A Book of Private Prayer for Morning and Evening
J. R. MacDuff, 1890
The verses of Scripture at the head of each prayer, are made suggestive of thought for the morning and evening prayers which follow. This, it is hoped, will secure greater variety in the subject matter of devotion.
To all who have God as their Father, these aids to devotion are inscribed.
First Morning
"Doubtless you are our Father." Isaiah 63:16.
"One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all." Ephesians 4:6.
And He said unto them, When you pray, say
MY FATHER in heaven, God over all, blessed for evermore; draw near to me in infinite mercy this morning. I laid me down and slept; I awaked, because You did sustain me. Vouchsafe now the blessing which makes richand adds no sorrow with it. May the conscious sense of Your love and nearness, help and guide, cheer and comfort me throughout the day; that its every duty begun, carried on, and ended in Youmay redound, through Jesus, to Your praise and glory.
All Your creatures own Your paternal care. You open Your hand, and satisfy the desire of every living thing. With a still deeper reverence and filial affection, may I be enabled to look up to the omniscient, omnipresent One, and address You by the endearing name, "Doubtless You are our Father." While I love to trace Your presence and power in nature and in daily providence the everlasting watch kept by You day and night over Your creation I adore You especially as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in Him MY covenant God and heavenly Father. It is to Him I owe my every adoption privilege. Through Him has been revealed the Father's heart of tenderness and the Father's home of love. By Him the gracious accents were uttered, and the truth of the gracious name confirmed, "My Father, and your Father; my God, and your God." As the Way, and the Truth, and the life God's way to the sinner, and the sinner's way to God I would thus dismiss all servile fear, as I now bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar.
Seal and ratify to me, a saving interest in this divine Fatherhood. Inspire me more and more with the love and confidence of Your adopted children. With some good measure of faith and trust, may it be mine to say, "MY Lord and my God!" "I know whom I have believed." Put more of the filial spirit within me the spirit of joy and peace; of restful reliance on Your good and gracious guidance here, and the blessed assurance of Your full vision and fruition hereafter. Keep me humble and lowly; make me charitable and forgiving, pure in thought and pure in deed. May it be my habitual aspiration to walk worthy of You unto all well-pleasing, as it befits the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty.
Bless all in sorrow. In the midst of the earthquake and the fire, let them listen to the still, small voice. May every misgiving be silenced. "He who spared not His own Son" may well encourage confidence, and inspire the unmurmuring word, "Even so, Father; for so it seemed good in Your sight."
Regard in kindness my beloved friends and relatives. Watch between us when we are absent one from another; and may their names be written among the living in Jerusalem. Bless Your church universal. Lengthen its cords, and strengthen its stakes. Promote all efforts for the proclamation of Your truth, and for hastening the time when unto Him who is above all, and through all, and in allthe voice of universal adoration will be heard ascending.
Meanwhile, in reliance on a promised answer, and the bestowment of all needed present and future blessings, I would unite with Your redeemed family in calling You my Father.
"MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
First Evening
"Your reward shall be great, and you shall be the children of the Most High: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil." Luke 6:35
I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him
MY FATHER, I would seek to end another day with You, looking up for Your promised blessing. How wondrous are the words, just read, from the lips of Your dear Son! You condescend not only to invite all to draw near to You in filial trust and confidence, but you call them "children," yes, "children of the Most High." Your kindness is, like Yourself, illimitable. An earthly father would long ago have disowned and disinherited me. But I listen to the amazing assurance "He is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil." Past evil and demerit and sin have not excluded me from hope of pardon, or involved the forfeiture of favor and love. You have "devised means by which Your banished one may not be expelled from Your presence." You are ever waiting to be gracious; not willing that any should perish, but that all should turn from their wickedness and live.
Anew would I wash, this evening, in the opened fountain. Lord, take away my unthankfulness, and attune my lips to the never-ceasing song of Your redeemed "Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift!" Deepen within me, a sense of my obligations to Christ for all that He has done and suffered on my behalf. May it be my habitual desire to love Him more and serve Him better my soul a consecrated altar, and my life a living sacrifice"
I would thank You, too, for Your many temporal mercies, the many tokens of Your unmerited goodness in my daily lot. While other hearts and homes are clouded with sorrow, or saddened with poverty, or stricken with suffering You have caused me to lie down by the green pastures, You have led me beside the still waters. Your goodness and mercy, like two guardian angels, are still following me, as they have followed me until now. I may well accept Your love and faithfulness in the past, as pledges and guarantees for the future. Blessed be Your name, that that future the morrow is unknown. Better still, that it is in Your hands; that all which concerns me and mine, is planned and ordered by You; and that You have promised strength for the day.
I pray for any who especially stand in need of my prayers: for those in the thick of the spiritual conflict, environed with many temptations; for those laid on couches of sickness and suffering; for those passing through the shadowed valley; for those mourning their "loved and lost." Make them, severally and individually, partakers of Your own everlasting consolation and good hope through grace.
Hear these my evening supplications; and enable me to close the day by uttering, with ever-growing reverence, the filial ascription my Father.
"MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Second Morning
"And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Zion, and with him a hundred forty and four thousand, having His Father's name written in their foreheads." Revelation 14:1
And He said unto them, When you pray, say
MY FATHER, I draw near to You in the name of Him whom You hear always the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world; the Lamb now standing on Mount Zion; the center of the adoring reverence and worship of the church above, yet who is ever waiting to receive the petitions of His church on earth, and present them to You the Father of an infinite majesty!
Gracious God, accept of me in the Beloved. Inspire me with filial love and devotion. May my prayer be set forth before You as incense, and the lifting up of my hands as the morning sacrifice. You have again dispersed the darkness of another night, and permitted me to see the light of a new day. Grant me Your blessing throughout its hours. Let me enjoy conscious nearness to You, my Father in heaven. May I covet, above all, Your favor and approval; and then, whatever else I lack, I must be happy.
Before I enter on its duties, do sprinkle the lintel and door-posts of my heart anew with the covenant-token. I rejoice to think of that ransomed multitude the hundred and forty and four thousand the already ingathered of the church triumphant. That same blood which has secured for them pardon and peace, still cleanses from all sin; there is still forgiveness for all, salvation for all your redeemed children. I look to Him as my only Savior. Every blessing I enjoy, temporal and spiritual, emanates from the Lamb on Mount Zion! To Him may I be enabled to give the willing surrender and homage of an undivided heart.
May all I have, be elevated and sanctified by the thought that it thus comes to me through His adorable merits the purchase of His cross and passion. O Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, I would follow You wherever You see fit to guide me. As God, You are mighty to save; as Man, You are mighty to pity and compassionate. Your sympathetic heart is responsive to every throb of human anguish. Your grace is promised to enable me to cope with all emergencies and vanquish all temptations. Over my spiritual enemies, in You I am more than conqueror!
Bless Your whole church, the myriads of Your children throughout the world, who, whatever be the distinction of Christian creed and profession, have, better than all earthly symbol, their Father's name written in their foreheads. Hasten the number of Your elect. Prepare the world for the advent of its King. Let the year of Your redeemed come, when the shout of joyful welcome will be heard from "a people prepared of the Lord." "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of Him who brings good tidings, who publishes peace; who says unto Zion, Your God reigns!"
Look in kindness on my beloved friends. May the Father's name be engraved in their foreheads also. Bless and sanctify them in their varied duties and engagements in the world; may they give You now the devotion of filial hearts; and at last may they be presented unblamable in the day of Christ's appearing.
Compassionate Your sorrowing children. May all murmuring thoughts be hushed by the assurance "It is the will of my Father!" At present they may feel Your dispensations mysterious no silver lining in the cloud. But let them cherish the joyful confidence that when they come to stand by the luminous gates of glory, in Your light they shall see light; and sing together, without a jarring note, the song of providence and the song of grace the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb.
I would sum up these my unworthy petitions, in His strength-imparting, all-prevailing prayer "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Second Evening
"Will you not from this time cry unto me, My father?" Jeremiah 3:4.
"Return, O backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings. Behold, we come unto you; for you are the Lord our God." Jeremiah 3:22.
I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him
MY FATHER, I thank You for sparing me to see the close of another day. Your gracious hand has been around me throughout its hours, shielding me from peril, guarding me from temptation, upholding me with the blessings of Your goodness. Before I lie down to rest, I would supplicate Your pardoning mercy.
Graciously forgive all that I have said or done amiss. If there is anything in the retrospect of the day, or of past days, which Your pure eye sees blameworthy, and which my own conscience condemns sins of omission or sins of commission; if I feel that I have not been walking and living and acting as seeing You who are invisible; if I have the humbling consciousness of suffering other lords to have dominion over me may I listen to the divine voice which has just spoken in Your Holy Word, "Return, O backsliding children!" And may I be ready with the response, "Behold, I come unto You; for You are the Lord my God."
Strengthen the things which remain that are ready to die. With new self-surrender, may I answer Your own divine challenge, "Will you not from this time cry unto Me, My Father!" Saturate me with filial love. Quicken and stimulate every good resolution. May that gracious, paternal name hush all fears, and dispel all doubts, and inspire unwavering trust.
I take refuge anew at the Redeemer's cross! I plead anew the ever-faithful saying, that He came into the world to save sinners. By His grace alone His free, sovereign, unmerited grace I am what I am.
I have good cause, from saddening memories of my failures and faithlessness, to be distrustful of the future on Your same sustaining, restraining, energizing grace, may I be enabled to repose. Hold me up and I shall be safe! Let me live from day to day, and from hour to hour, alike in temporal and spiritual things with a realizing dependence on Your bounty.
Bless my dear friends. Encompass us together now with Your favor; and, looking to You as our Father, fit us at last for the great family meeting in the home of heaven!
Compassionate those in sorrow. May they, too, be hushed to quiet rest in the assured belief, that all which concerns them and theirs, is dictated by Your unerring wisdom. Amid the loss of earthly friends and the wreck of earthly portions, may they cleave to the Friend who never wearies and never fails and never dies "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today, and forever!"
And now, as the curtains of night are drawn around me, I anew plead with You to wash out the defilements of the day. Blessed Intercessor the Brother in my nature, ever-living, ever-loving Lord, the Prince who has power with God, and at all times prevails pray for me that my faith may never fail. And so, in the words consecrated by being Yours, may I with filial confidence be able to say "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Third Morning
"He who spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall he not with Him, also freely give us all things?" Romans 8:32
And He said unto them, When you pray, say
MY FATHER, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in Him has begotten us again unto a living hope by His resurrection from the dead may this morning bring with it a resurrection blessing. As partaker of His resurrection life, may I be enabled and quickened to seek those things which are above, where He sits at the right hand of God. May He breathe upon me His special salutation, "Peace be unto you!" "I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and unto my God, and your God!"
Gracious Giver of all good, may all the duties of the day be pervaded with a sense of Your favor the bright consciousness of my Father's presence, and a Father's love. Every new morning brings with it fresh causes for gratitude, and fresh materials for praise. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits!
Especially would I remember the benefit of all benefits, the crown and consummation of all other mercies, in the gift of Jesus. You did not spare Your own, Your only Son, but delivered Him up for us all. Adored be Your name, for this pledge and guarantee of every minor blessing. After so wondrous a proof and token of Your love, how can I cherish the thought that You can send one superfluous trial, or exact one unnecessary sacrifice? That mightiest blessing within the compass of Almightiness to bestow, carries with it the gracious certainty of all else needful alike for the body and the soul, for time and for eternity! Standing by the cross of Calvary, and beholding there the picture of a love, which in its heights and depths, no plummet-line can fathom, I can listen to Your own voice a Father's voice addressing each of Your children, "All things are yours!"
Lord, forgive my manifold transgressions. You know the fickleness of my faith, and the inconstancy of my love. I mourn that I have so little humbling, abiding conviction of my guilt and demerit. May an affecting sense of my shortcomings and sins, my weakness and unworthiness, keep me, this day and ever, near the atoning Sacrifice. I flee anew to the pavilion of Your love! I take refuge anew in the clefts of the Rock of Ages! Keep me near Yourself! No earthly good can compensate for the loss of Your friendship! While, having the sweet sense of Your favor, I shall seek to rise superior to what the world may give or take away. Strengthen me with all might by Your Spirit in the inner man. My cry would be, "More grace, more grace!"
Give me singleness of eye and simplicity of aim. Disarm my temptations; solve my perplexities. Let me hear the gracious assurance echoing afresh the words of this morning, "My God shall supply all your needs, out of His riches in glory, by Christ Jesus!"
Extend Your Fatherly blessing to my beloved friends. Seal them unto the day of eternal redemption. May every relationship be hallowed in You, and thus earthly bonds will become eternal ones. Draw near in kindness to all who are in any ways afflicted or distressed in mind, body, and estate. Send down Your Holy Spirit as a divine Comforter. May Your dealings and discipline wean from earth, and train Your children for admission into the Father's better house and enduring home above. Take off their sackcloth, and gird them with gladness, enabling them to glorify You in the day of visitation.
Direct, control, and suggest this day, all my designs and thoughts and actions. Let me live under the sovereignty of that lofty motive to walk and act so as to please You. May its every hour of duty and of service receive fresh consecration from the ever-inspiring words "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Third Evening
"May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word." 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17
I will arise and go to my Father, and will say to Him
MY FATHER, who delights to lavish on Your children tenderest love and pity bestow, upon me and mine, "everlasting consolation and good hope through grace." The shadows of night are again falling around me. Under Your sleepless watch I am safe from all danger! O You who are the true Aaron, the mighty Pleader within the veil, the Angel standing by the golden altar come forth from the holy place with Your censer full of much incense! Accept the evening sacrifice of the church throughout all the world, which You have purchased with Your blood. Bless Your people with peace.
I rejoice, blessed Savior, to contemplate the glories of Your person, the completeness of Your finished work. In You, I have the all-power of Godhead, and the all-sympathy of humanity the great I AM, yet the Brother in my nature; mighty to save, yet mighty to pity and compassionate. May I joyfully listen to Your own gracious balm-words, which have so often hushed doubt and misgiving, and calmed the fever-heats of the soul: "Come unto Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
Lord, may I ever feel that my heaviest burden and heaviest cross is the burden and the cross of sin the cross of an erring, treacherous, deceitful heart, tempting me to stray from the living God, and to seek my happiness and satisfaction independent of You. May the great love with which You have loved me, reanimate my drooping faith, and quicken me to love You more and to serve You better!
While thankful for creature and created blessings, may they ever possess a double preciousness by being linked with Yourself, the infinite Bestower. May the temporal mercies I enjoy be elevated by the thought that they are the emanations from a Father's hand the pledges of a Father's love! Adored be Your name, that these are crowned by spiritual mercies "everlasting consolation and good hope through grace" that hope which "makes not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given unto us." By His quickening, energizing, sanctifying influences, may I become gradually transformed into Your glorious image! May He "comfort my heart," and "establish me in every good word and work." Let it be my habitual and earnest resolution to work while it is called day, while the solemn admonition sounds in my ears, "The night comes, wherein no man can work."
Bless those in affliction. Compassionate any who are suffering unspoken sorrows trials and heartaches that can be confided to no ear but that of the All-merciful and All-loving. May every tear-dimmed eye be turned from care and doubt to Him who suffered for us, leaving us an example that we should follow His steps.
Make me and all my dear friends partakers in the gladness and glory of Christ's resurrection life. May we be one in and with Him now, so that the tenderest ties of earth may be perpetuated before the throne; and the unstable unions here, be there rendered indissoluble.
Pity and compassionate a whole world. Forgive its sins, break its chains of slavery, sheathe its weapons of war. "Give peace in our time, O Lord; for there is none other who fights for us, but only You, O God." Hasten the period of predicted glory, when the blight shall be removed from this otherwise fair creation; when, delivered from the bondage of corruption, it shall be translated into the glorious liberty of Your children.
Before I retire to rest, I would pillow my head anew on the surety work of my divine Redeemer on the "everlasting consolation and good hope through grace" purchased by His atoning death, and sealed by His prevailing intercession. It is in His name, and in accordance with His gracious authority and teaching, that I am permitted, this night and ever, to call You, my Father!
"MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Fourth Morning
"How gladly would I treat you like sons and give you a desirable land, the most beautiful inheritance of any nation! I thought you would call Me 'Father' and not turn away from following Me!" Jeremiah 3:19
And He said unto them, When you pray, say
MY FATHER, the name which disarms all fear and inspires deepest confidence and trust enable me to pronounce it with child-like reverence and love. "Like as a father pities his children," may the earthly be a type and parable of the heavenly. Rejoicing in the sanctity of this higher and more endearing filial relationship, may it be mine to say, "The lines have fallen unto me in pleasant places; yes," with You, and in You, my Father-God, "I have a goodly heritage."
