XXII
THE SECRET BURDEN
"Lord, teach us to pray."--Luke xi. 1.
"Apart. . ."--Zech. xii. 12.
Down to Gehenna, and up to the throne,
He travels the fastest, who travels alone
THAT is to say, secret sin, and secret prayer, have
this in common; that they both make a man travel
his fastest. Secret sin makes him who commits
it travel his fastest down to Gehenna,--that is to
say, down into "the fire that is not quenched."
Whereas secret prayer makes him who so prays
travel his very fastest up to the throne of God, and
up to his own throne in heaven.
Down to Gehenna, and up to the throne,
He travels the fastest, who travels alone.
"Apart! Apart! Apart!" proclaims this
prophet, ten times, in the text. If he could only
get "the house of David, and the inhabitants of
Jerusalem" to pray, and to pray apart--the
Fountain for sin and for uncleanness would soon
be opened; and the Kingdom of God would soon
come. "Apart! Apart! Apart!" he cries
"Every family apart, and their wives apart!"
This truly evangelical prophet is very importunate
with the people to whom he preaches, to get
them to take the fullest and the most universal
advantage of this apartness in prayer. Apartness
in prayer has immense and incomparable advantages
over all other kinds and practices of prayer:
and this prophet urges it on his people with all his
authority and with all possible earnestness. He
would have all ranks, and all classes, and all occupations,
and all ages, and both sexes, to begin, and
to continue, to pray apart. Indeed, he as good
as proclaims to them, with all his prophetic power
and passion, that the man who does not pray apart
does not properly pray at all. And our Lord supports
this prophet and says the same thing in one
of His well-known utterances about prayer. Thou,
He says, when thou prayest, go apart first. Go
away to some retreat of thine, where thou art sure
that no eye sees thee, and no ear hears thee, and
where no man so much as suspects where thou art,
and what thou art doing. Enter thy closet; and,
with thy door shut on thee, and on thy Father
with thee,-- then pray.
There it is--written all over our open Bible so
that he who runs may read it,--the sure and certain
blessedness of prayer apart, the immediate and the
immense advantage and privilege of private prayer.
But not only is all that written all over both the Old
Testament and the New, it is illustrated and
enforced on us out of our own experience every day.
Let us just take ourselves here as so many proofs
and pictures of the advantage and superiority and
privilege of
private prayer over
public prayer. And
take just your minister and then yourselves in
proof and in illustration of this. As soon as the
church bells stop ringing on the Sabbath morning,
your ministers must immediately begin to pray
openly and before men--whether they are prepared
or no; whether they are in the proper spirit or no;
and whether they have recovered their lost sight
and lost hold of God that morning or no. It is
expected of them that, as soon as the opening psalm
is sung, the pulpit should begin to pray.
And you get,--more or less,--every Sabbath
morning from the pulpit what you pay your seat
for, and demand of us in return. You get a few
well-repeated liturgical passages. You get a few
well-selected texts taken out of the Psalms. And
then a promise or two taken out of the prophets
and the apostles,--all artistically wound up with a
few words of doxology. But all that, four or five
times every Sabbath day, is not prayer. All that
is a certain open and public acknowledgment and
tribute to the House of Prayer, and to the Day of
Prayer; but nobody with an atom of sense or
spirit ever supposes that that is prayer. And then
we have to stop our Sabbath morning prayer before
we have well begun it. You allow, and measure
out to us by your watches, our limit. We must say
our pulpit prayers before you at the proper moment,
in the proper tones, and to the proper length,--on
the pain of losing your countenance and patronage.
And on the other hand, though our hearts are
breaking, we must begin at the advertised hour.
And we must not by a sigh, or a sob, or a tear, or by
one utterance of reality and sincerity, annoy or
startle or upset you. We must please you with
a pleasant voice. Our very pronunciation and
accent must be the same as yours,--else you will
not have it. We may let out our passions in everything
else, as much as we like,--but not on Sabbath,
and, above all, not in pulpit prayer. These are
some of the inconveniences and disadvantages and
dangers of public prayer to your ministers. But
out of the pulpit, and sufficiently away and apart
from you,--we can do what we like. We have no
longer to please you to your edification. We can
wait as long as we like in our closet, before we
attempt to pray. The day is over now, and the
duties of the day: we are in no hurry now: we
are under no rule of use and wont now. We can
watch a whole hour now, if we are not too tired and
sleepy. We can sit down and read, and muse, and
meditate, and make images of things to ourselves
out of our Bible, or out of our Andrewes, till the fire
begins to burn! That was what David did. "My
heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire
burned: then spake I with my tongue." And
the minutes toward midnight may run on to
hours; and the midnight hours to morning watches;
and yet we will run no danger of wearying out
Him who slumbers not nor sleeps: He still waits
to be gracious. What we ministers, of all men,
would do without prayer apart,--I cannot imagine
what would become of us! But, with his closet,
and with the key of his closet continually in his
hand, no minister need despair, even though he is
a great orator, with a great gift of public prayer.
