"It Is Sometimes So With Me That I Will Rather Die Than Pray"
by Alexander Whyte
Introduction:
The last sermon by Alexander Whyte to be read is from a
series of sermons he preached on the great Puritan Thomas Shepard. The titles
for his sermons were taken from quotes in Shepard's writings (either his
journal, sermons, or treatises). The three volume works of Thomas Shepard have
been republished by Soli Deo Gloria. Shepard is well worth the considerable
effort it takes to read him.
To Dr. Whyte the heart of the spiritual life was prayer. Prayer was the saint
pouring his heart out upon God and God likewise pouring His heart out upon His
child in intimate communion.
"He never failed to distinguish the God-ward from the man-ward aspect of
religion. No spiritual teacher of his time and land preached with the same
insight on penitence or on prayer. Much as he valued the privilege of public
worship-yet to him the typical and the highest form of devotion was secret
prayer." (G. F. Barbour, The Life of Alexander Whyte D. D., p. 307)
For further precepts on prayer by Alexander Whyte his series of sermons on this
subject has been published in the book Lord, Teach Us to Pray.
Sermon:
It Is Sometimes So With Me That
I Will Rather Die Than Pray
by Alexander
Whyte
(Concerning Thomas Shepard, Pilgrim Father and Founder of Harvard; His
Spiritual Experience and Experimental Preaching, pp. 53-64)
Suppose for a moment that we had been left without hope in
our fallen estate of sin and misery. Just suppose that we had been left as a
race with nothing before us but a fearful looking for of judgment. And then
suppose we were told that there was another race of sinful and miserable men
exactly like ourselves in one of those wonderful worlds that we see in our
midnight sky. And suppose we were told also that to them in their fallen state
their Maker had Himself become their Redeemer and had prepared His throne in
the heavens, so that by simply approaching that throne they could command His
ear and His heart and His hand at any hour of the day and in any watch of the
night. Suppose all that had been told us about those happy creatures, with what
holy wonder and with what holy desire would we have gone out of our house at
night and looked up at that far-off star! How would we have envied those highly
favored sons of God! O that my lot had been cast among them, and not on this
God-forsaken earth! What Sabbath days they must have up there! What communion
seasons! What meetings for prayer and praise! And what family worship! How happy
it must be to be a father up there! How sweet and blessed, above all words, to
be a mother! But suppose we were also assured that with all that, those so
privileged people simply despised and neglected their Maker and Redeemer and
absolutely hated so much as to kneel down before Him. Suppose we were assured
that ninety-nine out of every hundred of those redeemed men actually rose every
morning and lay down every night as if there were no God and no mercy-seat --
what would you have said about such men? You would have said that they must be
madmen, if the tenth part of what you have been told about them is true.
Now, not only is it all true, but more than that, this world of ours is that
wonderful star. And we who are assembled in this House of God this Sabbath
evening, we are those suicides. It is we who say, What is the Almighty that we
should serve Him? And what profit should we have if we prayed to Him? Now, if
all that is so, can any explanation be given of that so fearful state of
matters? -- a state of matters so fearful that one of the most prayerful men
that ever lived here confesses to us that it is sometimes so with him that he
will rather face death and judgment than abide for long before God in secret
prayer. Now can that awful state of matters be at all explained? And if so what
can that explanation by any possibility be?
Well, at bottom and to begin with, there is some absolutely unaccountable
alienation of our sinful hearts away from our Maker and our Redeemer. There is
some utterly inexplicable estrangement from God that has, somehow, taken
possession of your heart and mine. There is some dark mystery of iniquity here
that has never yet been sufficiently cleared up. There is some awful 'enmity
against God,' as the Holy Ghost has it: some awful malice that sometimes makes
us hate the very thought of God. We hate God, indeed, much more than we love
ourselves. For we knowingly endanger our immortal souls; every day and every
night we risk death and hell itself rather than come close to God and abide in
secret prayer. This is the spiritual suicide that we could not have believed
possible had we not discovered it in our own atheistical hearts. The thing is
far too fearful to put into words. But put into words for once, this is what
our everyday actions say concerning us in this supreme matter of prayer. 'No;
not tonight,' we say, 'I do not need to pray tonight. I am really very well
tonight. And besides I have business on my hands that will take up all my time
tonight. I have quite a pile of unanswered letters on my table tonight. And
before I sleep I have the novel of the season to finish, for I must send it
back tomorrow morning. And besides there is no such hurry as all that. I am not
so old nor so frail as all that. Go thy way for this time, when I have a
convenient season I will call for thee.'