You have awakened me once more from the unconscious hours of night and darkness. Come to me this morning in the plenitude of Your mercy. Replenish my empty vessel with the oil of Your grace. As I set out anew on the pilgrim path, may I have the conscious assurance of Your presence that He who has "set me among the children" will be true to His faithful promise, and "shall not turn away from me."
I desire to make confession of my manifold transgressions. I have nothing to plead in extenuation. They have been committed against the clearest light and the fondest love. My own heart condemns me. My own conscience, blinded though it is to the evil and turpitude of sin, condemns me. You are the heart-searching and the thought-trying God; You know all things.
Look upon me in Jesus! Look upon me on account of what He has done and taught and suffered. I rejoice in the glorious assurance that the hands that were once outstretched for me on the cross, are now, with all-prevailing power, pleading for me before the throne! Rock of eternal Ages! Let me hide myself in You. Let me know, more and more, the conquering power of redeeming grace. May every high thought and lofty imagination be brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.
May I have the increasing experience, O my Father in heaven, that Your service is perfect freedom; that in doing Your holy commandments, and obeying Your gracious will, I am treading indeed "a pleasant land," and am an heir to "a goodly heritage" better than wealth of this world! Keep me from wandering away from You, and forfeiting the joys of Your salvation. Keep me watchful and vigilant. May I exercise a jealousy over my heart and its truant affections curbing all selfishness and passion, avoiding all that would dishonor or compromise the Christian name, cultivating a filial fear of offending One so gracious and beneficent, seeking to live more habitually under the power of that lofty motive to do my heavenly Father's will, and accomplish with fidelity the work, however lowly, You have given me to do.
Bless my beloved friends. If separated by distance, may our prayers blend at the mercy-seat; and may we have the joyous assurance that You can watch between us, when we are absent one from another.
Comfort, sustain, and solace all Christian mourners in their pilgrimage of sorrow. Open to them wells in the valley of Baca! Enable them reverentially to acquiesce in Your dispensations, however hard for flesh and blood to bear. Stripped of other blessings, may they rejoice in You as their supreme portion! As You have promised not to turn away from them that when father and mother and all earthly friends forsake them, that You will take them up! May they say through their tears, "Turn unto me, and have mercy upon me, for I am desolate and afflicted!" May they know that You are faithful who has promised: "He shall call upon Me and I will answer him! I will be with him in trouble! I will deliver him and honor him."
Arise, Lord, and have mercy upon Your children! Prince of Peace, take to Yourself Your great power and reign! Go forth in Your glorious apparel, traveling in the greatness of Your strength; manifest Yourself as "mighty to save!" Let Your glorious gospel be everywhere proclaimed, with its sublime message. May it heal all wounds, and redress all wrongs; may it rescue the tempted, and save the lost!
I would enter on the day's duties and engagements, its joys and its sorrows, under the shield and shelter of the same ever-blessed name and ever-blessed words "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Fourth Evening
"If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there, whom the father does not chasten?" Hebrews 12:7
I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him
MY FATHER, who is ever dealing with Your children in love and pity, draw near to me this evening, while I render my tribute-offering of grateful praise. I thank You for sparing me. Others in the course of today have slept the sleep of death. Some have been called without a note of warning, into the eternal world. I am preserved to this hour in the land of the living and in the place of hope.
I will praise abundantly, the memory of Your great goodness. If, in the past, You have seen fit at times to darken my heart and my home, and to visit me with chastisement; I have reason, in the retrospect, to own and acknowledge that it was the chastening of love, the wisdom of paternal discipline. When these storms of the wilderness have beaten upon me, You have graciously led me under the shadow of the great Rock, and revealed Him, who is the Refuge from the storm and the Covert from the tempest, in all His preciousness!
May I trust You still. I dare harbor no suspicions of Your faithfulness. I have rather only reason to wonder at Your patience and forbearance towards me. The kindest of earthly parents often mistake; but You are the unerring Father of Your redeemed children! There may be an ebb and flow in their love but never in Yours! In all time of my tribulation, let me hear Your Fatherly voice; let me ever see some bright light in the darkest cloud. Even when Your dealings are inscrutable when the why and wherefore are unrevealed may I believe when I cannot see; and confide where I fail to trace the footsteps of Your love, saying in the spirit of the patient sufferer of old, "Though He slays me, yet will I trust in Him!"
Meanwhile, as Your feeble child may I put my hand in Yours; not afraid of the day of trial, but knowing that when the struggle-hour comes, that You will bestow the needed grace giving power to the faint, and to those who have no might, increasing strength. Above all, I pray that whatever Your varied dealings may be, whether in the way of prosperity or adversity, that they may be the means of bringing me nearer to Yourself.
Keep me from everything that would imperil my spiritual well-being. Deliver me from the fascinations, the evil maxims and principles of the world. Break their alluring spell! While thankfully accepting and joyfully using the manifold gifts of Your love, may these never be allowed to divert me from loftier and more enduring spiritual realities. Foster within me, the virtues of the Christian character. Give me a spirit of self-sacrifice, willing, if need be, to take up my cross and follow You. Make me humble and meek, lowly and submissive, jealous of anything that would alienate my affections from You the highest good the only supreme, all-satisfying Portion! Let me dread nothing so much as displeasing You, in thought, word, or deed. In whatever I do, may I be animated by the fear, the holy fear, of offending so loving and gracious a Father, and dismiss all other fear.
Have mercy upon those who are still far from You. Cause them in their sad and unresting hours of estrangement from You, to think of the Father's heart, the Father's home, the Father's welcome. Deepen in them a sense of the misery of alienation from You, and the happiness of a full and gracious restoration to Your favor and peace. Confirm the irresolute and wavering, in unswerving loyalty and love.
Bless my beloved friends. If distance separate us on earth, may we look forward with joyful assurance to that blissful day when severance shall be unknown, when we shall be re-gathered in the true home of heaven, and so be with one another, and with our great Lord forever!
Be the Comforter of any that are cast down. Overrule the dispensations of Your providence, for the good of Your sorrowing children. May this thought hush and dispel all misgiving and still every murmur, "You chasten us because You love us!" You deal with us as Your sons! Lord, what are our severest trials, compared with what they might have been, had Your justice been laid to the line, and Your equity to the plumb-line! Now glorifying You, if need be, in the fires may we look forward, beyond the night-watch, to the morning without clouds, when You shall terminate the tears of Your weeping children, and sorrow and sighing shall forever flee away!
In the realized assurance of a holier and better than earth's most sacred relationships, I will this night both lay me down in peace and sleep, saying, in words which divinest lips have taught me "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Fifth Morning
"You are the children of the Lord your God." Deuteronomy 14:1
"You have one Father, who is in heaven." Matthew 23:9
And He said unto them, When you pray, say
MY FATHER, look down upon me in Your great mercy, as I draw near on a new day to the throne of Your heavenly grace. I beseech You to hallow the filial bond which unites me to You. Give me, gracious God, a holy fear, as I now lay my morning sacrifice on Your altar; not the fear of bondage, but the reverent love inspired by consciousness of my adoption into Your family. The natural sun is again shining upon me. May the beams of the better Sun of righteousness disperse the shadows of sin and unbelief. May I walk all the day in the light of Your countenance.
How wondrous has been Your paternal love in the past! No earthly parent, not the kindest and most forbearing, could have borne with me like You have done often tracking my wandering footsteps; bringing me back to peace, and rest, and home; often and graciously accepting my confession, "Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before You, and am no more worthy to be called Your son!" Grant me forgiveness for the past, and grace and strength for the future.
I look anew to Christ as my only Savior, "As many as received Him, to them He gave the power to become the sons of God, even to those who believe on His name." Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief! Lord, increase my faith! As a member of Your covenant household, may I seek to live under the sovereignty of that lofty motive to walk and act so as to please You; and with singleness of eye, and simplicity of purpose to glorify Your holy name.
Be with me throughout this day. Be my Protector from danger, my Shield and Guardian in temptation. Arm me for the spiritual conflict. Realizing my own weakness, may I be strong in You, and in the power of Your might. May all Your dealings and discipline, whether in the way of joy or of sorrow have the sanctified effect of bringing me nearer You the only Portion that can never be taken from me! Living or dying, may I be Yours!
Bless my beloved friends. May it be said of all of them, "You are the children of the Lord your God!" And may they, too, be able to look up to the mightiest of Beings, and call You by the endearing name, "Abba, Father!"
Compassionate all Your children who are in sorrow; and any in whom I may be more deeply interested. In their hour of darkness and desolation it may be in the deep mystery of their trials may it be theirs trustingly to say, "Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Your sight!"
Bless Your Church everywhere. Bless the whole world. Through the proclamation of Your glorious gospel, may more and more everywhere be brought to participate and exult in this divine Fatherhood and Brotherhood, and to walk as children of the light.
I ask these requests, and requests for every other needed blessing, in the name and for the sake of Him who, when He was on earth, taught us to say "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Fifth Evening
"I give them eternal life, and they will never perishever! No one will snatch them out of My hand!" John 10:28
I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him
MY FATHER, I thank You for these gracious words. May I take them as a pillow on which I may rest my head this night. Under their blessed and consolatory assurance, I will both lay me down in peace and sleep, because You, Lord, only make me to dwell in safety.
Blessed be Your name, that my spiritual interests, for this world and the next, are as sure as Your everlasting power and faithfulness can make them. It is Your prerogative, always to have mercy. It is not Your will that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. You, the mightiest of Beings is the kindest and best and most condescending. You open Your hand, and satisfy the desire of every living thing.
In Your unceasing watch of love, You tend the feeblest member of Your flock. When away from the fold, straying on the far mountains, You reveal Yourself as the great Shepherd-Restorer. Your words are not those of rebuke and terror, but of peace and gentleness: "Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom!"
O Shepherd of the wandering sheep! O Father of the wandering prodigal! Restore my soul, and lead me in the paths of righteousness! Lead me ever nearer to Yourself, the true Home and Hospice of the weary and burdened. All true satisfaction and joy emanate from You, and are centered in You. Let me not rest satisfied with any lowlier portion. Your favor alone, is life. Rising superior to the changes of this mortal life, may it be mine to say, "My heart and my flesh may fail; but You are the strength of my heart and my portion forever!"
Give me, this evening, a renewed sense of Your pardoning love in Jesus. May my past transgressions, in all their heinousness and aggravation, be blotted out, through the blood of the everlasting covenant. Impart to me daily, a deeper and diviner sense of that spiritual peace, secured by His death and sacrifice, and perpetuated by His prevailing intercession. In myself I have nothing to lean upon, nothing to hope for. But let His own gracious reassuring words dispel every misgiving, and inspire lowly confidence and trust: "I give them eternal life, and they will never perishever! No one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all. No one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand!"
My Father-God, foster within me every righteous purpose and good resolution. Let me grow ever in submissiveness to Your holy will and in obedience to Your holy commandments. Keep me from dishonoring Your name by any unworthiness of thought, or speech, or act. Preserve me from all evil tempers, all selfish and uncharitable deeds, all that is in contrariety to Your revealed Word, all that offends the Spirit of grace. Cultivating habitually more of the pilgrim character, may I be enabled to progress in the divine life, from grace to grace, until grace is merged and consummated in glory!
Look in kindness on my beloved friends and relatives. Bless them, and make them blessings. Bring them within Your earthly fold now, and at last to the pastures of the blessed in heaven. Hasten the Savior's coming and kingdom that happy time when the reign of suffering and of sin shall be known no more. Rescue the perishing; break the chains of slavery; sheathe the cruel sword of war; usher in the world of peace and love that creation, so long groaning and travailing in pain, may fully participate in the liberty of the glory of Your children!
And now, Lord, I wait upon You. My hope is in You. Accept of my renewed thanks for the manifold mercies of the day. Watch over me during the hours of night; and if You are pleased to spare me until tomorrow, may it be to listen to Your own assurance, "My presence shall go with you and I will give you rest!"
"MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Sixth Morning
"He who fears the Lord has a secure fortress." Proverbs 14:26
And He said unto them, When you pray, say
MY FATHER, I am once more invited and permitted to draw near to the throne of Your heavenly grace. You have again not allowed my eyes to sleep the sleep of death, but have awakened me to the light and the blessings of a new morning. Bestow upon me Your blessing. May I realize Your gracious presence, and feel that it is good for me to draw near unto You. May all the engagements of the day be sanctified.
I have been listening to Your voice, inviting me to a place of refuge, and unfolding Yourself as such. You are my refuge and my strength. May my whole soul, every faculty of my nature, be brought into near in delighted fellowship with You, and consecration to You. In Your fear the reverential fear of Your filial love may I have strong confidence. Give me the perfect love which casts out fear.
Still all my unrest with the gracious, paternal words, "You have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but you have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father!" I would anchor myself on Your Divine veracity. All Your promises in Christ Jesus, are yes and amen to those who believe. Earth can tell of no such strong and stable confidence. The best of human refuges often prove refuges of lies cobweb confidences, which fail when most needed. "They will all perish, but You will endure; all of them will wear out like clothing. You will change them like a garment, and they will pass away. But You are the same, and Your years will never end!"
Adored be Your name, for Him who is especially revealed as a refuge from the storm and a covert from the tempest the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. I thank You that He is a refuge open for all, suited for all, abundant for all; a refuge to which all are alike warranted and welcome to shelter in! Blessed Savior, I have no other refuge and I need none. My helpless soul, for time and for eternity, is safe in You. You understand the needs and necessities, the trials and temptations of my tried and sorrowing and tempted nature. To whom else can I go? you have the words of eternal life!
Give me grace to walk worthy of my adoption privileges. Let it be my chief aspiration and yearning, not only to know, but to do Your will, O my Father in heaven. Teach me to be trustful and confiding in You. Keep me from being over-anxious and over-troubled about earth's many concerns. Preserve me from surrendering my heart and its affections, to the base compliances and maxims of this present evil world. Let me nourish a constant sense of my dependence on You and place undeviating reliance on Your almighty support and strength!
May the Holy Spirit descend upon me in the fullness of His spiritual gifts, enlightening my darkness, removing unbelief and worries, and quickening my experience of spiritual realities. Stimulate within me, every Christian principle and virtue. Let me live, and walk, and act as seeing You who is invisible!
Reveal Yourself also to all Your suffering children as the same sure place of refuge. When trial may have shattered their own props and confidences; broken "the strong staff and the beautiful rod," may they place the more assured confidence in You who has said, "I will never leave you nor ever forsake you!" When their hearts are overwhelmed, may they know what it is to dwell in the secret place of the Most High, and to abide under the shadow of the Almighty. Let this assurance dry all tears, "Whom the Lord loves He chastens."
Look in kindness on those near and dear to me. Undertake for them. May we here continue heirs together of the grace of life children of the same heavenly family. Guide us while we live by Your counsel; and at last may death take us from the fleeting fellowships of the pilgrim journey to the heavenly rest and the unblighted home above!
Bless the means used for the promotion of Your cause and the extension of Your kingdom. Bring the world and its peoples, in Your own good time and way, under the benignant sway of the Prince of Peace. Let captive souls and captive nations come forth from their chains and servitude, walking and leaping and praising God.
Lord, be with me throughout this day. Strengthen me for the performance of every duty. Prepare me for the endurance of every trial. Feeling alive to all the unmerited proofs and pledges of Your mercy, and with the fear, not of bondage, but of "strong confidence" and filial love, may be it mine to say "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Sixth Evening
"I will be a Father unto you, and you shall be My sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty." 2 Corinthians 6:18
I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him
MY FATHER, who is ever keeping watch and ward over Your children, spread Your overshadowing wings around me this night. You have been with me throughout the day, defending me from danger, guarding me from environing temptation, upholding me with the blessings of Your goodness. Be near me during the unconscious hours of sleep. Come and whisper Your own gracious lullaby: "He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, He who keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep."
The past is crowded with memories of Your paternal kindness. No earthly father could have acted towards his child as You have done pitying my weaknesses, compassionating my frailties, solacing my sorrows. How poor and inadequate has been my requital! How often have I proved a bruised and broken reed, bending before the blast, yielding to the seductions of sin, and the assaults of the tempter, resisting Your grace, grieving Your Spirit! I have been a wayward prodigal, neglectful of filial duty and obedience, prone to forget the home of Your love and its sacred and peaceful memories. Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before You, and am no more worthy to be called Your son. Yet, despite my disobedience and rebellion and estrangement, You have not left me to perish with hunger. There is forgiveness with You still, that You may be feared. You have, in generous keeping robe, and ring, and sandal above all, the voice of joyous welcome. The words of today ring their gracious chimes in my ear, as they have done in the case of multitudes in ages past: "I will receive you, and be a Father unto you, and you shall be My sons and daughters."