"Apart! Apart! Apart!" this great prophet keeps
ringing in every minister's ears. "Apart! Apart!
Apart! Every minister--of all men,--apart!"
And the very same thing holds true of yourselves,
my praying brethren. You have the very same
out-gate and retreat in private prayer that we have.
You can escape apart from us, and from all our
pulpit prayers. God help you if you do not! If
all your praying is performed here,--and if it is
all performed by your minister for you,--may God
pity you, and teach you Himself to pray! But if
you are living a life of secret prayer, then you are
not dependent on us; and we are not so ruinously
responsible for you. And indeed, if you pray much
apart, you are already beyond our depth. You are
wiser than all your teachers. You could teach us.
I sometimes see you, and see what you are thinking
about, when you are not aware. You listen to us
in our public prayers. And you smile to yourself
as you see us attempting a thing in public that--
you see quite well--we know next to nothing about
in private. We have our reward of others, but not
of you: you say nothing. You sit out the public
worship and then you rise up, and go home. It is
with you as when a hungry man dreameth and;
behold, he eateth ; but he awaketh and his soul
is empty. Till you get home, and the house is
asleep. And then, could we but act the eavesdropper
that night! Could we but get our ear
close to your keyhole, we should learn a lesson in
prayer that we should not forget. You must surely
see what I am driving at in all this, do you not?
I am labouring, and risking something, to prove
this to you, and to print it on your hearts,--the
immense privilege and the immense and incomparable
opportunity and advantage of
private
prayer, of prayer apart.
And then, for a further illustration of this argument,
take the confession of sin, in public and in
private prayer. The feeling of sin is the most
personal, and poignant, and overpowering part of
your daily and hourly prayer. And, if you will
think about it for one moment, you will see how
absolutely impossible it is for you to discover, and
to lay bare and to put the proper words and feelings
upon yourself and upon your sin, in public prayer.
You cannot do it. You dare not do it. And when
you do do it, under some unbearable load of guilt,
or under some overpowering pain of heart,--you do
yourself no good, and you do all who hear you real
evil. You offend them. You tempt them to think
and to speak about you and your prayers, which is
a most mischievous thing: you terrify, like Thomas
Boston, the godly. And, after all; after all
that injurious truthfulness and plain-spokenness of
yours in prayer,--with all that, you cannot in
public prayer go out sufficiently into particulars
and instances, and times, and places, and people.
Particularity, and
taking instances, is the very lifeblood
of all true and prevailing prayer. But you
dare not do that: you dare not take an outstanding
instance of your daily sinfulness and utter corruption
of heart in public or in family prayer. It
would be insufferable and unpardonable. It is never
done. And you must not under any temptation
of conscience, or of heart, ever do it. When your
door is shut, and when all public propriety, and
all formality, and insincerity is shut out,
then you
can say and do anything to which the spirit moves
you. You can pray all night on your face, if you like,
like your Lord in Gethsemane. When you are so full
of sin that you are beside yourself with the leprosy
of it and with the shame and the pain of it,--they
would carry you to the madhouse, if you let yourself
say and do in public what all God's greatest saints,
beginning with God's Son, have continually done in
private. But your soul may sweat great drops of
blood in secret, and no human being is any wiser.
And as for those who watch you and see it all,--
"there is joy in heaven" over you from that night.
Not one in ten of you have ever done it, possibly
not one in a hundred: but when you begin really
to look on Him whom you have pierced, as this
great prophet has it, then you will begin to understand
what it is to be in bitterness, and to mourn
apart, as one is in bitterness for his first-born.
Then, no pulpit confession, and no family altar, will
relieve your heart. For then, there will be a life-long
mourning in your heart as the mourning of
Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon. "Oh,"
you will cry, "oh, that mine head were waters, and
mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep
day and night for the Son of God whom I have
slain by my sin! Oh, that I had in the wilderness
a lodging-place of wayfaring men; that I might
leave my people, and go from them to weep for my
sin against my God and my Saviour!" And God
will provide such a place
apart for you, and for
Himself with you,--till one day, when your head
is, as never before, "waters," He will say; "It is
enough, go in peace. Weep no more." And He
will wipe all tears from your eyes.
And the very same thing holds true of all intercessory
prayer. It would be an impertinence and
an impudence; it would be an ostentation and a
presumption to pray for other men in public, as
you are permitted and enabled and commanded
to pray for them in private. It would be resented,
and never forgiven. In intercessory prayer in
public, particulars and instances, and actual
persons, and special and peculiar cases, are absolutely
impracticable and impossible. You simply dare not
pray, in public, for other men,--any more than for
yourself,--as they need to be prayed for. You
would be arrested and imprisoned under the
law of libel if you did it. Were you to see these
men and women around you as they are; and were
you to describe them, and to plead with God to
redeem and renew, and restore, and save them,--
the judge would shut your mouth. But in private,
neither your friend nor your enemy will ever know,
or even guess, till the last day, what they owe to you,
and to your closet. You will never incur either
blame or resentment or retaliation by the way you
speak about them and their needs in the ear of God.
