SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 227, 7 January 1911, Page 9

SUNDAY READING.

"HE WAS ABOVE ALL A MAN OF PRAYER." (By Rev. W. S. Rollings). The words at the head of this article are by Dr. Alex. Whyte, concerning Thomas Boston, the puritan preacher, whose ministry became a powerful and effective witness for Christ throughout the whole of his parish. Dr. Whyte's importance and ministry are easily first in influence and importance to-day in Scotland, and what he said of Boston might with equal truth be said of himself—he was above all a man of prayer. In the accounts which have come to us from the great Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, frequent mention is made of the opening prayer which was offered by Dr. Whyte. Perhaps the highest compliment Dr. Whyte has yet received was paid to him by Dr., Silas Mcßee, editor 6f the New York Churchman, who wrote in his journal regarding the Conference: "Alexander Whyte, an honored member of the United Free Church and one of Scotland's best known eccelesiastics, lifted the Conference in the opening prayer; mystical and majestic in its approach to God out of and above the strife of division into the atmosphere of Catholic Christianity.' The Conference remained in the atmosphere of that prayer." It may be profitable to briefly summarise the teaching of this man of God regarding this supremely important matter. The Christian Church began in prayer and prayer has always been one of the keywords of the Church in its periods of greatest conquest, and to-day there is little doubt that wherever its ministry and membership are prayerless its witness is powerless. One of the contentions of Dr. Whyte concerning prayer is that it is the highest occupation in which earnest men can spend their time. Speaking of Paul he says: Intellectually as spiritually, as a theologian as well as a saint, Paul is at his very best in his prayer. ... In Ephesians and Collosians, especially, Paul's adoration flames up to heaven like the ascending incense of a great altar-fire. Paul's adorations in these two superb epistles reveal to us, as nothing else of Paul's compositions reveal to us the full intellectual strength and the full spiritual splendor of Paul's sanctified understanding. Canon Liddon was fond in his own way of emphasising the same truth. He claimed that men of giant intellect could find full scope for all the forces of their soul in intensest degree. If they entered into the meaning and power of prayer we need to learn that the vital business of the Christian life is no child's occupation; a something that belongs to that elementary stage of Christian experience which one might outgrow; the praying life grows stronger and deeper with the passing years if the Christian is aright. "If," ,ays Dr. Whyte, "you find your life of prayer always so short, and so easy, and so spiritual, without cost and strain and sweat to you. you may depend upon it you have not yet be<mn to pray." ° If prayer in highest degree demands all the forces of the intellect and heart working at full tension, it brings to those who will pay the price a rich reward. They will find it an outlet for their largest mind, their deepest heart, and their richest and ripest individuality. This is another claim made by Dr. Whyte: "Instead of the life of prayer being a monotony and a weariness, as we think it, there is simply no exercise of the body, and no operation of the mind, and no affection of the heart, for one moment to compare with prayer, for interest, for variety and for freshness, and for all manner of intellect and spiritual outlet and reward." This is not the language of hyperbole. It is attested by the experience of the world's praying men and women, of all classes and creeds. What tke athletic, what the man of intellect finds in fellowship with the thoughts of great minds, what the artist finds in the world of art, what the society man finds in social fellowshipall this and, more than this, the man of prayer finds through his praying. Few there are who can receive this saying. To some people prayer is at best a burden—some duty. Yet one of the facts of experience is that when the spirit of prayer is most intense life is richest and freshest and most satisfying. This is told of a young artist, a brilliant but conceited young fellow, who, by the selfdenial of a good mother, was sent to Rome to pursue his vocation. After two years his mother, accompanied by an adopted daughter, crossed the Atlantic from America to see him. The first time he taw them, he his foster-sister what had happened to his mother's face during the two years. She simply replied, "Your mother has prayed a good deal." "Well," replied the artist, "it makes a very good face, very interesting, very solemn, and it hns fine lines in it." This witness is true. The life that is nourished by the deep fountains of prayer becomes fruitful in those qualities which produce the highest typo of character. Regarding the .helps to the gaining of a pure heart, Dr. Whyte has much to say in his various writings: (1) In the lowest range of the praying life he believes that forms may help us. He is not averse to a praying soul writing down its language. Those who know his thorough intellectual habits entertain more than a suspicion that the prayer which lifted the Missionary Conference into fellowship with God and baptised it into the spirit of brotherhood. It is foolish to decry written prayers. "I eould no more pray to God with written prayers than I could go courting with my grandfather's love letters," said Henry Ward Beecher. Yet he confessed he would rather have been the .author of "Jesus, Lover of my Soul." than the ruler of a kingdom. What are the greatest psalms and the greatest hymns of the Church but the prayers of its »reat souls? Many have owed their souls to the little prayers learned at a mother's knee. Many saintly penitents have entered heaven with a prayer from the psalter upon their lips. David, Paul. Clias. Wesley and others, when our own words fail us, may help us to pray. And so also our own word* written down at our seleetest and devoutest moments.

(2) Another important point on which Dr. Whytc lay.* stress is the diligent cultivation of the habits of prayer. A good man is good, hut the spirit of prayer is hetter."' Dr. "Whytc helieves that if we trrow careless in our habits of prayer the "piril of prayer will become a diminishing quantity. "Prayer worth calling prayer; prayer that <!od will call true prayer and treat as true prayer, takes far more time hy the clock Lhan one liinn in a thousand thinks. After all that the Holy flhost has done to make true prayer independent of times, and of plaees. and of all kinds of instruments and assistances —as long as we remain in this mi»|iii'itnal and undevotional world we shall not succeed to he called success, without times and places, and other assistances in prayer." David, Daniel. Peter and •Tohn. Luther, McClaren, dowctt. and hosts of others can he cited as witnesses to this claim. Dr. Jowctt says that wherever lie is. as sure as seven o'clock comes round in the morning, he wants to pray. He has formed the hahit of specially praying flt that hour, and his sold cries out daily at this time for its customary fellowship with God. (3) Other aids commended are the reading of the Scriptures, being definite in our prayers, and having a definite hour out;of every twenty-four.