It is through Jesus, the divine Elder Brother, that this welcome and jubilee are granted. I look to Him as my only Savior. He is all I need, living or dying, for time or for eternity! Let me live as one who was dead and is alive again, who was lost and is found. Make me more dutiful to You. Deepen within me filial affection. Transform me by the power of Your Holy Spirit, into the image and likeness of Christ! Let me not dishonor You by unbelief, or distrust Your faithfulness. An earthly father may err; a heavenly Father cannot. If at times I am troubled with anxious forebodings, may I know that however checkered my experiences, I may regard the future undismayed with such a Guide, Protector, Friend! What is unknown to me is known to You! Let the thought of a Father's hand, a Father's voice, it may even be a Father's rodcheck all my fears and hush all my disquietudes.
I pray for my beloved friends. Set them as a seal upon Your heart, a seal upon Your arm. May we all live under the spirit and influence of Your divine law of love.
Extend Your Fatherly compassion to Your sons and daughters of sorrow. May they be led to see and acknowledge that Your dealings are tempered with gracious tenderness. You stay Your rough north wind, in the day of Your east wind. When we cannot traced Your mysterious footsteps may we implicitly trust Your loving heart. When we remember that You have given us, in the incarnation and death of Your dear Son, the mightiest proof of kindness which Omnipotence can bestow may this hush all our murmurs, and attune our trembling lips to the avowal, "Father, not my will, but may Your will be done!"
I look to You anew for Your gracious blessing. Let me listen anew to Your special whisper of love, "I will be a Father unto you!" May I compose myself to rest under the sweet assurance that You Lord, sustain me; and so, when I awake, I may be still with You!
"MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Seventh Morning
"Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ." Ephesians 1:2
And He said unto them, When you pray, say
MY FATHER, I listen in these words to Your own gracious benediction. Enable me, not with lip homage, but with true, reverent, filial devotion to approach Your holy presence. I need have no slavish fear in thus coming to Your footstool. You are even now offering me the twofold blessing of grace and peace both emanating from the love of my gracious Father and my divine Redeemer.
My cry would ever be, "More grace! More grace!" It is by grace I stand. I am saved by grace, sustained by grace, restrained by grace. Grace keeps me from falling. Grace Your free, sovereign, unmerited grace in Jesus will at last present me faultless before Your glorious presence with exceeding joy!
And as the companion of grace, please impart to me peace Your peace, which passes understanding peace through the blood of the cross that peace which the world knows nothing of peace which the world, with all its riches and honors and blessings, cannot give and which the world with all its trials and tribulations cannot take away! Feeling the yoke of sin to be grievous and heavy, entailing disquietude and unrest; may I flee now and always, to the great Peace-giver, whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light.
I rejoice that Jesus died for my sins, rose again for my justification, and is now carrying on His divine work of intercession before the throne for me. Blessed Jesus, ever-pleading on high, and never pleading in vain, draw near to me this morning in Your infinite love, and breathe upon me, as You did on Your disciples of old, and say, "Peace be unto you!" Amid my conscious weakness and infirmities, may I listen to Your assuring promise, "I will make my grace sufficient for you; I will perfect My strength in your weakness." Thus may grace and peace follow me all the days of my life; and may I realize their upholding power and soothing presence, when standing at the threshold of eternal life.
Bless Your sorrowful children. Sanctify the dispensations of Your providence to them. If they fail now to trace and recognize the mystery of Your dealings, may they anticipate the coming day, when, in the light of eternity, Your voice, gracious Savior, will be heard: "Did I not tell you, that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?" Rescue the perishing; reclaim the wanderer; solace the suffering; support the dying.
I pray for the widely scattered family of mankind. Hasten the time when the sighs of a burdened and groaning creation will be heard no more every sword sheathed, every fetter broken; when the wilderness and the solitary place will be made glad, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.
Lord, be with me throughout this day. Fit me for the battle of life. May I be strong in You, and in the power of Your might. And when every conflict here below is terminated, may it be mine to exchange the earthly warfare for the eternal rest of the glorified. Meanwhile, I would sum up these my imperfect supplications with the words which Your Son's divine lips have taught us "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Seventh Evening
"Like as a father pities his children so the Lord pities those who fear Him." Psalm 103:13
I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him
MY FATHER, draw near to me this evening, and teach me how to pray. Confidently trusting Your pitying love, I would unburden and unbosom to You all my needs and perplexities, my sins and sorrows, my frailties and infirmities. Have I not the gracious promise that, casting all my burdens on You that You will sustain me? Blessed be Your name, for the assurance given tonight in the precious Psalm of Your servant of old. No earthly parent, not the kindest and the best, can pity like You. Your ways are not as our ways, nor Your thoughts as our thoughts.
As one of Your children, thus loved and pitied, may it be my aim to hear Your voice, and obey Your wishes having my own will in all things resolved into Yours. I rejoice to think of Your pitying love in Jesus. Thanks be unto You, for Your unspeakable gift! In this most wondrous evidence of Your paternal interest in me, may I see the pledge and guarantee of all other blessings; while I seek to give you back in return the homage of a grateful heart and consecrated affections. May my life be, more than it has been an effort to crucify sin and to live for You. Keep me lowly and meek, tender and forgiving. May my love to You be accompanied with love to my fellow-men. Loyal to the Golden Rule, may I do all things in love.
You have guided me throughout the day by Your good counsel; and now that the shadows of evening have gathered around me, and the day is far spent, be my unchanging Friend, still with me. Be about my bed as You have been about my path.
Extend especially, Your same pitying love to all Your children of affliction. May they know that Omnipotence and Love together tread the stormy waters; that You are the same in joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health, in life and in death. Turn trial and loss, into spiritual riches and gain. Cheer every desolate heart, with the hope of immortality.
Bless everywhere the proclamation of Your gospel. Give efficacy to the power of the Cross. Awaken slumberers to the momentous realities of their souls, and eternity. May many seek with boldness, to bow to You as their God.
I commend myself to Your gracious keeping. Father, pity me! Father, shield me! Father, guide me! Father, restore and comfort me! Father, sanctify me! Father, bring me at last to the many mansions, the home of Your glorified children, from which I shall go no more out! Meanwhile, I would now, as ever, love to call You by the same endearing name "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Eighth Morning
"Your Father knows the things you need, before you ask Him." Matthew 6:8
And He said unto them, When you pray, say
MY FATHER in heaven, regard me this morning with Your gracious favor. You invite me into Your presence, and with filial trust to make known to You my varied needs. I do not need to enumerate them. You are intimately acquainted with all my ways. There is not a thought in my heart, not a word on my tongue, but, lo, O Lord, You know it altogether! Yet it is my privilege thus to come and unburden my soul's necessities, my sins, my sorrows, my weaknesses and infirmities.
There are blessings especially promised to those who frequent the mercy-seat. When "in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving" our requests are made known unto You, we have the annexed sure promise that the peace of God, which passes all understanding, shall keep our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
How little do I realize this privilege as I ought! How little, when approaching the throne of grace, do I feel my own urgent needs! How little am I actuated by the predominating motive of love to You, and a supreme desire to show forth Your glory! O omniscient One, graciously forgive my erring past, and grant me strength and trust for the unknown future. Let that future be left to reveal and unfold itself. Let me not needlessly strive to predict it, or to anticipate needed help and grace; but rest in the paternal promise, that there will be strength assigned and proportioned for each day, and sufficient to meet all my necessities. Meanwhile, let me exult in the assurance, that though the lot may be cast into the lap, the whole disposing thereof is by You.
Let me know the gladness and joy of sanctified prosperity the many unmerited blessings You have bestowed upon me. And when You see fit to revoke the gracious loan, grant that I may, in lowly reverence and submission say, "Even so, Father for so it seems good in Your sight!" Help me in every unexpected difficulty. Arm me in every conflict. With the armor of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, may I be loyal to You and to the dictates of my conscience; and thus be so enabled to pass through temporal things that I lose none of the eternal things.
I pray for the whole world. Arise, O Lord, and let not man prevail. Arise, O Lord, and plead Your own cause. Give efficacy to the gospel, the glad tidings of great joy. May the leaves of the Tree of Life be for the healing of the nations.
Let Your Fatherly love embrace all in whom I am interested. Bless the aged. Make the autumn of life golden with Your presence and with the light of unsetting suns. Bless the young. Let them lay the green ears of early consecration on Your holy altar. Bless the lonely and desolate. May they look to You who sets the solitary in families. Bless and comfort the bereaved. Turn their night of weeping into a morning of joy. Bless and sustain the dying. As they watch the approaching footsteps of death, may they only recognize Jesus coming to fetch His pilgrims home and to fulfill His own promise regarding the Father's house and the many mansions.
I supplicate anew, for Your presence and blessing this day. Strengthen me with all might by Your Spirit in the inner man. Grant me to fear You and be conscious of no other fear. May my best affections be centered on You, my sure portion and chief joy; so that when the supreme hour of death overtakes me, I may be able to take up the triumphant song which my Redeemer has given me the right to sing, "O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory?"
I ask these, and every other needed blessing, in the name of Him whom You always hear. To You be ascribed all blessing and honor, and glory and praise!
"MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Eighth Evening
"They can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God's children, since they are children of the resurrection." Luke 20:36
I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him
MY FATHER, I come to You this night, trusting in the name and merits of the great Angel-Intercessor. Into His golden censer, full of precious incense, I would place my imperfect prayers. May they ascend before You with acceptance, being sprinkled with the incense of His adorable merits. Make me Your child now by grace, that it may be mine at last to enter on all the glorious privileges and blessings of the "children of the resurrection."
O You who are Yourself the Resurrection and the Life, who has given us, in Your own rising from the dead, the pledge of our resurrection, draw near to me, as You did on the first resurrection evening of old, and breathe upon me and say, "Peace be unto you! Receive the Holy Spirit!" Risen with Christ, may I seek those things that are above, where Jesus sits at Your right hand. May my life now be hid with Christ that when Christ, who is my life, shall appear, I may also appear with Him in glory. His finished work is my only plea for acceptance. It is by looking to Him, who having Himself overcome the sharpness of death, has opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers, that I can appropriate the gracious words of this morning, spoken by his own lips, "Neither can they die any more!" "Thanks be to You O God, who gives me the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!"
I would seek to make confession of my manifold transgressions. "If You, O Lord, should mark iniquities who could stand? But there is forgiveness with You, that You may be feared." Our sins reach unto the clouds but Your mercy is high above the heavens. I rejoice in Your willingness and ability thus to forgive my guilty past. Being justified by faith, may I have peace with You.
Bestow upon me the power of Your Holy Spirit. Give me strength equal to my day. Left to my own resources, I would often be compelled to lose the conflict. But You have graciously promised to give adequate grace in the hour of trial or temptation. Lead me more and more to distrust myself. Reveal to me my own emptiness and weakness and liability to fall. Keep me from doing anything that would be unworthy of my Christian profession, inconsistent with Your holy mind and will, and detrimental to my own peace. Deliver me from pride and selfishness, from envy and malice, from hatred and uncharitableness. If I see frailties in others, may I consider myself, lest I also be tempted. May I be ever ready to listen to the apostolic monition, "Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me!
Have mercy on the human race. Speed everywhere the proclamation of Your blessed gospel. May the cross of Christ, and the message it carries with it, loose all chains, and redress all wrongs, and dry all tears. Beautify the place of Your sanctuary.
Sanctify providential dealings to Your sons and daughters of affliction. May they come forth from the furnace, as purified gold. Spare useful and valued lives; and may those appointed to death fall sweetly asleep in Jesus, in the sure and certain hope of a resurrection to eternal life.
Anew I commend myself this night to You and to the word of Your grace. Ever hold up my goings in Your paths, that my footsteps do not stumble. Enable me to look forward to the time when, in an unsinning world, there shall be nothing to mar or impede the interchange of communion with You; but where, as children of the resurrection, we shall be one forever and ever in our living Lord and King. Watch over me during the defenseless hours of sleep. Let the curtain of Your protecting care be drawn around me! And when I awake, may I be still with You, ready anew to greet You with the words of adoring reverence ""MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Ninth Morning
"I will lead them beside streams of water on a level path where they will not stumble, because I am Israel's father, and Ephraim is my firstborn son." Jeremiah 31:9
And He said unto them, When you pray, say
MY FATHER, who has brought me to the beginning of a new day, defend me by Your mighty power; and grant that this day I fall into no sin, nor run into any kind of danger, but that all my doings may be ordered by Your governance, to do always what is righteous in Your sight. I would enter on today's duties and engagements, free from over-anxious or disquieting thoughts and cares, under the consciousness of Your love and protection.
Blessed be Your name for Your manifold and great mercies the "springs in the desert" which You have provided still, as of old, for Your ransomed people. Cause me to walk in a straight way. Prevent me from stumbling. Have You not promised to keep Your children in the hour of temptation; and when temptation arises to give them the needed strength so that they may be able to bear it, or to resist it? You who have revealed Yourself as a Father to Your spiritual Israel, strengthen me for every duty this morning. Arm me for every conflict. Enable me, day by day, to imbibe more of the pilgrim spirit, and to pass the time of my sojourning here in fear.
Blessed Savior, You are as sympathetic and responsive as ever to the needs and petitions and trials of Your people. There is no infirmity beyond Your help, no peril beyond Your support, no sin which excludes from Your pardoning, pleading, interceding love! I would gratefully own the power which has hitherto protected me, and the grace which has restrained me. Unless the Lord had been my help, my soul would often have been devastated. When my feet were ready to slip, Your mercy, O Lord, held me up!
Let me wage a constant warfare with all that is antagonistic to Your divine mind and will. Enable me to exercise a holy jealousy over my motives as well as my actions to live and walk as seeing You who are invisible, remembering that You who are my Witness now will be my Judge at last. Let me take no step without Your sanction. May I be distrustful of my own wisdom. Give me a right judgment in all things. It is my comfort to know that You will mark out and decide for me every stage in my heavenward journey. In a spirit of delighted obedience, I would hear Your voice behind me saying, "This is the way walk in it."
Bless my beloved friends. May we be united in the bonds of Christian fellowship, and cherish the same certain hope of immortality. Let us all be taught by You, and great shall be our peace.
Compassionate the sick, the sorrowful, the bereaved, the dying. Enable them to take down their harps from the willows of sadness, and sing songs in the night; looking with submissive faith to the Brother on the throne, who notes every pang of the throbbing and sorrowing heart, for He has Himself felt them.
Have mercy on Your whole Church! Pity the careless, arouse the slumbering, confirm the wavering. Bring Your true people more and more to see eye to eye and heart to heart. Hush the voice of discord and division, so that, in one glad burst of harmonious song, the universal prayer may in due time arise!
"MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Ninth Evening
"Even so, Father; for so it seemed good in Your sight." Luke 10:21
I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him
MY FATHER, I thank You anew for Your glorious name, for all the blessed thoughts and assurances and solaces which cluster around it. As a Father You have again watched over me during the day; as a Father You have shielded me from danger; as a Father You have poured unnumbered blessings into my cup the least of them undeserved. And even when You see fit to cloud my path, curtail my comforts, and withdraw my cherished joys I recognize the same paternal hand. When You bring a cloud over the earth the rainbow is seen in the cloud. Crosses and comforts both emanate from You, and our comforts are always greater than our crosses. Whether therefore You give or take away, I would adore alike a giving and a taking God, and say, with reverential love and submission, "Even so, Father; for so it seemed good in Your sight!"
Sprinkle anew the lintel and door-posts of my heart this night, with the blood of atonement. I bring infinite demerit and unworthiness to the worthiness of Him who is all-worthy. I would listen to the ever-gracious declaration, "I will be merciful to your unrighteousness; your sins and your iniquities I will remember no more."
And while looking to Christ as my Savior, I would look to Him also as my great Example and Pattern. It was He who uttered this morning's word of filial obedience and submission. May He attune my lips to utter the same. Confidently reposing in the same heavenly Father His Father and my Father, His God and my God may I be enabled to say, "Do to me and with me, whatever seems good in Your sight; and forbid that what seems good in Your sight, should ever seem unacceptable in mine. This cup which You give me to drink shall I not drink it? Not as I will but as You will."
Look in kindness on all Your poor afflicted ones. Bless the ministry of sorrow. Soothe and sustain in every dark and perplexing hour. If Your tried people fail at times to see the bright light in the cloud, may they take comfort in the assured promise that "at evening time, it shall be light."
Let Your favor and blessing rest on every effort for the promotion of Your cause throughout the world.
Subdue all hearts and all kingdoms by the conquering power of redeeming love. Revive Your work in the midst of the years. The work from first to last, is Yours. It is You who lay the foundation-stones; it is You who lay all the subsequent stones. And when the top-stone shall be brought forth with shouting, the cry will still be, "Grace, grace unto it!"
And now, Lord, what wait I for? My hope is in You. May the great Angel of the covenant come down in this, the time of evening oblation. May my imperfect services be accepted through Him who, when on earth, taught His universal Church to call You "Our Father".
"MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Tenth Morning
"If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!" Matthew 7:11
And He said unto them, When you pray, say
MY FATHER in heaven, I beg Your blessing, as I am once more on the threshold of a new day. May its duties and engagements be undertaken and pervaded with the gracious sense of Your nearness and favor. Dispel all fear; promote and strengthen all confidence in these assuring words of the great Redeemer. He has consecrated with a heavenly meaning, the most sacred tie and relationship of earth. The love of father to child is only the feeble image, Lord, of Your love to Your redeemed people. Parental gifts, bestowed with yearning affection, are only the pledges and emblems of a divine interest in us which knows no change, no decay. Loving Your own who are in the world, You love them unto the end. You have established Your faithfulness forever.
Impart unto me all these promised "good things" pardon, peace, justification, sanctification crowned and consummated with the hope of immortality. I would bring my emptiness to Christ's almighty, all-sufficient fullness. Alas! how far do I fall short of Your lofty standard of duty! How far do I come beneath my own best ideals! How much I think and say and do, when my motives are rigidly scrutinized is mingled with humbling imperfection! But, incomplete in myself, I am complete in Jesus! Thanks be to You, who always causes me to triumph in Christ. Impart to me especially, the aids of Your Holy Spirit, that He may quicken my zeal, energize my faith, deepen my love, elevate and consecrate my whole being! Of all "good things" of all Your promised blessings this is the best and greatest (Luke 11. 13). Empower me with the Holy Spirit. Your Spirit, O God, is good; lead me into the land of uprightness.
Bless Your sorrowing children. May they be enabled to recognize chastisement as one of the gifts of adoption that You chasten them because You love them. With unrepining submission, may it be theirs to say, "It is the Lord; let Him do what seems good unto Him."
Look in pity, gracious God, on this sin-stricken, woe-worn world. Unloose the chains of slavery; scatter the people that delight in war; and hasten the advent and kingdom of the Prince of Peace. Stir up Your faithful people in Your service. Raise up honored heralds of the truth to prepare the way of the Lord, and make straight in the desert, a highway for our God. Give us all grace, in our varied spheres, to be waiting and watching; to lay out whatever talent You have entrusted to our care; to work while it is called today, and prepare for the coming night, when the season of earth's opportunities shall cease forever. I ask these, and other needed blessings, in the name and through the merits of Jesus Christ, Your only Son, our Savior.
"MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Tenth Evening
"He prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, and not only for that nation, but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one." John 11:52
I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him
MY FATHER, before I retire to rest, visit me with Your grace. Renew to me the blessed sense of Your pardoning love. I have the blessings of another day, with thankful heart to record. I have received throughout its hours, double mercy for all my sins. And now, as the shadows of evening are gathering around, I beseech You to be my keeper. As You have been to me a pillar of cloud by daybe a pillar of fire by night. Fulfill Your own gracious promise: "In all places where I record My name, I will come unto you and bless you." "My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest." May every joy of life be sweetened, and every sorrow sanctified, by the assurance that, "You are my Father." May I know, in common with the whole family of God, the exceeding greatness of Your power to us who believe.
While I renew my gratitude and praise for personal mercies, for the blessings of home and kindred, health and strength, above all, for spiritual and religious privileges, my thoughts are more especially drawn, to such as are less highly favored. I would sympathetically and earnestly remember those who are sitting in darkness, and in the region and shadow of death; who have never enjoyed the opportunity of welcoming the glad revelation of Yourself as a gracious Father, and of Christ as a living, loving Savior. Lord, hasten the time when "the children of God that are scattered abroad" shall by You be ingathered; when the filial song shall arise from a regenerated world, "Behold! we are all Your children!" Make those Your people, who are not Your people; and her beloved, who was not beloved. Let Jew and Gentile, barbarian, bond and free, exult together in the liberty of the glory of the sons of God!
Own every means for the promotion of Your cause. May the divine Dove of Peace brood, as He did over chaos of old, bringing light out of darkness, and order out of confusion. May we all feel, in our varied spheres of influence, that we have some mission, however lowly, to perform for You, and for the good of others. Give the single eye, and the single aim, and the lofty unalloyed motive.
Have great compassion on Your suffering and distressed children, more especially on the bereaved and desolate. May they recognize Your dealings, however mysterious, as dictated and regulated by unerring love, the appointments of Your own infinite wisdom; and look forward to that better world where all afflictions shall be ended, all tears dried where there is no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither any more pain, for the former things are passed away!
Gracious God, I anew plead with You, in fulfillment of the gospel promise of this evening, to gather together Your now scattered children, that so the happy predicted time may soon come, when no man shall need to teach his neighbor or his brother, saying, "Know the Lord," but when all shall know You, from the least even unto the greatest; when nations and kingdoms and people and tongues shall unite with one heart and voice in calling You "Our Father"!
"MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Eleventh Morning
"Truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ." 1 John 1:3
And He said unto them, When you pray, say
MY FATHER, blessed be Your name, that Your children are ever permitted to enter Your presence and invoke Your favor. Let me this morning approach the gates of prayer with filial confidence and holy reverence. Keep me from vain distractions and disturbing thoughts. Let me know and feel somewhat of that divine fellowship realized by Your servant and apostle. Make my soul receptive of spiritual influences. Open the windows of heaven, that a shower of blessing may descend. May I see everything around me transformed and transfigured in You, all wearing the print and impress of a Father's love, and gladdened with the memories of a Savior's redeeming work and salvation.
Alas! I have to own that I am the ungrateful recipient of much divine kindness. I have not the humiliating sense I ought to have of sin in general, and of my own sins in particular. My best resolutions, how frail! My best affections, how divided! My best services, how mingled! My best aims and aspirations, how far short of Your glory! Your love and patience and forbearance are as wondrous as they are undeserved. It is of Your compassions alone, that I am spared the cumberer's sentence and doom.
I would lie low at the foot of the cross, disowning all trust and confidence in anything I have done, in anything I can do. I would look alone to Him who is able to save, and willing to save to the uttermost, and through whose merits and mediation, I am now, and shall be at last, more than conqueror.
Deliver me from the dominion, as well as from the guilt of sin. Deliver me from this present evil world. Amid its legion foes, may I stand panoplied in the armor of righteousness, faithful to You through good report and through bad report; so that, at last, an entrance may be ministered to me abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of my Lord and Savior.
Deepen in me a sense of responsibility for the use of every entrusted talent. Let me seek to lay them out for the good of men, and for Your glory. Let me enter on no duty without invoking Your sanction, and seeking to hear Your voice amid all perplexities, "This is the way walk in it."
May Your gospel triumph over the pride and superstition and will-worship of man. Darkness is still covering the earth, and gross darkness the people. May the joyful mandate soon be heard, "Arise and shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon you."
May trial have the blessed effect of bringing me nearer to You. Direct broken hearts and weeping eyes to that bright world where nothing shall mar or interrupt everlasting harmonies the rest which remains for Your people.
May all varied duties and engagements this day be sanctified. Fit me for work and warfare. May I ever realize that Your pure eye is upon me! And so, when the shadows of evening gather around, I may not have the saddened sense of a day lived and spent in vain, but rather of having enjoyed somewhat of this gracious fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. Leaning with a more simple and entire dependence on divine grace amid all changes and checkered experiences, may it be ever mine with filial love and confidence to say "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Eleventh Evening
"So that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe!" Philippians 2:15
I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him
MY FATHER, the shadows of night are again gathering around me. Abide with me; for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. Graciously forgive whatever I have done amiss in thought or word or deed. Before I close my eyes in sleep, I come anew to the opened fountain, and plead anew the all-sufficient atonement of the divine Redeemer.
Let me more deeply realize my filial covenant relationship to You, rejoicing that all which concerns me is in Your hand, and under Your divine, sovereign control. For the manifold blessings of this life, may I feel a chastened gratitude and thankfulness while I have them; and when You, the great Giver and Disposer, see fit to revoke the grant, may it be mine, with filial self-surrender, to say, "Yes, Father, because this was Your good pleasure."
Alas! O God, I have to confess how far I am living beneath my privileges and responsibilities! How inadequately I realize my spiritual deficiencies and shortcomings! How little consciousness I have of my need of the Redeemer and of His great salvation! How little have I attained to the "purity and blamelessness" of Your children! how much in my temper and conduct and daily walk is unworthy of those who are called to shine as lights in the dark world!
Lord, may this be more and more, my habitually aspiration to shine for You; to manifest daily, the elevating, sanctifying, transforming precepts and principles of Your gospel; that I may live blameless and pure, without fault, my conduct unmarred and unblemished by inconsistency. Let me enter on no engagement unsanctioned by Your approval. Preserve my purity of thought, purity of word, purity of deed.
Whatever Your dealings and discipline towards me are, whether in the way of prosperity or adversity, may it be my single desire that You may be glorified. Thus cultivating a pilgrim spirit, may I be prepared, whenever You see fit to call me hence, to enter Your presence and home above; where, fully purged from the dross of earthliness, with no bias to evil, no contrariety to Your divine mind and will I shall be permitted to serve You forever and ever!
Have mercy on Your afflicted children. If Your dealings with them are apparently harsh and mysterious, may they hear also Your gracious undertones of love. May they trust the Father-heart of their heavenly Parent, and feel assured, whatever the complexion of their trial is, that all things, joyful or sorrowful, prosperous or adverse, are working together, and will work together, for their eternal good.
Bless my beloved friends. May they too count it their highest privilege and happiness to be among the blameless and harmless sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty, testifying for You, Your cause and kingdom and glory, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. Lord, how long shall the wicked how long shall the wicked triumph? Save Your people; bless Your inheritance; sustain them also, and lift them up forever.
Meanwhile, I would present my evening petitions, and close them, with the conviction of a divine and gracious reality in the words "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Twelfth Morning
"Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it does not yet appear what we shall be. But we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is" 1 John 3:2
And He said unto them, When you pray, say
MY FATHER in heaven, draw near to me this morning in Your own infinite mercy. "Sun of my soul," who has set Your glory above the heavens, eclipsing all created beams, may Your presence be an inspiration to me. I need no other blessing if I have Yours. The retrospect of life is a retrospect of Your divine love. I am a living monument of Your forbearance.
How wondrously have You borne with my ingratitude and waywardness; with my sinful omissions of known duty, and my sinful commission of known sin! I am a mere cumberer of the ground, yet You have spared me. It is of Your mercies, that I am not consumed. Unworthy to eat of the crumbs which fall from my Master's table, You are bestowing upon me token upon token of unmerited goodness, waking me up each morning to new causes for filial gratitude and praise.
I bless You for my regeneration, my preservation, and for the manifold blessings of this life. Most chiefly do I bless You for Jesus Christ, the Son of Your love; for all that He has done for me, for all that He is still doing for me. In Him I would rock my every fear and disquietude to rest. In the words of Your holy apostle just read, I would cleave to the assurance of a present sonship in the family of which He is the divine Elder Brother. "Beloved, now are we the sons of God!" This is the pledge of the inheritance, until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of His glory.
Grant that I may be enabled to walk worthy of my adoption privileges, looking forward with humble yet triumphant confidence to the full realization of the blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of my great God my Savior, when I shall be transformed into His divine image and likeness, and see Him as He is!
Meanwhile, may I have grace given me to purify myself even as He is pure. My Father-God, keep me from whatever has the tendency to estrange me from You, and to weaken the filial tie and the child-affection. Preserve me from a spirit of selfishness; from seeking alone personal enjoyment of Your gifts, instead of making thankful and generous employment of these in respect of others. From all indolence and sloth; from all hatred and envy, jealousy and malice; from all unworthy ambitions and debasing allurements; from all that would interfere with my brother's well-being; from every breach of charity, good Lord, deliver me.
Bless my beloved friends and relatives. May they too be quickened by the same animating and encouraging prospect of attaining at last, resemblance to Jesus. May they be looking for and hastening His coming; so that when the advent-hour shall strike, they may be able to lift up their heads with joy, knowing that their redemption draws near.
Promote Your cause and kingdom everywhere. May Your churches act up to their responsibilities as lights in the world, called to shine for You, and to diffuse sacred influences all around. Hasten the day when the reign of sin and sorrow and death shall be forever terminated; when Your ingathered people, out of every nation and kindred and tongue, shall welcome in the Prince of Peace to the throne of universal empire. Compassionate the sick and sorrowful. Prepare the dying for their great change. May angels be waiting by their death-pillow, to carry the departing spirit into the Savior's bosom. May all who are called to sorrow and tribulation here who tell of vacant places and blanks in the family circle, and mourn their loved and lost submissively trust, where they fail to understand the mystery of Your ways. Oh, that we were ever able and ready to follow You, not only in smooth places, but where the way is rough and the prospect dreary; seeing a rainbow of promise in every cloud, looking beyond the changes and chances of this mortal life to the Father's home of unblighted love, where we shall be "forever with the Lord."
Quicken me this day, to run the pilgrim race. Remove every hindrance and impediment. May a sense of Your favor pervade and hallow all its doings. May I be enabled to close it as I would now begin it, by calling You, "My Father".
"MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Twelfth Evening
"You are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus." Galatians 3:26
I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him
MY FATHER, I would retire to rest this night, invoking Your blessing, and seeking, "by faith in Christ Jesus," more deeply and thankfully to realize my filial relationship to You. Let me dismiss all fear or worry. May every source of anxiety and disquietude be hushed to rest, that by that same faith in Him who is my only Lord and Savior, I may, in common with Your children throughout the world, commit myself to Your gracious keeping.
You have, in the day that is past, been loading me with Your benefits. May every blessing I enjoy bear the impress of Your love, and be hallowed and sanctified by the thought that it comes from You. I would exult anew in the security of Your promises. I rejoice, that nothing can touch my divine inheritance. Those whom You love at the beginning You love unto the end. The mountains may depart, and the hills be removed; but Your kindness shall not depart from me, nor shall Your covenant of peace be removed.
You are inviting me to cherish child-thoughts of confidence and affection, in coming now to Your throne of grace. Strengthen every tie which binds me to Yourself. Yours by creation, may I feel that I am doubly Yours by redemption. May I seek to consecrate the life to Your praise, which You have ransomed at such a high price. "If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature." May I not dishonor You by departure from the path of duty or principle. Risen with Him, may I seek those things that are above, where He sits at Your right hand.
If any lukewarmness should have imperceptibly crept upon me, Lord, quicken and revive me by the power of Your Holy Spirit. Restore Your love to its place of rightful ascendency. Subordinate all creature love to Yours. Give me grace to occupy with conscientious fidelity, whatever place in the world You have seen fit to assign to me. Let nothing dim or obscure my "blessed hope."
May Your dealings and discipline fit and nurture me for the time when my present imperfect and divided love shall be imperfect and divided no more; when the glory of God will be the motive principle interfused through every thought and action of my life translated from the bondage of corruption, into the glorious liberty of Your children.
Bless my beloved friends. Hallow every earthly tie, by making it a heavenly one. We can ask no better blessing than in the gracious words of this evening, that we may all be the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.
Be the binder-up of broken hearts, the rest for the weary, the stay of the orphan, the home of the homeless. Smooth the pillow of sickness. May those appointed unto death, be prepared for the great change. Amid the manifold uncertainties of the present, may I be so living and walking and acting by faith in a faithful Savior, that when that same supreme hour overtakes me, I may have nothing to do but to die and to awake up in everlasting glory!
I ask every needed blessing in the name of Him whom You always hear, and who taught His disciples in all ages, to unite in the gracious invocation "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Thirteenth Morning
"This son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!" Luke 15:24
And He said unto them, When you pray, say
MY FATHER, You have loved us with an everlasting love. You love us even in our prodigal wanderings, when, forgetful of the lavish proofs of Your affection, we stray into the far country. I come to You this morning, rejoicing that You have heard my cry, that You have led me to mourn over my estrangement; and instead of rejecting my yearnings for return and reconciliation have, with the outstretched arms of mercy, You have welcomed me back to peace, and rest, and home!
Grant me the gracious sense of Your presence. Let me hear the wondrous name and assurance, "This my son!" Let it banish all doubt and unbelief, all disquietude and fear. "My Father" may the consciousness of this affiance in You, lead me to deeper contrition, to more devout filial reverence and devotion. Once lost, but now found, returned to the Shepherd and Bishop of my soul, let me listen to the voice of mingled omnipotence and love, "Be of good cheer your sins are forgiven!" Being forgiven much may I love all the more.
May genuine contrition for the past mingle with heartfelt resolutions of new obedience for the future. As one alive from the dead, let me rise and walk with Christ in newness of life. Risen with Him, may I seek those things that are above, where He sits at the right hand of God. Elevate my affections. Enthrone His love as the ruling passion in my soul. Lead me to fight more faithfully under His banner, and to be more loyal and uncompromising in my allegiance. May this be my motto and watchword, "I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me!"
Promote His cause throughout the world. Father, glorify Your name. Hasten the day when the year of Your redeemed shall come. Cause the places round about to become a blessing. May the shower come down in its season; let there be showers of blessing.