But even when it is not so bad with us as that, at our very best there is a
certain backwardness in prayer to which all praying men have to confess. I find
that same sad confession in men so different both in their doctrines and in
their experiences as Jeremy Taylor and John Newton. These are the very words of
the eloquent Bishop in his Holy Living: 'There is no worse sign of our
spiritual danger than the backwardness we have to pray. So weary are we of the
duty, so glad are we to have it over, and so witty are we to find an excuse to
evade it.' And these are the exact words of John Newton in his fine book, The
Cardiphonia: 'I find in my own case an unaccountable backwardness to pray.
I can read, I can write, I can converse with a ready will, but secret prayer is
far more spiritual than any of these. And the more spiritual any duty is the
more my carnal heart is apt to start away from it.' Both of those prayerful
men, you see, confess to a sad backwardness in prayer -- to call that state of
mind and heart by no worse name.
Now in a state of matters like that it is quite evident how next to impossible
it will be for any man to put his whole heart into his prayer, even when he
compels himself to pray. And yet without the whole heart it is not true prayer
at all. It is only when we seek God with our whole heart, that we have any
assurance from Him that we shall find Him. The men of Judah, we read, swore to
God with their whole heart. They sought God with their whole heart's desire and
He was found of them and He gave them rest round about. And a psalmist sings of
the great blessedness of them that keep God's testimonies, and that seek Him
with their whole heart. And again, With my whole heart have I sought Thee, O
let me not wander from Thy commandments. And again, When you seek Me with your
whole heart, then shall you find Me. Even the old Stoics, who lived in an
outside dispensation, said that nothing cost them so much as the things which
they purchased by prayer. Because they had to give up their whole heart to
their prayer before they could gain
anything from God in that way. And our own New England [Thomas] Shepard has
this same experience in the New Testament dispensation. 'August 13. I saw that
my heart was prone to neglect prayer. I soon thought that I had prayed enough
for one night. Till I came to see that all I could pray was little enough to
help down all the mercy I needed. And till I came to see also that God would
have me to get my mercy from Him at some cost to myself.' Yes; this is one of
the great difficulties of a life of prayer to such men as we are, that it
demands from us our whole heart.
Then again, sometimes, and to some people, there is the great difficulty they
have in praying along with some other people. For instance, you will have an
insurmountable difficulty sometimes in entering with your whole heart into
public worship. Your minister does not carry you with him in his pulpit
devotions. His language, his voice, his accent, his intonation, his manner, his
composition, or some other unacceptableness of his to you, throws you wholly
out of step with him till you lose all the help of public prayer. Then again,
those who conduct family prayers at home do not help you, rather otherwise. They
are so familiar to you, they so little interest you, they are so lengthy, and
they so weary you, and so on. Till family worship is no worship at all to you,
but the very opposite, and till you escape away from it as often as you can.
Then again, and still more distressful, when a husband and his wife attempt to
pray together, or a father and his son, or a mother and her daughter, their
personal needs at the moment, their personal experiences at the moment are so
unlike, their innermost lives are so different and so unshared, that it is
impossible for them to agree together in what they ask and in the way they ask
for it. Till all their attempts at united prayer only bring out the more
painfully how far away they are from one another, and thus from God. So many,
so real, and sometimes so absolutely unavoidable are the difficulties that lie
in the way of a life of true and prevailing prayer.
And once more, why do the most devout of men and the most long-exercised of men
sometimes so fall away from their life of prayer and from all liberty and
comfort and power in prayer, and that after they have for years so enjoyed all
that? Well, that is a question in personal and experimental religion that I
cannot answer satisfactorily to myself, as yet. I have tried hard to find out
some of the reasons for that declension, both in myself and in other men, but I
am not satisfied with what I have found, as yet. If I succeed in my study of
that painful matter, I shall tell you more about it another time.
From all that let us proceed to ask how that awful state of matters is
to be met and overcome by us. For it would be too terrible to think that our
dislike of prayer and our neglect of God is to go on till death and till we are
suddenly summoned to give an account of our life of prayer, as of all else.
1. Well, for one thing -- 'I thought on my ways,' says the devout and much
experienced psalmist, 'and I turned my feet into Thy testimonies.' Let us be
like him in this matter of prayer. Let us think on our ways in prayer. Let us
think on the place that prayer holds in Holy Scripture, and on the place that
prayer has always held in the lives of all God's outstanding people. Let us
think of the urgency and the grace of God's commands laid on us to live a life
of prayer. Let us think that the Almighty is actually waiting for us to begin
to pray in order that He may begin to be gracious to us in answer to our
prayers. Let us think how we must look in His eyes in this matter of prayer.
Let us think what He must think and say to Himself about us. Let us think if we
were in His place what we would think of any one who treated us and our son as
we treat Him and His Son. We could not fail to cry to God for the spirit of
grace and of supplication if we would only begin to think Who and What He is,
and who and what we are, and what prayer is appointed by Him to be between Him
and us.
