JOB 16

17 Not for any injustice in mine hands: also my prayer is pure.

Prayer

Our purest and truest of American women writers speaks thus of a prayer she had heard:

"It was unlike any other prayer that I had ever heard: not cold and formal as if uttered from a sense of duty, not a display of eloquence nor an impious directing of Deity in His duties towards humanity. It was a quiet talk with God, as if long intercourse and much love had made it natural and easy for the son to seek the Father, confessing faults, asking help and submitting all things to the All Wise and Tender, as freely as little children bring their little sorrows, hopes and fears to their mother's knee."

Not an impious directing of Deity in His duties toward humanity. How we have all heard that. It seems to me prayer is a matter calling for care, more than all others. It is not-it cannot be a light matter to enter voluntarily into the presence of the Most High as it were.

If we were called upon to present ourselves before the great of this world, how would we do it? With cringing sycophancy? With an assumption of bravado? Nay, neither. A calm, self-possessed self-respecting unobtrusiveness, with something of deference to the other's position as a fact. If we are certain we have attained to the exalted position of children of Deity, we should show that we feel the dignity of our position, and approach even Himself with (as nearly as in us lie) a reflection of His own greatness.

Our attitude should be one of deep humility, for we are but dust and ashes. But our thoughts and the words that give them utterance should be a blending of simplicity with sublimity. Oh! but I tell you, there is more of the truly sublime in a few simple words welling up from a full heart, a pure heart, a true heart, than in the most eloquent burst, that is possible for finished rhetorician to pour forth in empty form.

"O, my Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me;" but "Thy will be done."

The Christadelphian, June 1884