Look down in love and sympathy on Your children of sorrow. Preserve us all from a murmuring spirit under dark and trying dispensations. May bereaved ones look forward with chastened joy, to that glorious time when tears shall no more be shed, and "death itself shall die."
Lord, be with me throughout this day. In my varied worldly work and engagements, my duties and occupations, may I seek to be a faithful steward. And when You see fit to call me hence, may I be found ready for the summons, and be able to look beyond death and the grave to that morning without clouds when in Your light, I shall see light; and with earth's pilgrim wanderings finished, I shall be safe in my true Father's house and home forever.
Meanwhile, with childlike reverence and trust, I would look up to the mightiest of all Beings, and call You by the endearing name "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Thirteenth Evening
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. He comforts us in all our affliction." 2 Corinthians 1:3-4
I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him
MY FATHER, another evening has gathered its shadows around me. You are light, and with You there is no darkness at all. "It is not night if You be near." Let no "earth-born cloud" arise, to intercept the sunshine of Your countenance. Before I retire to rest, I would recall with gratitude, Father of mercies, the many memories of Your great goodness. Under the shelter of Your wings I would rejoice. Enable me, with the close of day, to enjoy a foretaste of that everlasting fellowship and communion which is to be the heritage of Your people in the heavenly kingdom.
Well may I address You as "the Father of mercies!" My earthly path is strewn with mercy, loving-kindness on loving-kindness. I would set up this night anew, my Ebenezer my stone of remembrance and write upon it the inscription, "Hitherto has the Lord helped me!"
When at times, in the retrospect of life, clouds have darkened my sky, and the bright spots of the wilderness have been mingled with dreary ones, still have I had reason to rejoice in You as "the God of all comfort, who comforts me in all my afflictions," giving me strength equal to my day, delivering my soul from death, my eyes from tears, and my feet from falling. Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who daily loads me with benefits!
I desire to make acknowledgment of my great unworthiness the poor and inadequate returns I have made to You. How often I have requited Your mercies with ingratitude, doing the things I ought not to have done, and leaving undone those things that I ought to have done. I have no excuse or apology for these, my sins and shortcomings. My own heart condemns me, and You are greater than my heart. I look away from myself and my own mis-doings, to the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.
O Jesus, Son of David, have mercy upon me! You have an all-sufficiency in all things. I take You to be my refuge in danger, my guide in perplexity, my solace in sorrow, my confidence in death, my joy and portion through eternity. Enable me to obey Your own gracious invitation this night. Coming weary and heavy laden, may I have rest and peace for my soul peace in the renewed consciousness of the perfection of Your atonement, the merits of Your death, the completeness of Your righteousness, the prevalence of Your intercession. Bring me to live more habitually under the constraining power of Your love; that I would regard life more and more as a mission to please You to please You not so much in great things as in little things in the faithful discharge of little duties, and in the calm endurance of little trials; taking up the cross when it is Your will to lay it upon me, saying with adoring filial love, "Yes, Father, because this was Your good pleasure."
Grant to me the promised abiding influences of Your Holy Spirit, as a Spirit of life and light, sanctification and comfort. Restore unto me the joys of Your salvation, and uphold me with Your free and gracious Spirit!
Bless those near and dear to me. Sanctify them in body, soul, and spirit. Seal them unto the day of eternal redemption!
May all Your poor afflicted ones, be enabled to resolve their wills into Yours, rejoicing in Your covenant, paternal name, "the God of all comfort." You have said that You will send no temptation greater than Your people are able to bear. With the temptation, give them the accompanying pledged promise of grace, that they may be able to bear it.
I retire to rest this night, reposing in Your covenant faithfulness, extracting strength, consolation, and peace from the words throbbing on the lips of so many of Your children at this hour of evening prayer
"MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Fourteenth Morning
"And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ." Romans 8:17
"He is not ashamed to call them brethren." Hebrews 2:11
And He said unto them, When you pray, say
MY FATHER, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, draw near to me in Your infinite mercy, and grant me the blessing which makes rich and which adds no sorrow with it. Rend Your heavens and come down; fill this little sanctuary with Your glory, and my heart with Your love. Let my prayer come before You as incense, and the lifting up of my hands as the morning sacrifice. Bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar. Help me to understand the privilege and glory of being an heir of Yours, and a joint-heir with Your dear Son.
I thank You anew, for that ever-gracious name which hushes all fears, and dismisses all doubts and misgivings. I thank You that He who is the Prince of Life condescended to take upon Him our nature, in all its weaknesses and infirmities, its sorrows and temptations; and that thus linked in a true and spotless humanity, He is not ashamed to call us brethren. We adore this great mystery of godliness. The ascription of earth will be the ascription of eternity "To the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He has made us accepted in the Beloved."
I rejoice in His full and completed atonement. I rejoice that by Christ's doing and dying, every barrier of access is removed between me and Your throne of mercy; that having overcome the sharpness of death, He has opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers. I have His own gracious assurance, that because He lives I shall live also; that as an heir of God and a joint-heir in Him I have everything pledged for my salvation which is within the compass of omnipotence pardon, peace, and acceptance here, and the promise of eternal glory hereafter.
My earnest prayer is that strength may be given me to walk worthy of so priceless an inheritance. May it be my constant aspiration to consecrate the life redeemed at such a cost, to Your service. May I jealously watch whatever in my heart or conduct I know to be displeasing to You contrary to the dictates of conscience and the teachings of Your holy Word.
Preserve me from sin, and from the snares and assaults of the Evil One. Keep me from all unworthy cares and worldly entanglements. Bring my thoughts and purposes into harmony with Yours; setting ever before me my Savior's example, in His kindness and forgiveness, His humility and meekness, His resignation under suffering, His unswerving resolve ever to do His Father's will. Emancipated from the bondage of corruption, may I know more and more, what it is to be translated into the liberty of the glory of Your children, and to realize, partially now, and fully hereafter, all that is comprehended in the divine beatitude, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."
Give each of us grace in our varied spheres to seek to glorify You, either by active duty or by passive submission. Let us feel that if You are our portion, we are independent of every other.
Let all Your poor afflicted ones, bow to Your sovereign and all-wise appointments, satisfied that You chasten not arbitrarily, but because You love, and that nothing can come wrong to them which, as Your children and heirs comes from Your hand. May the bereaved be able to utter over their departed, "Precious in the sight of the Lord, is the death of His saints."
Bless my beloved friends. Hallow the bond which unites us. May we enjoy now a common fellowship in You, and in the blessings of the covenant of grace. Whatever fountains of earthly bliss it may be Yours to open to us in our pilgrimage way, may we be permitted at last, in Your full vision and fruition, to drink together of the streams of Your everlasting love!
May this day be begun, continued, and ended in You. And with the blessed assurance of Your paternal love in Christ, I would address You in His own gracious words, and say "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Fourteenth Evening
"They will be Mine," says the Lord Almighty, "in the day when I make up My jewels. I will spare them, just as in compassion a man spares his son who serves him." Malachi 3:17
I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him
MY FATHER, draw near to me this evening, as I now draw near unto You. Let me hear Your voice saying, "Son, you are ever with me, and all that I have is your!" "I have called you by your name; you are Mine!" I thank You for Your ministrations of earthly blessing; for all that gladdens and brightens my daily existence; for food and clothing, for health and strength, for friends and home. The retrospect of my life is a retrospect of Your kindness. I will utter abundantly the memory of Your great goodness, and talk of Your righteousness. I would take Your tender, pitying love in the past, as a pledge for the future, and hear Your voice behind me saying, "Be still, and know that I am God!" "This is the way; walk in it."
Let the sense of my covenant relationship to You in Christ, dispel all doubt and hush all disquietude. Let me feel the gracious persuasion that whatever befalls me is Your ordination; that be they bright or dark, joyful or sorrowful, Your dealings are mercy and truth, the decrees and allotment of Your infinite wisdom. Where I cannot trace Your hand -- I shall trust Your loving heart! What I do not know now -- I shall know hereafter. Have You not said, "I will spare them, just as in compassion a man spares his son who serves him"? I accept the tenderness of the earthly relationship, as the symbol of diviner realities. After such an assurance, how can I dare to impeach Your rectitude or question Your faithfulness?
Lord, let me mourn nothing but the withdrawal of the conscious sense of Your favor. It is absence from You which creates the greatest blank in my heart. With You I am rich, whatever else I lack. Without You I would be poor, though I owned the wealth of worlds beside. Let me aspire after increasing conformity to Your most holy will. Keep me from imbibing false worldly maxims and becoming a prey to the fascinations of a world that disowns You. Elevate my affections, purify my desires. Make me more Savior-like. Fit me for the heavenly Fatherland. On that day when You make up Your jewels, Your precious treasures, may I be found among those who have been long taught on earth to regard You with filial love, and who are to have that divine affection intensified and perpetuated through eternal ages.
Regard with Your sympathy and compassion, Your children of sorrow. May they too be able to look forward with childlike faith and hope and confidence, to that blessed morning when earth's shadows shall have vanished; when every mystery shall be revealed and made luminous with love, and when they shall remember with adoring gratitude, all the way by which You have led them through the wilderness, to humble them, and to prove them.
Bestow Your providential care on my dear friends, enabling them also to appropriate the elevating assurance, "They will be Mine, says the Lord Almighty!" Pour upon us the continual dew of Your blessing. May we now together rejoice in hope of the coming gloryfound together, watching and waiting and working, that the final summons may not find us unprepared to enter the eternal rest and the eternal home.
Anew I thank you for the mercies of the bygone day. Watch over me during the silence and darkness of the coming night. Give Your angels charge concerning me, that they may encamp round about me; and if pleased to spare me until tomorrow, may I rise refreshed and invigorated for duty and service. Whether I wake or sleep, may I live together with You.
"MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Fifteenth Morning
"But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons." Galatians 4:4-5
And He said unto them, When you pray, say
MY FATHER, who have in Your great mercy permitted me to see the light of another day -- defend me by Your mighty power; and grant that this day I fall into no sin, neither run into any kind of danger, but that all my doings may be ordered by Your wise governance. I would enter the inner chamber of Your presence, and in the sweet concord of covenant fellowship with the Hearer and Answerer of prayer, I would bow at Your throne of heavenly grace.
I rejoice in the assurance of Your faithfulness. Amid all the fitful changes of life -- You are the same. Heaven and earth may pass away, but the Lord lives! Blessed be my Rock; and let the God of my salvation be exalted.
I would adore especially the mysteries of Your love manifested in the mission and incarnation of the divine Redeemer that when the fullness of the time had come, when the world by its own boasted wisdom failed to effect its own salvation, when "the world by wisdom knew not God," You sent forth Your dear Son, virgin-born, to redeem by His perfect life and meritorious death, the children of fallen humanity, and bestow upon them the adoption of sons. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law -- by nothing short of becoming a curse for us!
My earnest prayer is that these adoption privileges and blessings may be mine; that with believing trust and confidence I may be able to look up to the greatest of all Beings and call You "My Father!" Impart to me more and more the feelings and dispositions of Your children. Give me the heritage of those who fear Your name. Make me gentle and loving, unselfish and forgiving. Father, guide me! Father, keep me! Father, discipline me by Your providence for Your service here, and for Your glory hereafter! It is by Your grace alone, that I stand. Hold me up -- and I shall be safe! How often and how easily would I have fallen in the hour of temptation, but for Your upholding hand! In all times of peril or tribulation, of weakness or vacillation, set me in the cleft of the Rock. Inspire me with purposes of new and more devoted obedience. Sanctify me in body, soul, and spirit; and present me at last faultless before the presence of Your glory with exceeding joy!
I pray for the whole Church; I pray for all Your children who are scattered abroad. Fetch home every wanderer; reclaim every backslider. Confirm Your true people in their most holy faith. May they know in their increasing experience, that Your service is self-rewarding and self-satisfying. Make their hearts sacred altars living temples, on which the superscription is written, "Holiness to the Lord!"
Bless Your sorrowful and the bereaved ones. May they accept their trials as the dealing and discipline of infinite wisdom, designed to wean from the perishable, and allure to the imperishable. If it is night here, prepare them for a cloudless, nightless, sorrowless heaven, where trial is no longer either felt or feared.
"Almighty God, may it please You of Your gracious goodness, shortly to accomplish the number of Your elect, and to hasten Your kingdom, that we, with all those who are departed in the true faith of Your holy name, may have our perfect consummation and bliss, both in body and soul, in Your eternal and everlasting glory."
Anew I commend myself to You this day, and to the word of Your grace. Help me in the battle of life. Set a watch before my mouth; guard the door of my lips. In every duty, may I have Your presence; in every perplexity, may I have Your counsel; for every burden, may I have Your support. May each returning morning find me better prepared for the rest of the glorified, and the full vision and fruition of You, my God. Meanwhile, with the ever deepening love and devotion of Your adopted children, may it be mine to say "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Fifteenth Evening
"Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us?" Malachi 2:10
"You, O Lord, are our Father, our Redeemer; Your name is from everlasting." Isaiah 63:16
I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him
MY FATHER, I come to You this night as the one God and Father of all, the beneficent Creator, the all-wise Provider, the supreme Disposer. Especially do I approach You as my Redeemer, whose redeeming name and redeeming love are "from everlasting." Teach me to feel my dependence on You; that from day to day and from hour to hour, I am a miracle of Your grace, "kept by the power of God."
I acknowledge my great unworthiness. I have sinned against You times and ways without number. I have nothing to plead in extenuation. If tried by my best hours, or best days, or best services how condemned would I stand! How often You might righteously have left me to the fruit of my own ways and to be filled with my own devices, turning away Your face from me and my prayer from You. But You have not so requited me. Blessed be Your name, You do not "upbraid." Your hand of mercy and loving-kindness and longsuffering is stretched out still. Your ways are not as our ways, nor Your thoughts as our thoughts. The forbearance and longsuffering of the best of earthly fathers is only the feeble reflection of Yours. With devout filial love I would seek Your forgiveness and favor.
As Your redeemed child, adopted into Your family, may it be my desire to love You more, and to serve You better. Let Your will be the controlling principle of my life. If You send me prosperity, let me accept every blessing as emanating directly from You. If You send me adversity, may it be the blessed means of promoting my spiritual growth, freeing me from the dross of worldliness and sin, and transfiguring me into the likeness of Christ.
Gracious Savior, I rejoice in Your exalted and ever-present sympathy. You make my case and my cares, Your own. Whatever troubles or perils, difficulties or temptations may environ my path, may this be my elevating consolation, that Your hand is never shortened that it cannot save, neither is Your ear heavy that it cannot hear. Quicken me in Your service. Lift me above the life of selfishness, and unsympathetic isolation. Bring me more under the dominion of that charity which is the bond of perfectness. Preserve me from overlooking and neglecting the interests of others. May this be my habitual aim to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with You my God.
I commend to Your gracious care, all my beloved friends. May they dwell in the secret place of the Most High, and abide under the shadow of the Almighty. Let us be together sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise, and able to rejoice in the common hope of the glory of God. We bless You for those eternal ties, which survive the uncertain ones of earth.
May the realized sense of Your presence and love, take the sting from all our afflictions. O Brother born for adversity, speak Your own balm-word for the weary and heavy-laden "Come unto Me, and I will give you rest." Turn the night of weeping into a morning of joy. May the cross blossom into a crown. Prepare the dying for the final hour. May they fall asleep in Jesus, to wake up in everlasting glory.
Hasten that happy day when "our Father in heaven" shall be the one universal name, owned and reverenced all the world over; when the love of Christ shall be enthroned in every heart, and become the theme and inspiration of every tongue!
I anew commend myself to You and to the word of Your grace. While beseeching You to be with me through the silent watches of the night, I would close my petitions and retire to rest by pronouncing the ever-blessed words, in the name of Him who first uttered them "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Sixteenth Morning
"You are my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation." Psalm 89:26
And He said unto them, When you pray, say
MY FATHER in heaven, the God of my life, and the length of my days; may it be mine to avow, with some good measure of appropriating faith and holy confidence, "You are my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation."
Other portions are perishable, other confidences are unstable, other refuges too often prove refuges of lies. But my Lord lives! Blessed be my Rock; and let the God of my salvation be exalted! O You who go before Your people still, as of old, in the day-cloud and night-fire, uphold me with Your most gracious favor, and sustain me with Your continual help. Let me have increasing experience of the blessedness of Your everlasting watch by night and by day.
"My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. He will not let my foot slip; He who watches over me will not slumber; indeed, He who watches over His people will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord watches over me; the Lord is the shade at my right hand; the sun will not harm me by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep me from all harm; He will watch over my life; the Lord will watch over my coming and going, both now and forevermore!"