The things that are notoriously and irrecoverably
destroying the character and the usefulness of your
fellow-worshipper--you may not so much as whisper
them to your best friend, or to his. But you can,
and you must, bear him by name, and all his sins
and vices, all that is deplorable, and all that is
contemptible about him, before God. And if you
do so; and if you persist and persevere in doing
so,--though you would not believe it,--you will
come out of your closet to love, and to honour, and
to put up with, and to protect, and to defend your
client the more,--the more you see what is wrong
with him, and the more you importune God in his
behalf. Intercessory prayer, in the pulpit, usually
begins with the Sovereign, and the Royal Family,
and the Prime Minister, and the Parliament, and
so on. You all know the monotonous and meaningless
rubric. But nobody is any better, Sovereign
nor Parliament, because nobody is in earnest. We
pray for the Sovereign, in order to be seen and
heard and approved of men. But in secret,--it is
another matter. If you ever--before God and in faith
and love--prayed for your Sovereign, or for any great
personage sincerely, and with importunity, you
then began to feel toward them in a new way; and
you began to have your answer returned into your
own bosom, if not yet into theirs, in the shape of
real honour, and real love, and real good-will,
and real good wishes, and more and better prayer,
for those you so pray for. "I exhort therefore
that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions,
be made for all men; for kings, and for
all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet
and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty....
For there is one God, and one Mediator between
God and men, the Man Christ Jesus.... I will
therefore that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy
hands, without wrath and doubting."
And, then,--to conclude this great argument,--take
thanksgiving, which is, by far, the best and
the most blessed part of both public and private
prayer. You cannot thank God with all your heart
in public. You cannot tell in public--even to
them that fear God--all that God has done for
your soul. Even David himself could not do it.
He tried it, again and again: but he had to give up
the attempt. In public, that is, and before the
great congregation, he could not do it. You see him
attempting it, again and again; but the great
congregation is not able to bear it. Here is the
best specimen of a true thanksgiving I have ever
met with. But then, it is not a public, but a private
devotion,--as its title-page bears.
"O God," this man of prayer said in secret to
God once every week, taking a whole night to it:
going out into particulars, and giving instances,
and names, and dates.
"O God, I thank Thee for my existence: for my
life, and for my reason. For all Thy gifts to me of
grace, nature, fortune"--(enumerating and naming
them, and taking time to do it)--"for all Thy
forbearance, long-suffering, long long-suffering to
me-ward, up to this night. For all good things I
have received of Thy hand"--(naming some of
them)--"for my parents honest and good" (recollecting
them, and recollecting instances and
occasions of their honesty and goodness)--"and
for benefactors, never to be forgotten" (naming
them). "For religious, and literary, and social
intimates, so congenial, and so helpful. For all
who have helped me by their writings,--(and at
that he rises off his knees, and walks round his
library, and passes his eye along its so helpful
shelves).--"For all who have saved my soul also
by their sermons, and their prayers" (and at this
he recalls great preachers of the soul, some dead,
and some still alive and open to his acknowledgments).
"For all whose rebukes and remonstrances
have arrested and reformed me. For
those even who have, some intentionally, and
some unintentionally, insulted and injured me,--
but I have got good out of it all,"--and so on.
You could not offer a sacrifice of praise like that
before everybody. You could not do it with
propriety before anybody! And it would be still
more impossible to go on, and to give instances
and particulars like this: and, without instances
and particulars, you might as well be in your bed.
"Thou holdest my soul in life, and sufferest not my
feet to be moved. Thou rescuest me every day
from dangers, and from sicknesses of body and soul;
from public shame, and from the strife of tongues.
Thou continuest to work in me, by Thy special
grace to me, some timeous remembrance of my
latter end; and some true recollection and shame,
and horror, and grief of heart for my past sins.
Glory be to thee, O God, for Thine unspeakable,
and unimaginable goodness to me,--of all sinners
the most unworthy, the most provoking, and the
most unthankful!" You could not say things like
that in the pulpit, no, nor at your own most intimate
family altar. And, yet, they
must be said.
There are men among you whose hearts would
absolutely burst, if they were not let say such
things: aye, and say them, not once a week, like
this great saint, but every day and every night.
And it is to them--few, or many among us, God
alone knows,--it is to
them that this Scripture is
selected and sent this morning,--this Scripture:
And I will pour out upon them the spirit of grace and
of supplications, the spirit of repentance and confession,
the spirit of intercession and prayer for all
men: and the still more blessed spirit of praise
and thankfulness: and they shall pray and praise
apart, till their Father which seeth, and heareth,
apart and in secret, shall reward them openly.
Down to Gehenna, and up to the throne,
He travels the fastest, who travels alone.
