Abeard
Puritan Board Freshman
We are always in danger of making our religion and our religious exercises unreal. We are in danger of having only a creed—instead of a life; only forms of worship—instead of heart experiences of devotion. This danger arises from the spirituality of true religion. We cannot see the God whom we adore and worship. There is no one visible to our eyes when we pray. We cannot touch the things we are taught to believe in as alone true and eternal. All religious acts, are acts of faith.
It is very easy, therefore, to lose the reality from our acts of devotion, and to let God as a living fact fade out of our consciousness. Yet the result is a very sad one; practically, we are left without God. The forms and symbols remain. We repeat our creeds, we recite our commandments, we say our payers—but our hearts are not warmed by love, the promises fail to support us and comfort us, and we are not strengthened for duty nor helped in struggles by our devotion.
Yet the realest things in this universe are the spiritual realities. God is real. Of course, we all believe this. We are not atheists. We have God in our creeds. We are entirely orthodox in our thoughts about the divine character and attributes. But is this God of our creeds, a reality to us in our personal life? Is he a father to us in our conscious experience? Do we enjoy real, living communion with him? Are our lives properly affected by his relation to us?
The danger with all of us is that we fall into formalism—that we utter words of petition in which there is no true heart desire, no actual supplication. It may startle some of us if we question our own souls, after any season of private or public prayer—to have to confess in how small a part of it our whole being was absorbed and engrossed. When God listens while we pray—what does he hear?
An English preacher asks: "If at the close of any public service, if on rising from private prayer, the question were seriously put to us, in the heart: 'What have you done; what has been asked; what has been sought; what has been desired; what has been wished or felt in this act of devotion? What, therefore, in the supposition that God answers prayer, may you now expect as the result?' How often must the confession be, 'Nothing, nothing—my heart was not involved. The very object of our worship, God himself, was to us an unreality; our conception of him, our shaping and framing of the thought of him, was even like that dumb idol of which Isaiah tells—a thing lifted into its place, and helplessly set there, speechless to its suppliant, and powerless to save."
There surely is something startling in this, if such words as these describe our experience. We need to give solemn heed to this whole subject. It is possible for us to go through forms of devotion regularly and decorously—and yet never really pray at all, our lips speaking words which are not born in one's hearts.
It is of vital importance that we seek to free our worship of all unreality. We should utter no word in our supplications before God, which is not laden with a deep and true desire from our heart of hearts. If we plead, "Nearer, my God, to You"— the holiest yearning of our soul should be in the cry. When we speak thanks in our worship, the pure incense of gratitude should rise in the glad accents of our praising words. Whatever we say when we are on our bended knees before God in the act and attitude of prayer—should be the truest, realest utterance of our heart's desires. Unreality in praying, is irreverent mocking of God!
It is very easy, therefore, to lose the reality from our acts of devotion, and to let God as a living fact fade out of our consciousness. Yet the result is a very sad one; practically, we are left without God. The forms and symbols remain. We repeat our creeds, we recite our commandments, we say our payers—but our hearts are not warmed by love, the promises fail to support us and comfort us, and we are not strengthened for duty nor helped in struggles by our devotion.
Yet the realest things in this universe are the spiritual realities. God is real. Of course, we all believe this. We are not atheists. We have God in our creeds. We are entirely orthodox in our thoughts about the divine character and attributes. But is this God of our creeds, a reality to us in our personal life? Is he a father to us in our conscious experience? Do we enjoy real, living communion with him? Are our lives properly affected by his relation to us?
The danger with all of us is that we fall into formalism—that we utter words of petition in which there is no true heart desire, no actual supplication. It may startle some of us if we question our own souls, after any season of private or public prayer—to have to confess in how small a part of it our whole being was absorbed and engrossed. When God listens while we pray—what does he hear?
An English preacher asks: "If at the close of any public service, if on rising from private prayer, the question were seriously put to us, in the heart: 'What have you done; what has been asked; what has been sought; what has been desired; what has been wished or felt in this act of devotion? What, therefore, in the supposition that God answers prayer, may you now expect as the result?' How often must the confession be, 'Nothing, nothing—my heart was not involved. The very object of our worship, God himself, was to us an unreality; our conception of him, our shaping and framing of the thought of him, was even like that dumb idol of which Isaiah tells—a thing lifted into its place, and helplessly set there, speechless to its suppliant, and powerless to save."
There surely is something startling in this, if such words as these describe our experience. We need to give solemn heed to this whole subject. It is possible for us to go through forms of devotion regularly and decorously—and yet never really pray at all, our lips speaking words which are not born in one's hearts.
It is of vital importance that we seek to free our worship of all unreality. We should utter no word in our supplications before God, which is not laden with a deep and true desire from our heart of hearts. If we plead, "Nearer, my God, to You"— the holiest yearning of our soul should be in the cry. When we speak thanks in our worship, the pure incense of gratitude should rise in the glad accents of our praising words. Whatever we say when we are on our bended knees before God in the act and attitude of prayer—should be the truest, realest utterance of our heart's desires. Unreality in praying, is irreverent mocking of God!