It is, above all, my comfort and consolation, my highest, holiest privilege, that the Shepherd-God of old, is the Father-God of His true spiritual people in every age; and that with filial reverence and devotion I may now this morning, approach my Father's presence and invoke my Father's love.
I acknowledge my many and grievous offences, committed as they have been against so much light and love, so much warning and mercy. I have too often resisted Your grace, grieved Your Spirit, and wronged my conscience. I have fallen a prey to the fascinations of the world, the whisperings of unbelief, and the deceitfulness of my own heart. Lord, have mercy on me! Christ, have mercy on me! Holy Spirit, have mercy on me! Remember not the sins of my youth, nor the transgressions of my riper years; but according to Your mercy remember me.
Lead me in Your good and holy way. Deliver me from the tyranny of any secret, besetting sin. To all the seductions of the tempter, may I be ready to say, "How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against You, my God and my Father?"
Blessed Savior, ever-living, ever-loving Elder Brother on the throne, may it be my earnest desire to follow in Your steps as my great Example and Pattern. Like You, may I seek to be meek and lowly in heart, tender and considerate, resigned and submissive, forbearing and forgiving; so that even here I may enjoy Your own special beatitudes, "Blessed are the peacemakers." "Blessed are the pure in heart."
Look in great kindness on my beloved friends. Distance separates between us, but no distance can separate between them and You. May we together plead the same exceeding great and precious promises. May we be anchored to the same "Rock of salvation." Make us heirs together of the grace of life. Let us be able to unite in the common filial invocation, "You are my Father!"
Bless our beloved country. Protect and perpetuate whatever is likely to promote Your glory and the well-being of the people. Be a wall of fire around Your Zion. May her watchmen never keep silence, until the Your righteousness goes forth as brightness, and Your salvation as a lamp that burns.
Pity and compassionate all Your sorrowing children. Smooth the pillow of pain and sickness; grant restoration to health and strength. Point the bereaved and the lonely, beyond this land of shadows, where all is frail and fleeting to those joys which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man to conceive!
Be with me throughout this day. I know not what is before me. But this is my prayer, "Lead, kindly Light. Lead, gracious Father. Lead me on. I ask not to know the distant scene. Lead me, step by step. I would not choose my own path. You choose for me. And so, with the same omnipotent Father still blessing me, who has blessed me in the past lead me over every dark and dreary spot in the journey, until the night is gone, and I reach the gates of everlasting day!
"MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Sixteenth Evening
"Be imitators of God, as dear children; and walk in love, as Christ also has loved us.'' Ephesians 5:1, 2
I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him
MY FATHER, draw near to me this night, and visit me with that love which You bear to Your own people. I am once more on praying and on pleading ground. It is Your own gracious promise, that those who wait upon You, shall renew their strength. As I now commune with You from Your mercy-seat, may I be strengthened with all might by Your Spirit in the inner man. Make Your grace sufficient for me, and perfect Your strength in my weakness. Deepen the sense alike of my dependence on You, and of my spiritual responsibilities.
Forbid that I should be guilty of receiving even the least of Your mercies as matters of course. May they all be hallowed and sanctified by connecting them with Yourself, the great Bestower. I am unworthy to eat of the crumbs which fall from Your table. But You are inviting me to Your banqueting house, while Your banner over me is love. May it be my chief and habitual desire, to love You who first loved, and so loved me. Let Your love be shed abroad in my heart; and may a sense of that love and of my infinite obligations to it, quicken and stimulate me in every good word and work. "He who dwells in love, dwells in God, and God in him."
Blot out my manifold transgressions, through the blood of the everlasting covenant. Say to me, in mingled omnipotence and mercy, "Your sins, which are many, are all forgiven!" Along with the assured sense of fatherly forgiveness for the past, arm me with Your upholding strength for the future. May that indwelling love constrain me, in the time to come, to live not unto myself, but unto Him who died for me and rose again. However feeble and imperfect the resemblance, may I seek to be a follower and imitator of Him whose food and whose drink it was, to do Your holy will. Grant me to be an imitator of His meekness and gentleness, and His consecration to whatever was pure and lovely and kind.
Repress all unworthy ambitions, all selfish aims, all perilous concessions to the spirit of the world. Let me not be discouraged because of the hardness of the way its difficulties, its dangers, its temptations. Let my path be brightened and beautified with the sunshine of His favor, who having once suffered being tempted, is able to support those who are tempted.
Lord, let this love of Yours, be an expansive principle in my heart and life. Let love to You, my Father in heaven, be accompanied with love to all. Preserve me from narrowness and exclusiveness, from unforgiving tempers and unbrotherly deeds. From envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness, good Lord deliver me. May the well-being of my neighbor be as sacred as my own. If exposed to the shafts of slander and unkindness, may it be my habitual effort not to render evil for evil, or railing for railing; but contrariwise blessing. May I live under the influence and sovereignty of these blessed words, "Walk in love, just as Christ has loved you."
May this same charity permeate churches as well as individuals. Terminate the spirit of sectarian jealousy and mutual recrimination. Quicken and stimulate the life of love. Give access in every land, to Your faithful missionary servants; may they prepare the way of the Lord, and make straight in the desert, a highway for our God. Hasten the time when kings and princes shall cast their crowns and scepters at the feet of Him who is King of kings and Lord of lords!
Bless all Your children who are in sorrow; all who are bowed down with heavy cares and disappointed hopes and wounded spirits; all who are mourning departed relatives and friends. Let them cleave to the unforgetting love of their Father in heaven. May afflictions lead to a more complete and entire surrender of soul and life, to Him who does all things well.
Accept of my renewed thanks for the mercies of the bygone day; and when earthly mornings and evenings have terminated, may it be mine to wake up in Your likeness in everlasting glory! Meanwhile, with uplifted heart, I would utter the name and words which serve to dispel fear and to impart an ever-deepening trust "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Seventeenth Morning
"To all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God." John 1:12
And He said unto them, When you pray, say
MY FATHER in heaven, who through Your dear Son have given us power to become Your sons, help me to draw near to You this morning with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, seeking and receiving that blessing of Yours, which makes rich and adds no sorrow with it.
You are forever the same. Vicissitude may be impressed on all around me. The fondest affections may be dimmed or alienated: trusted friends may grow faithless. But You are forever the same.
With gratitude and thankfulness I can trace, in the retrospect of the past, Your gracious footsteps. The way I have hitherto traversed, has been paved with kindness. May I see in every temporal mercy, the image and superscription of Your love. All which gladdens and sweetens my lot, emanates from the cross of Jesus. He who spared not His own Son, has with Him also freely given me all things. Realizing my filial relation, may I have grace given me to "believe on His name." Lord, I believe; help my unbelief! May I "receive" Jesus with a hearty and unhesitating faith in His varied offices, as my Prophet, Priest, and King the Prophet to teach me; the Priest to intercede for me; the King to reign over and within me, bringing every high thought and lofty imagination, into captivity to the obedience of Christ.
Amid conscious weakness and infirmity, I rely on Your grace and guidance in all the diverse experiences of life; and at last to be presented faultless before the presence of Your glory with exceeding joy!
Look in kindness on those in whom I am interested, and for whom it is alike my duty and privilege to pray. Bring into the way of truth, all such as have erred or are deceived. Have mercy on those who may have fallen wounded in the battle, or who may have turned faint-hearted in the hour of conflict. Restore unto them, the joys of Your salvation, and uphold them with Your free Spirit.
Pity and relieve Your suffering and sorrowing ones, according to their several necessities. Give them the heritage of those who fear Your name. May the thought of the coming glory and its unspeakable joys, reconcile them to the tribulations of the present world.
Have compassion on the whole world. Hasten that predicted time when all kings shall fall down before You; when all nations shall serve You; when they shall bring gold and incense, and shall show forth the praises of the Lord. Saturate Your faithful ministering servants with the healthful Spirit of Your grace, and pour upon them the continual dew of Your blessing.
Help me this day in the engagements of life. May love to You and a desire to glorify Your name, be intermingled with all I think, or say, or do. Whether I live, may I live unto the Lord; or whether I die, may I die unto the Lord; living or dying, may I be Yours! Thus fitted for duty and prepared for trial, with filial reverence and confidence, I would sum up my petitions by calling You "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Seventeenth Evening
"Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall be called the children of God." Matthew 5:9
I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him
MY FATHER, I thank You for the mercies of the bypast day. May every blessing I enjoy be hallowed and sweetened by the thought that it comes from You, and is a pledge of Your goodness. You are graciously ministering to my ever-recurring necessities. Enable me, from morning to evening, to live as a pensioner on Your bounty; to trace every gift to the great Bestower, every stream of creative and providential mercy to Yourself, the infinite Fountain-head. Your favor alone is life; Your loving-kindness is better than life. There are many who say, "Who will show us any good?" Lift up the light of Your countenance upon me. Hide not Your face, else I must be troubled. Cause it to shine, and then I must have peace!
I acknowledge my many and multiplied transgressions. By reason of my sin, I might often have forfeited Your favor, and been left to wander as a prodigal and exile forever, far from rest, and home, and You. Blessed be Your name, the hand of parental love and mercy is stretched out still. You are waiting to be gracious. A Father's voice of reconciliation and forgiveness is ever heard saying, "I will be merciful to your unrighteousness; your sins and your iniquities I will remember no more."
As partaker of Christ's resurrection life sanctify me in body, soul, and spirit. Preserve me from the snares of the world, the assaults of temptation, and the deceitfulness of my own heart. It is my comfort to know that He who is with me, and for me is greater far than all that can be against me. Remembering Your goodness in the past, I would entrust myself to Your keeping and guidance for the unknown future, knowing that You will be faithful to Your promise, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." May it be my habitual desire to please You and my sorrow to grieve You. Enable me to subdue and mortify unholy affections, and to live as seeing You who are invisible.
Hallow my relations to my fellow-men, and to the world around me. Grant me grace to inherit the blessing and beatitude of the peacemakers; ever coveting that most excellent gift of love, which is the very bond of perfectness seeking, amid wrongs, to forgive and to forget. Alas! that there should so often be unworthy estrangements among the children of a common Father, and the professing heirs of the same heavenly inheritance!
Look in kindness on Your children who stand in need of sympathy. Be the Comforter of all who are cast down. May the breaking of earthly cisterns, only endear to them the great inexhaustible Source of consolation. Let them see; and if they cannot see, let them believe that there is a "needs be" in their varied tribulations. May they count it their highest duty and supreme privilege, with the reverent obedience and submission of children, to bow to the will of their Father in heaven.
God of Bethel, O God of all the families of the earth, take those near and dear to me under Your loving care. May You be their keeper; their stay, and their strength at their right hand. As night now closes around me, I would for them and for myself, take shelter in the gracious promise: "When you lie down you shall not be afraid. Yes, you shall lie down, and your sleep shall be sweet." Let me retire to rest at peace with You and in charity to all mankind, listening to Your promise: "In all places where I record My name, I will come unto you, and I will bless you."
"MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Eighteenth Morning
"Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father!" Galatians 4:6
And He said unto them, When you pray, say
MY FATHER, send forth Your Spirit into my heart, enabling me, as one of Your children by adoption, fully to realize the graciousness of Your paternal name, and the tenderness of Your paternal love. I come to the footstool of Your throne, thanking You for this morning's light and this morning's mercies. Refresh me with Your blessing; revive me with Your grace. May I enjoy a season of fellowship with You my Father, and with Your Son, Jesus Christ. I acknowledge with profound thankfulness Your unwearying watchfulness and care. Sun of my soul, shine upon me with the brightness of Your rising. May each returning morning be the emblem and pledge of that glorious day, when the sun shall no more go down, neither shall the moon withdraw itself, but You shall be my everlasting Light.
With an ever-deepening reverence would I say, "Give me this day, and day by day, Father, my daily bread." I would realize my constant dependence as the pensioner on Your bounty. Lift me above the unrest and perplexities of the present. Enable me to see You in everything, and everything in You. May I know and feel that Your favor alone is life, and Your loving-kindness is better than life. My heart and my flesh fails; but You are the strength of my heart, and my portion forever.
I acknowledge with sincerity and penitence of heart, my manifold trespasses. I have done those things I ought not to have done; I have left undone those things which I ought to have done; and there is no soundness in me. I have nothing to palliate or extenuate my guilt. Against You You only, have I sinned, and done iniquity in Your sight. Father, forgive me! Father, love me! Father, save me! Father, fetch me home from every unworthy wandering!
Let me rise to a sense of my adoption privileges, with purposes and resolutions of new obedience. May Your Holy Spirit, the Comforter, the Purifier, the Sanctifier preserve my soul pure and undefiled as His own living temple, revealing the glory of the Redeemer's person and work taking of the things that are Christ's, and showing them unto me. It is by Your grace alone, that I stand. How often has Your interposing hand shielded me from spiritual danger, and repelled the assaults of evil! Be still my ever-present Defender. Keep me from all false ways, from treading questionable ground. If there are temptations, please disarm them. If there are difficulties, please remove or resolve them. If there are joys, please hallow them. If there are trials, please sanctify them.
Deepen in me a sense of my individual responsibility to You. May the divine principle of love, influence and govern all my actions. You love me too well to give me my own way; for in my blindness and self-will I would often choose the evil and refuse the good. Seal me with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is the pledge of my heavenly inheritance.
Pity Your children who are in sorrow. Bless all weepers and watchers by the couch of sickness, or the bed of death. Spare useful and valued lives. Turn back, if it is Your holy will, the shadow on life's dial; and where You have appointed otherwise, transform the gate of death into the gate of heaven.
O Lord arise, and have mercy upon Zion. Let the time to favor her, yes, the set time, soon come. May all Your churches, walking in Your fear, and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, everywhere be multiplied. Open closed eyes to see, and closed ears to hear, and closed hearts to understand Your Word. Arise, O God, and plead Your own cause.
I would seek this morning to have my mind stayed on You; living under the loving constraint of that lofty motive, "to do always those things that are pleasing in Your sight." I would be strengthened for the day's engagements, and fortified against its trials, by thus summing up my petitions with the divinely-taught words "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Eighteenth Evening
"Those who are led by the Spirit of God -- are sons of God. You received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children." Romans 8:14-16
I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him
MY FATHER, I thank You for this, Your new, best name. The shadows of evening have again fallen around me. May I repose under the shadow of Your wings. With You there is no darkness at all; the darkness and the light are both alike unto You. Before I lie down to rest, impart to me the gracious sense of Your favor of sin forgiven, of peace secured and sealed to me through the blood of the cross. Cleanse the thoughts of my heart by the work of Your Holy Spirit, that I may be enabled perfectly to love You, and worthily to magnify Your holy name.
While I thank You for the unnumbered temporal blessings of my lot, let me ever feel that of all Your gifts -- You Yourself are the crown and consummation of all Your blessings! I would bless You especially this night for the gift and revelation of Your Holy Spirit the Enlightener, Purifier, Sanctifier of Your people. May it be mine to feel His indwelling power, His quickening, energizing influences, raising me more and more from the death of sin -- to the life of righteousness. May He bear witness with my spirit that I am Your child, and, as a child, an heir of heaven.
Have You not just said, by the mouth of Your holy apostle, Those who are led by the Spirit of God -- are sons of God"? May I thus be conducted on from grace to grace, and from strength to strength. Your Spirit, O God, is good; lead me to the land of uprightness that land where the leading will be from glory to glory. May it be my endeavor now to attain a gradual resemblance to the image and character of the divine Redeemer, aspiring after that holiness of heart and life without which no one can see, no one can enjoy, the presence and fellowship of an infinitely pure and holy God.
I pray for any in whom I am interested who may still be far from You those who are crying in the far country, "I perish with hunger." Gracious Father, fetch them home! Let them welcome the outstretched arms of Your love, the opened gates of mercy. Have compassion on a world lying in wickedness, on the nations and peoples that know You not. Come from the four winds, O Breath, O Spirit of God, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live! Brood, as You did of old over the darkness of chaos, and say, "Let there be light!"
Pity those who are in tribulation, and with regard to whom deep may be calling unto deep. May Jesus come to them walking on the sea. Enable them to look forward in quiet, peaceful confidence to the time when every wave will be rocked to rest, sin vanquished, sorrow unknown, tears wiped away. Meanwhile, as Your children, may they feel that even in the floods of great waters they are "led by the Spirit of God." May He, in these "paths of the sea," reveal Himself especially to them as the Comforter.
I again invoke Your guardian care and divine blessing. Spare me, good Lord, to welcome the light of a new day. May I awake in Your favor, fitted for the discharge of all its duties.
"MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Nineteenth Morning
"I tell you the truth, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name." John 16:23
And He said unto them, When you pray, say
MY FATHER in heaven, I approach the footstool of Your throne of grace through the merits and mediation of Him whom You always hear. O divine Redeemer, who holds in Your hand the golden key of the gates of prayer, who open and no man shuts, I trust the gracious word of promise to which I have now listened. May I be enabled to draw near to the divine Presence with a true heart, in full assurance of faith.