2. And then, when once you begin to think and to pray, be sure you persevere in
it to the end. Never never in this world give up prayer. And the more distaste
and difficulty you find in beginning to pray the more liberty and sweetness you
will taste if you only persevere. 'Men plead difficulty,' says Shepard, 'I
plead advantage. For he that overcometh his indisposition to pray shall eat of
the hidden manna. Have you not yourselves,' he asks, 'eaten of this same hidden
manna. Have there not been times when you were very unwilling to begin to pray,
but after you began and persevered but a little you could not leave off?' Yes;
that is the recorded experience of one who sometimes would rather risk dying in
his sin than begin to pray. What Pascal said of composition is still more true
of prayer, the difficulty is to make a good beginning.
3. Then again, go on in your prayer in spite of your want of present gusto, so
Santa Teresa is continually counseling her spiritual children. Samuel
Rutherford shall explain to us what the Spanish saint means by gusto in prayer.
When the devout parishioners of Kilmacolm complained to Rutherford concerning
their too little sweetness in prayer this was the counsel he returned to his
correspondents. 'The less sweetness in prayer the more pure spirituality. A
sweet service has not seldom its sweetness and gusto from some other source
than the spiritual world? I believe,' wrote Rutherford, 'that many think that
prayer is formal and lifeless unless the wind is in the west, and unless all
their sails are filled with spiritual joy. But I am not of their mind who so
think,' said that great counselor of Scottish souls in their distresses and in
their apprehensions.
4. 'July 2,' writes Shepard, 'I saw it to be my duty not only to pray from time
to time, but actually to live by prayer. To live by prayer for myself, and for
my family, and for my church. And I saw that my heart was at last conformed to
the mind and the will of God in that respect. And I went on to consider in what
ways I might henceforth live by prayer alone.' 'Pray often,' says Taylor, 'and
you will pray oftener, till you will end in praying without ceasing.'
5. Again, always make hay when the sun shines. As thus: And the Lord
descended and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And when Moses heard the name of
the Lord, he made haste, and bowed his head to the earth, and worshipped God,
and said, If now I have found grace in thy sight, pardon our sin and our
iniquity, and take us for Thine inheritance. Yes; make haste to make hay when
the sun shines.
6. Again if you are an experienced man in these spiritual matters you will be
able to turn both your past transgressions and your present temptations to your
greater prosperity in the life of prayer. 'My sin is ever before me,' said
David, when he was engaged on the composition of his greatest psalm. 'I am
always sinning,' said Luther, 'and I am always reading the Epistle to the
Romans, and am always praying.'
7. And again, when you ask the advice of the old experts in this matter they
will all tell you to set apart a special time for prayer, and even a special
place. James Durham, the laird of Pourie Castle, gave himself much to spiritual
reading. And he caused build a study for himself on the head of the stair in
his house in the country, three miles out the Forfar road on the way out of
Dundee. In this little chamber that great scholar, great divine, and great
saint gave himself continually to reading and meditation and prayer, and he was
so close a student that he often forgot to eat his bread even after his servant
had set it on his table. And like Durham the New England Fathers were wont to
build their houses with a secret room for secret prayer. And Shepard looked on
it as a sure sign of declension when the New England architects got no orders
to put such secret rooms in their plans for new houses.
8. Speaking about secret rooms and secret prayers, a friend of mine has this
devotional device put up on his most shut-in wall. He has a long picture-frame
with the portraits of all his family fixed into the frame from the oldest to
the youngest. And then hanging above that frame he has a fine head of Jesus
Christ, which is so hung that the Intercessor looks down night and day on the
children's portraits below as if He were making continual intercession for
them, as indeed He is. And instead of that standing in room of his own prayer
for his children and thus discharging him from it as we might think the danger
was, my friend assures me that the sight of that wall night and morning draws
him down to his knees, when but for that reminding and quickening wall he would
often forget to pray. You might try some such device yourselves, as many of you
as have a bad conscience both toward God and toward your children in this
matter of secret and intercessory prayer in their behalf.
What are these, and whence came they? These are they who were born and brought
up in a baptized home, but were never prayed for, to call prayer, and were
never taught to pray for themselves. They took a high place at school and at
college but they were never taught to pray. Their fathers and their mothers
were church members, but they never took the trouble to teach their children to
pray. And when they became fathers and mothers themselves the entail of
prayerlessness and neglect of God descended to their children also. Therefore
they are where they are. And therefore it is with them and with their children
as it is. My brethren, if prayer is anything at all it is everything. And that
is exactly what the whole Word of God says about prayer; it is everything,
absolutely everything.
http://www.sounddoctrine.net/