I. Our Lord seems to have undertaken no great work without earnest prayer for God's guidance. If we undertook everything in this spirit we should have more success, and more happiness in our success than we have. And it was not merely when He had some special boon to ask that our Saviour prayed; to pray was with Him something more than merely asking for favours it was to worship and adore the Father, to rise in spirit from the world, and above all bodily cares and wants, and join in spirit that glorious company of angels and Cherubim and Seraphim, who ever live in the light of God's countenance, and cry, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God.
II. Consider some general features which ought to belong to prayer, according to our Lord. (1) Christ warned His disciples against the Pharisees; whomsoever they imitated, it must not be those hollow professors with their high pretence and rotten hearts: it must not be those who sought the praise of men, and thought little of the praise of Him who seeth in secret. Any man follows the example of these hypocrites who comes to the house of prayer with any hollow purpose. (2) For the matter of prayer, I will only allude to that advice of our Saviour's, where He says "Use not vain repetitions." It is chiefly to guard against this danger that the Church has ever used fixed forms of prayer, that no prayers may be offered which are unworthy of God. (3) Again, our Lord taught us that though we are to pray reverently, yet we are to pray earnestly, as those who will take no denial. He spoke the parable of the widow applying to the unjust judge, and who obtained her suit by her constancy, to show us how we ought to pray; and He promises that those things which we ask in faith we certainly shall have. Wherefore it appears that the Spirit which God approves is that of earnestness and perseverance; He does not love coldness and lukewarmness; He loves genuine heartfelt zeal which is ever praying to Him for increased blessings, and ever pressing on, and never satisfied with what has been given, but desiring more abundant supplies.
Bishop Harvey Goodwin, Parish Sermons,p. 1.
Forms of Prayer.
I. That liturgies were of Divine appointment under the Jewish dispensation there can be no question. The songs of Moses and Miriam, and the titles prefixed to a large number in the Book of Psalms, bear evidence of being composed for congregational use. Besides, through the writings of Josephus and other Hebrew historians, no inconsiderable part of the ancient Jewish liturgies have been preserved to us, and a remarkable coincidence has been discovered between the order and method of these early compositions with our own Book of Common Prayer. Unsafe as it might be, as a rule, to base an argument on the silence of Scripture, yet we can hardly suppose that if our Lord had intended that in such an important particular the Christian worship was to differ from the Jewish, He would not have told His disciples so plainly, rather than just join in such pre-composed devotions Himself, and then institute a form, which from being expressed throughout in the plural number, must have been intended for public and social use.
II. Note some objections to prepared forms of private prayer, however spiritual and excellent they may be, if they be used exclusively. (1) It is obvious we are thereby confined in regard to the matter of our prayers; we restrict our conversation with Heaven to a fixed routine of subjects, and preclude the mention of those hourly spiritual experiences which, though unseen, and unknown to the world, make up the great incidents of the soul's life, and may give, day by day, a new complexion to its prayers. (2) Again, there is a danger lest the exclusive use of forms should have a tendency to deaden the spirit of prayer. It is a question to be entertained calmly, whether the heart be not kept closer to its work when it has to search out of its own experiences and its own feelings the materials of its sacrifice, than when in the prepared human composition the fire and the wood are laid ready to its hand. Words, we know, are but outward things. Words are but the priest's censer which, whether it be made of gold or of clay, affects not the fragrance of the incense, nor the height to which the cloud ascends. In the estimates of Heaven the tongue of the eloquent, and the lips of the stammering, have a common value, and both are only so far regarded by God as they proceed from an honest heart as they discover a lowly spirit, as they evidence a strength of faith, as they bespeak an earnest longing for the approval and regards of Heaven.
D. Moore, Penny Pulpit,No. 3,199.
Forms of Private Prayer the Uses of them.
I. Let us bear in mind the precept of the wise man: "Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter anything before God." Prayers framed at the moment are likely to be irreverent. To avoid the irreverence of many or unfit words and rude, half-religious thoughts, it is necessary to pray from book or memory, and not at random.
II. Forms of prayer are necessary to guard us against the irreverence of wandering thoughts. If we pray without set words (read or remembered), our minds will stray from the subject; other thoughts will cross us, and we shall pursue them; we shall lose sight of His Presence whom we are addressing. This wandering of mind is in good measure prevented, under God's blessing, by forms of prayer.
III. Next, they are useful as securing us from the irreverence of excited thoughts. If we are encouraging with us an excitement, an unceasing rush and alternation of feelings, and think that this, and this only, is being in earnest in religion, we are harming our minds, and even grieving the peaceful Spirit of God, who would silently and tranquilly work His Divine work in our hearts. This, then, is an especial use of forms of prayer. When we are in earnest, as we ought always to be: viz., to keep us from self-willed earnestness, to still emotion, to calm us, to remind us what and where we are, to lead us to a purer and serener temper, and to that deep unruffled love of God and man, in which is really the fulfilling of the law, and the perfection of human nature.
IV. Forms are necessary to help our memory, and to set before us at once, completely, and in order, what we have to pray for.
V. How short are the seasons which most men have to give to prayer. Before they can collect their memories and minds their leisure is almost over, even if they have the power to dismiss the thoughts of this world, which just before engaged them. Now forms of prayer do this for them. They keep the ground occupied, that Satan may not encroach upon the seasons of devotion.
VI. The Forms of the Church have ever served her children, both to restrain them in their career of sin, and to supply them with ready utterance on their repentance.
VII. Let us recollect for how long a period our prayers have been the standard forms of devotion in the Church of Christ, and we shall gain a fresh reason for loving them, and a fresh source of comfort in using them. They have become sacred from the memory of saints departed who have used them, and whom we hope one day to meet in heaven.
J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons,vol. i., p. 257.
References: Luke 11:1. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ii., p. 336; W. C. E. Newbolt, Counsels of Faith and Practice,p. 220; A. Murray, With Christ in the School of Prayer,p. 1; A. Maclaren, Weekday Evening Addresses,p. 19; G. E. L. Cotton, Sermons to English Congregations in India,p. 308. Luke 11:1-13. A. B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve,p. 51.