How wondrous Your own declaration, that whatever I ask, if it is in accordance with Your holy will "whatever," within the bounds of Omnipotence to bestow -- will not be refused. There is bread enough in our Father's house, and to spare; none of Your children need perish with hunger. Lord, evermore give me this bread! The bread which perishes, the bread of daily provision for my earthly needs and necessities providential care and providential guidance but above all, the Bread of heaven for the supply of my daily spiritual needs, and which alone can stay and satisfy the hunger of the soul the Bread, whoever eats of which, shall live forever.
Adored be Your name for this twofold revelation of Yourself as a God of providence and a God of grace. I rejoice that You are with me in every step of the earthly journey, whispering in my ear the consoling words, "In all places where I record My name, I will come unto you and bless you!" Let my heart be responsive to Your directing voice and wise appointments. If you give me the full cup, oh enable me to carry it with a steady hand. If the cup is mingled with troubles, be this my solace and comfort, that it is my Father who has added the bitter drops. Whether mine is the experience of cloud or of sunshine, may I be ready in both to say, "May Your will be done!"
In the blessing promised to me this morning in answer to prayer, give me above all the blessed sense of forgiveness peace through the blood of the cross. Pardon whatever sins I have committed against You in thought, word, and deed. Accept of me in the Beloved; heal my backslidings, receive me graciously, and love me freely.
Bless Your children in affliction. May it be their joy and privilege to pour their sorrows into a Father's ear. As one whom his mother comforts, do comfort them, and they shall be comforted. Be the rest-giver and the rest-provider for Your weary and heavy-laden children.
I would ask You also in behalf of those near and dear to me, all connected by the ties of nature, all associated in the holier and more enduring fellowships of Your covenant children. Write every name in the Lamb's book of life. Make them Yours now, and Yours forever.
Look in kindness on our native land, in all its interests, sacred and civil. As you have blessed her and made her a blessing in the past, may she continue to realize that she is the honored instrument in Your hand for the spread of truth and the triumph of righteousness.
Compass my path, good Lord, and keep me from evil. Give me increasing purity of heart, and simplicity of purpose, and singleness of aim. Let no transaction be undertaken but what I believe to have Your sanction and approval. When the day is ended, may it be blemished with no remembrance of unworthiness in word or deed. Give me the daily grace promised for daily necessities and exigencies. May my whole nature be in harmony with Yours. Thus, in undivided and delighted consecration to You and Your sole glory, may I be enabled now and ever to call You "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Nineteenth Evening
"The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God." Romans 8:19-21
I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him
MY FATHER, I would again, at the close of another day, bring to You the incense-offering of gratitude and praise. Meet me at this appointed hour of evening sacrifice. Disperse all the shadows of sin and unbelief, and impart the inner sunshine which no darkness can obscure. How unworthy am I of the privilege of approaching Your presence! There is enough of coldness and formality in my best services, to debar me from fellowship and communion with You. Touch alike my erring heart, and my imperfect petitions with the live coal from off Your holy altar.
I rejoice at the thought of the glorious liberty of Your children, and of Your gracious willingness that I should partake of the same. By nature and by practice I am tied and bound with the chain of sin! Yet You have, in Your dear Son, revealed a glorious method by which emancipation can be secured, alike from its guilt and its tyranny, its condemning and its enslaving power. If Christ makes me free, then am I free indeed. Take away all slavish and servile fear the bondage of corruption. Put Your spirit of adoption within me, enabling me to cry, "Abba, Father!" Like the cripple laid at the temple gate of old, let me go forth with every chain of spiritual slavery unloosed and broken -- walking and leaping and praising You -- conscious of freedom from the curse of the law, freedom from the tyranny of heart-sins and life-sins, freedom from the fear of death, freedom and deliverance from the wrath to come.
Lord, I have ever need of Your grace and of the influence of Your Holy Spirit. Protect and preserve me by Your mighty power. If at times prone to spiritual declension, reclaim my truant heart from its wanderings. Give me increasing tenderness of conscience, scrupulously avoiding anything that would compromise Christian principle, or dim the sanctities of pure thought and holy deed.
And while I ever aim after a Christ-like character and life, do fill me with deeper solicitude for the well-being of those around me. Make me more and more loyal to the great gospel rule and requirement, of doing to others as I would desire that they would do to me. Let me know and feel and exemplify that love is the fulfilling of the law.
Pity a fallen world, "subjected to frustration, not by its own choice." Hasten the happy time when creation, now in morning and sackcloth, shall put on her bridal attire, and when the invocation shall be heard, "Let us be glad and rejoice, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready!"
Have mercy on the wide family of Your afflicted ones. May they take refuge in the very arms that are chastising them, feeling assured that their heavenly Father knows best, that they have need of all these things. May it be theirs to look beyond what is frail and fleeting and transitory -- and anticipate the time when every tear-dimmed eye shall wake up amid the brightness and glory of an unsinning, unsorrowing, tearless world!
Bless my beloved friends. May they, too, know, in their happy personal experience, the liberty of the glory of the children of God. Enable them to cultivate those elevating virtues which make life truly beautiful. Consecrate every family tie by fellowship with Him of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named.
Anew I ask You to forgive whatever You have seen amiss in me this day. Before I retire to rest, I would wash in the opened fountain; seeking always to be living ready for the summons when it comes, "Prepare to meet Your God!" and so at last, when the night of death gathers its shadows around me, I may fall asleep in the humble yet confident assurance of a resurrection to eternal life. With these gracious hopes and promises, I would sum up my petitions at the throne of the heavenly grace by calling You "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Twentieth Morning
"Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom!" Luke 12:32
And He said unto them, When you pray, say
MY FATHER, draw near to me this morning with Your own gracious word and welcome, "Fear not!" You feed Your flock like a shepherd, carrying in Your arms the weak and tender, the burdened and weary. What a promise is mine, of Your Shepherd-care and Fatherly goodness the green pastures and the still waters of the Good Shepherd, the unwearied love and affection of the Father of all mercies and the God of all grace!
As I now approach Your holy presence, I would seek to be possessor of the peace which has been purchased and secured to me through the blood of the cross. I look for pardon and acceptance and the hope of eternal life to the Good Shepherd who gave His own life for the sheep. Blessed be Your name, my safety is not dependent on myself. Gracious Savior, I cleave to Your own divine assurance, which, by a double security in its twofold emblem, hushes to rest every doubting, disquieting, unbelieving thought: "Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom!" I accept a Father's pledged word and immutable promise, ratified by the declaration of the great Shepherd of souls.
Hear and accept my penitential acknowledgment of sin and unworthiness, of weakness and infirmity, of defeat and failure. Grant me Your upholding, strengthening, sanctifying grace for the future. Let me exercise a habitual jealousy over my words and actions. Purify my motives, elevate my affections. Keep me from dishonoring Your paternal goodness by doing what is inconsistent with Your will. Be my Protector in danger, my Counselor in perplexity, my Light in darkness, my Comforter in sorrow, my Guide even unto death.
Have mercy on a perishing world. Sheathe the sword of war; break the fetters of the slave. May the captive nations go forth exulting in gospel freedom, made partakers of the liberty with which Christ makes His people free.
Purify the members of Your church more and more. Receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, may they have grace to serve You acceptably with reverence and godly fear. Compassionate all who stand in need of our sympathy. May Your sorrowing people experience the blessedness of sanctified affliction. Stay Your rough north wind -- in the day of Your east wind. Deep may be calling unto deep, all Your waves and billows going over them. Lead them to the Rock that is higher than they. In the midst of long and weary vigils, whether of pain or of sorrow, may they stay themselves on You.
Fit and strengthen me for the special duties of this day. Let Your love be shed abroad in my heart. May I be living in charity with all men, cultivating the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which in Your sight is of great price. Make me feelingly alive to my responsibility for every entrusted talent, however lowly. Thus may I be guided, directed, shielded -- until from being one of Your little flock below, I am folded forever with Your glorified flock above in the pastures of the blessed. Meanwhile, in the name of Him whom You hear always, I delight to call You, "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Twentieth Evening
"And he said unto him, Son, you are ever with me, and all that I have is yours!" Luke 15:31
I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him,
MY FATHER, anew I would cling this night to Your name and character unfolded in Your Word, as my living and loving, the faithful and unchanging Father. I would hear Your voice saying of spiritual blessings now in possession, and of everlasting blessings in prospect, "Son, you are ever with me, and all that I have is yours!" These blessings have been purchased for me, fully, freely, and forever -- by my great and gracious Redeemer! You will supply all my needs, out of Your riches in glory through Christ Jesus. Accept of my person and my services in Him.
I would put the incense of my evening sacrifice into the censer of this great High Priest. Let the fragrant cloud of His merits cover all my imperfections. Look not on me as I am in myself. My best motives are mingled with selfishness; my best actions are marred with defilement. But behold my Shield; look upon me in the face of Your Anointed Son. Let Your hand be upon the Man of Your right hand, on the Son of man whom You have made strong for Yourself. I feel the weakness of my faith, the coldness of my love, the fitfulness of my affections; that much owned and professed by the lip has not been countersigned by the life. "If You, O Lord, should mark iniquities -- who could stand? But there is forgiveness with You, that You may be feared."
I cast myself anew on Him who has done all and suffered all and procured all for me; and who carries with Him the sympathies of exalted human nature to His throne of glory.
Blessed Savior, You can enter into my needs and trials, my misgivings, and perplexities, and fears. You know earth's wilderness paths, for You have Yourself trodden them. You know the hour of sorrow, the hour of temptation, the hour of loneliness, the hour of suffering, the hour of death. Son of man, pity me! Son of God, save me! I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. May I be found resolute and invincible in the hour of spiritual conflict; through Him made more than conqueror. By simplicity of trust, consistency of obedience, consecration of heart and life -- may I ever seek to glorify His holy name.
Lord, bless Your church throughout all the world. Bring many out of darkness to exult in the marvelous light of the gospel. Fetch every prodigal back from his wandering. Blessed be Your name, for the encouragement given in Your holy Word, for such to retrace their steps to the long-forfeited home; for the assurance that You will resound with songs of joy at their return.
Comfort mourners. Direct them to the Balm in Gilead -- and the Physician there. Let them recognize Your sovereign right to deal with Your children as seems good in Your sight. Every thorn in the nest is permitted by You. There is infinite wisdom in Your dealings. Driven from creature refuges and perishable joys, may it be theirs to say, "My heart and my flesh may fail; but You are the strength of my heart, and my portion forever!" May we all be enabled to look beyond human vicissitudes, to the time when sorrow and sighing shall forever flee away, and when to each ransomed one the same welcome shall be addressed, "Son, you are ever with me, and all that I have is yours!"
Meanwhile, with my eye upwards and my footsteps onwards, may I seek to run with endurance the race that is set before me, with no undue solicitude or anxiety for the future; ever asking, "Lord, what would You have me to do?" and delighting to execute Your will and mission, simply because they are Yours.
As You have preceded me today with the pillar of cloud, so let the fiery pillar go before me this night. Shepherd and Keeper of Israel, let me fall asleep under the consciousness of Your unceasing vigil, while I call You by the still more endearing name
"MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Twenty-first Morning
"O Lord, You are our Father. We are the clay, and You are our potter; we all are the work of Your hands." Isaiah 64:8
"You, Lord, are our Father; our Redeemer from of old is your name." Isaiah 63:16
And He said unto them, When you pray, say
MY FATHER in heaven, hallowed be Your name. I laid me down last night and slept; I awaked; because You sustained me. You who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, over the works of whose hands the morning stars of old sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy shine into my heart with the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. May Your presence brighten all the day's blessings, and remove all its worries, and sanctify all its trials.
I flee to the sanctuary of Your covenant love, rejoicing in You as my Father, and in Christ as my Redeemer. Your conjoint name the name revealed in the earliest, ages of Your church, "the Lord, the Lord God merciful and gracious, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and in truth" is from everlasting, and it is to everlasting.
Let it ever be to me a gracious and consoling thought, that "the Lord reigns!" I am but clay in the hand of the almighty Potter. All that concerns me and mine, is directed and regulated by infinite wisdom and unchanging love. Neither is there anything arbitrary in Your dealings. I would lie passive at Your feet, saying, Do to me and with me as seems good in Your sight. You do according to Your will in the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth. I will be still, and know that you are God.
I come to You through Him who has revealed and unfolded this paternal relationship, Himself the image of the invisible God. I thank You alike for the example of His holy life, and for the merits of His atoning death and sacrifice. I bring my guilt to the great Propitiation. O Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy upon me! O Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, grant me Your peace! Enable me to walk worthy of You, my Saviour-God, unto all well-pleasing. Prevent me doing anything to dishonor Your holy name, or injure the advancement of Your cause and kingdom. Let me ever acknowledge Your right to do with me and mine as seems good in Your sight.
After all that You have done for me the proofs and pledges of Your love in a life of suffering and a death of shame preserve me from the sin and ingratitude of impeaching Your rectitude or questioning Your faithfulness. Gracious Father and Redeemer, in covenant for my salvation calm all my feverish unrest and perplexing anxiety, with the gracious challenge, "He who spared not His own Son, but gave Him up to death for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?"
It is by Your grace alone, that I stand. Keep me from the entanglements of prosperity; mitigate the pangs of adversity with Your divine solaces. Deliver me from all that would retard Your work within me, or that would quench the light of Your indwelling Spirit.
And loving You, my God, may I also seek to love my fellow-men. I would sympathize with any who are in distress, whether of body or of mind. Imbue me with the tenderness of Him who would not break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax.
Let all of Your sufferers glorify You in the day of visitation. As Your children, may they remember Him who prayed the submissive prayer, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me." May it be theirs to accept the cup of affliction which You put into their hand as a cup of love, saying, "Not as I will, but as You will." Take off their sackcloth and gird them with gladness.
Revive Your work in the midst of our years. Enlighten the ignorant; vivify every faint heart; rouse every procrastinator who would mock You with the wrecks of a worn and withered love. Hasten the predicted era when Your Spirit shall be poured out upon all flesh; when loiterers and lingerers and waverers, shall no longer obstruct the King's highway; when there shall be "multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision," asking the way to Zion with their faces turned thitherward.
Help me, good Lord, this day, in the discharge of every duty; and when my work is done, whether life be long or short, may I come forth in Your strength, more than conqueror.
I ask these and every other needed blessing, through the all-sufficient merits, and all-prevailing name of Jesus Christ, my only Lord and Savior.
"MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Twenty-first Evening
"The Lord disciplines the one He loves; just as a father disciplines the son he delights in." Proverbs 3:12
I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him
MY FATHER, draw near to me this evening, in Your infinite mercy. Hallow the tie which unites me to Yourself. Amid all earthly vicissitudes, and, it may be, amid adverse dealings, mysterious dispensations, may it be mine to hear the gracious message of You who are without variableness, "I will be a Father unto you, and you shall be My sons and daughters." I rejoice that the rainbow of promise spans the darkest clouds; and when I cannot see it at the time when the cloud is apparently without the rainbow faith can penetrate the gloom and discern behind it all an unchanging covenant God, who corrects because He loves, and who loves as a Father.
I adore You for the rich blessings that are treasured up in Christ. In Him alone, is my trust for time and for eternity. To Him I look alone for salvation. Hide me in the clefts of the Rock of Ages until earth's calamities be overpast. Millions have taken shelter there, and yet there is room.
Lord Jesus, every cross loses its bitterness by having You at my side. Other portions may, and sooner or later must, perish. You are the All-satisfying and All-enduring portion of my soul. May the loss of every earthly prop drive me nearer to You. May this be my song in the house of my pilgrimage, "Whom having not seen, I love; in whom, though now I see Him not, yet believing, I rejoice with joy unspeakable, and full of glory." May it be my habitual desire to follow His footsteps and to reflect His image, to live and to walk so as to do always those things that are pleasing in His sight.
Look in compassion on Your children of suffering and sorrow. May they, too, see all tempered with gracious love; reposing in the exalted sympathy of their divine Redeemer, the King of glory, yet the King of sorrows and Prince of sufferers.
Bless my beloved friends. May we be bound up as one now in the bundle of life, and be at last found together among the golden sheaves gathered by the reaper-angels for the great harvest-home above. Seal us with the Holy Spirit of promise, unto the day of redemption.
Abide with me; for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. Forgive whatever I have done amiss during its hours in thought, word, or deed. Let me lie down to sleep with a grateful heart for all Your manifold goodness, feeling that I have abundant reason to sing of Your mercy, even in the midst of judgment. I look forward to that joyous time when, fully purified alike from sin and sorrow, I shall enter within the heavenly gates and stand faultless before Your throne!
