“Thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.” Matt. vi. 6.
Here is our Saviour’s own sanction and blessing vouchsafed to private prayer, in simple, clear, and most gracious words. The Pharisees were in the practice, when they prayed by themselves, of praying in public, in the corners of the streets; a strange inconsistency according to our notions, since in our language prayer by oneself is even called private prayer. Public private prayer, this was their self-contradictory practice. Warning, then, His disciples against the particular form of hypocrisy in which the self-conceit of human nature at that day showed itself, our Lord promises in the text His Father’s blessing on such humble supplications as were really addressed to Him, and not made to gain the praise of men. Those who seek the unseen God (He seems to say), seek Him in their hearts and hidden thoughts, not in loud words, as if He were far off from them. Such men would retire from the world into places where no human eye saw them, there to meet Him humbly and in faith, who is “about their path, and about their bed, and spieth out all their ways.” And He, the Searcher of hearts, would reward them openly. Prayers uttered in secret, according to God’s will, are treasured up in God’s Book of Life. They seem, perhaps, to have sought an answer here, and to have failed. Their memory perishes even in the mind of the petitioner, and the world never knew of them. But God is ever mindful, and in the last day, when the books are opened, they shall be disclosed and rewarded before the whole world.
Such is Christ’s gracious promise in the text, acknowledging and blessing, in His condescension, those devotional exercises which were a duty even before Scripture enjoined them; and changing into a privilege that work of faith, which, though bidden by conscience, and authorized by reason, yet before He revealed His mercy, is laden, in every man’s case who attempts it, with guilt, remorse, and fear. It is the Christian’s unspeakable privilege, and his alone, that he has at all times free access to the throne of grace through the mediation of his Lord and Saviour.
But, in what I shall now say concerning prayer, I shall not consider it as a privilege, but as a duty; for till we have some experience of the duties of religion, we are incapable of entering duly into the privileges; and it is too much the fashion of the day to view prayer chiefly as a mere privilege, such a privilege as it is inconsiderate indeed to neglect, but only inconsiderate, not sinful; and optional to use.
Now, we know well enough that we are bound to be in one sense in prayer and meditation all the day long. The question then arises, are we to pray in any other way? Is it enough to keep our minds fixed upon God through the day, and to commune with Him in our hearts, or is it necessary, over and above this habitual faith, to set apart particular times for the more systematic and earnest exercise of it? Need we pray at certain times of the day in a set manner? Public worship, indeed, from its very nature, requires places, times, and even set forms. But private prayer does not necessarily require set times, because we have no one to consult but ourselves, and we are always with ourselves; nor forms, for there is no one else whose thoughts are to keep pace with ours. Still, though set times and forms of prayer are not absolutely necessary in private prayer, yet they are highly expedient; or rather, times are actually commanded us by our Lord in the text, “Thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.”
In these words certain times for private prayer, over and above the secret thought of God which must ever be alive in us, are clearly enjoined; and the practice of good men in Scripture gives us an example in confirmation of the command. Even our Saviour had His peculiar seasons of communing with God. His thoughts indeed were one continued sacred service offered up to His Father; nevertheless, we read of His going up “into a mountain apart to pray,” and again, of His “continuing all night in prayer to God.” [Matt. xiv. 23. Luke vi. 12.] Doubtless, you well recollect that solitary prayer of His, before His passion, thrice repeated, “that the cup might pass from Him.” St. Peter too, as in the narrative of the conversion of Cornelius, the Roman centurion, in the tenth chapter of the Acts, went up upon the house-top to pray about the sixth hour; then God visited him. And Nathanael seems to have been in prayer under the fig-tree, at the time our Saviour saw him, and Philip called him 1. I might multiply instances from Scripture of such “Israelites without guile;” which are of course to us, because, though they were under a Divine government in many respects different from the Christian, yet personal religion is the same at all times; “the just” in every dispensation “shall live by faith,” and whatever reasons there were then for faith to display and maintain itself by stated prayer, remain substantially the same now. Let two passages suffice. The Psalmist says, “Seven times a day do I praise Thee, because of Thy righteous judgments.” [Ps. cxix. 164.] And Daniel’s practice is told us on a memorable occasion: “Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed (the impious decree, forbidding prayer to any but king Darius for thirty days), he went into his house, and his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime.” [Dan. vi. 10.]