Meanwhile, however varied the teaching and discipline of Your providence, be it mine, in unshaken confidence and with unfaltering filial devotion, to call You "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Twenty-second Morning
"Go to My brothers and tell them that I am ascending to My Father and your Fatherto My God and your God." John 20:17
"I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you." John 14:18
And He said unto them, When you pray, say
MY FATHER in heaven, draw near to me in Your infinite goodness. Last night, as in the case of many of my fellow-creatures, I might have been called to sleep the sleep of death not permitted to welcome again the morning light. With the renewed radiance of the natural sun, may the Sun of Righteousness arise upon me with healing in His beams. Let all vain and wandering thoughts be silenced and repressed, as I now approach Your footstool. Impart to me now, in entering on the day's duties, a restful confidence in Your mercy, a sweet sense of Your favor.
Great and gracious God, I thank You for the many proofs of Your kindness. My pathway in life is strewn with Your blessings; and there are no small mercies with You, for the least of them are undeserved. Especially would I adore You for the crown and consummation of Your love in the gift of Your dear Son, the pledge and guarantee of all other and lesser blessings. In Him I have pardon, peace, acceptance, eternal life. In Him I have a balm for every wound, a solace for every trial, and a steadfast hope. I delight to ponder the elevating thought, that He is ever living, ever loving; that from the throne of glory on which He sits, I can listen to the gracious accents addressed to every member of His redeemed family: "I will not leave you as orphans. As the Dispenser of heavenly gifts, I have ascended to My Father, and your Father; to My God, and your God."
O great Intercessor within the veil, reveal Yourself to me in my morning approach to the mercy-seat, and perfume my unworthy prayers and petitions, with the incense of Your adorable merits. May I feel the power of the indwelling Spirit. Subdue unmortified sin; quicken me in every good and holy way. Enthrone Yourself in my soul and life, as Lord of all, and bring me to live more constantly and habitually under the constraining influence of Your love. As once orphaned and homeless, but now " set among the children," may I be able personally to appropriate the assurance, "The redemption of the soul is precious." " I know whom I have believed."
Bless Your holy church throughout all the world. Let the story of grace, in its glorious fullness, be borne from land to land and from shore to shore. Baptize Your ministering and missionary servants with the filling of Your Holy Spirit.
I would plead with You, O my Father-God, for those connected with me by the ties of kindred, or affection, or grace. May we participate in all needed blessings, temporal and spiritual. Unite us in the common fellowship of the gospel. Watch between us when we are absent one from another, and preserve us safe unto Your heavenly kingdom.
Look in compassion on Your sons and daughters of affliction. Let the Savior speak to them also His own pacifying words the words of the great Elder Brother the Brother born for adversity "I will not leave you comfortless; I will come to you." As prop after prop that was accustomed to sustain on earth gives way may they find in Him a sure support which cannot be shaken. Let them rely on His pure and exalted sympathy, looking to the hand which dries all tears, and the voice which soothes all sorrows.
In His name I would begin the day with the ever-precious words which on earth He taught us "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Twenty-second Evening
"Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." Ephesians 5:20
I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him
MY FATHER, I would give You thanks for all things. You give me "all things richly to enjoy." May it ever be mine, gratefully recognizing Your hand, to say, "I bless You for my creation, preservation, and for all the blessings of this life."
It is "in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ" that I would offer this my evening tribute of gratitude and praise. Accept me in the Beloved. Draw near, adorable Savior, as You did to Your disciples of old, and breathe upon me, and say, "Peace be unto you!" Bestow upon me Your most gracious favor, and uphold me with Your continual help, that in all I think, and say, and do I may ever have a single eye to Your glory.
Especially would my thanks arise, for the unspeakable riches of Your redeeming love for all that Jesus died on the cross to purchase, and which He is exalted on the throne to bestow. I will sing unto the Lord a new song, for He has done marvelous things. His right hand and His holy arm has gotten the victory for Him; a victory I never could have achieved for myself. I am made more than conqueror through Him that loved me.
It is by Your grace alone, that I stand. Unless You had been my help, my soul had often dwelt in hell. If I have been successful in resisting sin and repelling the assaults of temptation, it is all Your doing. Hold me up and then alone shall I be safe. Let me habitually realize Your presence and the supporting aids of Your blessed Spirit. I commit myself unreservedly, soul and body, to Your gracious guidance.
"Lead me on!" If it be through sunny paths, and gentle dealings, and loving experiences, may I listen to the divine directing voice, "Follow Me!" Or if it be through suffering and tribulation, may I equally confide in the unrevealed mystery of Your ways, knowing that "all things" are working together for my good! I look forward to the time when my unhesitating avowal shall be made, "He has done all things well."
Have mercy on Your whole church. Visit it alike with the early and the latter rain. May the shower come down in its season; let there be showers of blessing. May those who make mention of the Lord, give Him no rest until He establishes and makes His spiritual Jerusalem, the praise in the earth.
Bless my beloved friends. May they too be set among Your children. Enable them, with lowly confidence, to look up to You as their Father, to Christ as their Elder Brother, and onwards to heaven as their everlasting home.
Regard with tender sympathy and love, those children of Yours, who are laid stricken at the gates of sorrow. May they be led to glorify You in the day of visitation. Even though it is a cross that raises them, may this be their longing aspiration, " Nearer, my God, to You; nearer to You!" Amid the fluctuations and uncertainties of this mortal life, may it be the joy and peace and security of all of us, to have our anchor cast within the veil.
I ask these, and every other needed blessing, in the name of Him whom You always hear, and who, when He was on earth, left us for our devotions the ever-precious words "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Twenty-third Morning
"Behold, how great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!" 1 John 3:1
And He said unto them, When you pray, say
MY FATHER, I thank You for the rest and the refreshment of sleep, and for all the mercies of a new day. Even with regard to outward things, I can devoutly say, "Behold, how great is the love the Father has lavished on me!" You are ever giving me new causes for gratitude, and loading me with the blessings of Your goodness.
But chiefly would I praise You, for the revelation of Your love in Christ Jesus. I can exult in the same gracious testimony borne by Your servant of old, "As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name." "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief." I look alone to the Savior's meritorious cross and passion, to the mysteries and marvels of redeeming love in its suffering and triumph, which give Him the right now to say, "I will be merciful to your unrighteousness; your sins and your iniquities I will remember no more;" and which will give Him the right at last to say from His throne of glory on the day of His appearing, "Behold I, and the children whom You have given Me!"
Anew, then, would I plead this morning, the ever-faithful saving, which has never lost, and never can lose, any of its faithfulness, that "Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners!" Earth has no "manner of love" like this! The kindness of the kindest, the love of the most loving human friend, knows a limit. Your love, O gracious Redeemer, knows none.
I have to lament, heavenly Father the proneness of my heart to depart from You, to disown Your mercies, and mock You with a divided allegiance seeking my happiness too often in things which perish with the using. Break the world's alluring spell. Disenchant its delusive fascinations! Elevate my affections, purify my desires. May I seek to have the consciousness of Your pure, loving eye ever upon me, living under the supremacy of that elevating motive, to walk so as to please You.
Bless my dear friends wherever they are. May they, too, have many loving memories of Your great goodness. May it be their loftiest aim and ambition to be called the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty.
Bless Your wide family of the suffering and sorrowing. Keep them from all unrighteous surmises regarding Your dispensations. May Your chastisement only quicken their aspirations after nearer, closer, more confidential fellowship with Yourself, their Father in heaven. Let every doubt and misgiving be hushed to rest with the assurance, "If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons."
May the bereaved look forward to joyful reunion with their beloved dead, when they shall together, and forever, be with their Lord.
Gladden me this day with Your presence. Morning by morning, as I set out on my path of duty, may it be my increasing desire to attain a nearer and closer conformity to You and to Your holy will to have more childlike tenderness of spirit, childlike obedience, childlike fear of grieving or offending a Father so full of pitying love and mercy.
Hasten the advent and kingdom of Your dear Son, when, as the Lord our God, He shall come, and all His saints with Him, and when there shall be voices heard in heaven saying, "The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ!" For this blessed consummation I would unite this morning with Your children throughout all the world in saying
"MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Twenty-third Evening
"For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." Romans 8:15
I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him
MY FATHER, in this the hour of evening, A calling to bodily rest, do give me the better rest and repose that are to be found in Your favor, and in the enjoyment of Your love. Impart unto me the spirit of adoption. Enable me, as I now venture into Your presence, to dismiss all slavish fears, and to approach You with the trust and confidence of Your redeemed children.
You have vouchsafed to me the blessings of another day. Enable me always to accept of these renewed hours as a fresh proof of Your gracious regard, a renewed grant of Your undeserved mercy. And now, let me both lay me down in peace and sleep, knowing that it is You alone, who makes me to dwell in safety. All darkness is dispersed with the conscious sunshine of Your presence.
I come anew to the cleansing blood and the all-sufficient merits of my divine Redeemer. Wash out the defilements of the day. May the grace of adoption, bestowed as Your own Fatherly gift, lead me to aspirations after increasing holiness of heart and life, to the crucifixion of sin and the subjugation of self. May I be patient in suffering, calm under provocation, pure in motive, charitable in word, unselfish in deed. If there is any lurking or lingering sympathy with what is opposed to Your will, or inconsistent with my obligation to serve You, Lord -- remove it. Keep me from all repinings and misgivings at the rectitude of Your dealingsall angry thoughts, all unworthy envyings and jealousies, all resentments and recriminations. Let it be to me at once a precept and a promise, "Sin shall not have dominion over you."
Your grace is equal for all exigencies and emergencies. Overrule the designs and discipline of Your providence in fitting me for earth's duties and training for glory, in fostering and strengthening the inner life of righteousness, and bringing my desires and affections more into harmony with Your will.
I pray for the interests of Your Son's kingdom everywhere. Give efficacy to the attractive power of the Cross. Reclaim the wanderer, rescue the perishing. Revive Your work in the midst of the years. May all Your churches share in the refreshing dews of the Holy Spirit. May no part of the fleece be dry. Arise, O Lord, and plead Your own cause!
Pity the sick, the sorrowful, the bereaved, the dying. Where human links are severed, gladden with the thought of eternal reunions. Let us all live under the salutary impression of the precarious tie which binds us to life and its blessings; and when the last night of earth shall overtake us -- may its shadows melt and merge into the brightness of eternal day!
Meanwhile, in the spirit and the language of adoption, I would close these unworthy petitions with the endearing name and devout prayer on my lips "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Twenty-fourth morning
"He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be My son!" Revelation 21:7
And He said unto them, When you pray, say
MY FATHER in heaven, I invoke Your blessing upon the work of the day on which I am now entering. May I seek to nourish a constant and habitual sense of dependence on Your favor and love. To You all hearts are open, to You all desires are known, and from You no secrets are hid. Cleanse the thoughts of my heart by the work of Your Holy Spirit. I rejoice in that paternal name which disarms all fear and hushes all disquietude. Under its shelter I now draw near to the throne of the heavenly grace. Let me know the truth of the promised assurance, "The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, unto the soul that seeks Him." "I wait for God, my soul does wait, and in His Word do I hope."
As Yours by adoption, I would look anew with the unwavering eye of faith to the doing and dying of my divine Redeemer. Disowning all creature merit, I am complete in Him encouraged to draw out of His infinite fullness -- grace for grace. In Him alone, I overcome. In Him alone, I inherit all things. In Him alone, I can look up to You as my covenant God, and appropriate the heritage of Your children. May my pathway heavenward be brightened by the sense of peace through the blood of the cross, and the assured hope of eternal life in Him. Enable me worthily to live as the chartered heir of so glorious an inheritance the life of love and consecration now begun, which is to be perpetuated and perfected in heaven. Keep me from sin. Keep me from whatever is inconsistent with the love and allegiance I owe to Christ as my divine Lord and Master. Keep me humble and thankful, grateful and submissive. Keep me from the dominion of pride or selfishness. May the remembrance of the Master's example often serve to chide, as well as to stimulate every Christian grace in me. As the child of a gracious Father, may I be daily attaining a greater fitness for that Father's house and that Father's presence, where temptations are no longer felt or feared!
I pray for all Your people. Bless those who are laboring, unknown and unrecognized, in the interests of the Redeemer's kingdom, as well as those who are conspicuous in fighting the battles of the faith. May all seek to occupy their assigned, it may be lowly trust, with fidelity, until You come to demand account of their stewardship.
Bless my beloved friends, whether near or at a distance. We can meet in sympathetic union at the mercy-seat, and rejoice in the assurance that the same Lord is near unto all those who call upon Him. Overrule the vicissitudes and changes of life in our homes and families -- for Your glory.
I commend to You, the wide circle of Your afflicted children. Let them indulge in no hard thoughts of Your Fatherly dealings. May the home of bereavement and the hour of departure be transformed into the house of God and the gate of heaven. Where life's joyous music may be hushed in death, may Your children look forward to that glorious hereafter, where there is no jarring or discordant note to interrupt the everlasting harmony, and where death is swallowed up in victory!
I anew commend myself to Your gracious keeping. Protect me from danger, guard me from temptation, lead me in the everlasting way. May it be my endeavor, day by day, to pitch my tent nearer heaven and nearer to You. Meanwhile, with implicit trust and childlike reverence, conscious of my many spiritual blessings in possession, and with the covenanted inheritance in prospect, I would sum up my petitions by calling You "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Twenty-fourth Evening
"Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?" Matthew 6:26
"Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows." Matthew 10:29-31
I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him
MY FATHER, I rejoice that all events are in Your hand, and under Your disposal. You feed the birds of the air. You watch the sparrow's fall. You feed the young ravens when they cry. Nothing can happen without Your appointment. There is no chance or accident in Your dealings. All of Your dealings are dictated and regulated by a wisdom that cannot err, and by a love that cannot change. And therefore it is that, as the shadows of evening have again gathered round me, I delight to realize Your presence and to invoke Your guardian care.
If, as Creator, the winged tribes of the earth are under Your supervision and providential rule, how much more may I, as one of Your unworthy children, repose in the faithfulness and loving-kindness of my heavenly Father! Yes, Lord, I shall trust Your heart even when at times I fail to trace Your hand. I shall listen to Your voice of mingled comfort and rebuke "Your Father knows that you have need of all these things!"
I come to You in the name of Him who on earth taught me these gracious lessons; who came to reveal You as "our Father," and Himself as our great and all-sufficient Savior. O Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world have mercy upon me! Grant me Your peace! Wash away every guilty stain from my soul. Number me with Your saints in everlasting glory.
Precious Lord Jesus, while I look alone to Your meritorious work for pardon and acceptance, may it be my habitual endeavor to follow in the footsteps of Your holy life. May the same mind be in me, which was also in You. Make me the possessor of that charity which is patient, and is kind; which is not easily provoked; which rejoices not in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth. Keep me from evil thoughts and selfish desires. Let me live and walk and act as seeing You who are invisible.
I pray for my beloved friends. Bless them, and make them blessings. May all of us be able to say with united heart, "We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace."
Look in kindness on the whole human race. Terminate the supremacy of wickedness and oppression, and usher in the blessed reign of the Prince of Peace. May Your churches be valiant for Your truth. Revive Your work in the midst of our years. May Your Spirit come down like rain upon the mown grass, and as showers that water the earth.
Sanctify affliction to Your many sorrowing children. Manifest Yourself especially to those enduring unspoken trials. With Your tender touch, bind up every hidden wound, and dry every tear. If, meanwhile, no silver lining is to be seen in the clouds, may comfort be taken in the assurance that "at evening time, it shall be light."
As You have been with me, heavenly Father, throughout the day, I commend myself to Your care during the silent watches of the night. Let me fall asleep listening to the gracious lullaby, "The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade upon your right hand." And when the gates of the morning are once more opened, may it be to hear anew the benediction, "Fear not, for I am with you! My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest."
"MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Twenty-fifth Morning
"Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before you, and am no more worthy to be called your son." Luke 15:18, 19
And He said unto them, When you pray, say
MY FATHER, the God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in all draw near to me this morning in Your great goodness. I would begin a new day invoking Your blessing. May the peace of God which passes understanding, keep my heart and mind through Christ Jesus. Disperse all darkness, remove all doubt and disquietude, and with reverent filial devotion, enable me to approach Your mercy-seat.
"Father, I have sinned against Heaven, and in your sight, and I am no more worthy to be called your son." Yet how great has been Your forbearance, when through much weakness and unworthiness and unwatchfulness, I have been straying from You! Too well do I truly feel and know, that in forfeiting Your favor, I have surrendered my truest peace and most abiding happiness. But, blessed be Your name, You do not leave Your prodigal children to their waywardness and estrangement. In the midst of merited wrath, You are remembering unmerited mercy.
The gates of a lost Father's home, and the arms of a lost Father's love are ever extended for the wanderer's return. The joyful words at times heard in the earthly dwelling, are the echoes of higher heavenly realities "This son of Mine was dead, and is alive again! He was lost, and is found." "Who is a God like unto You, who pardons iniquity, and passes by the transgression of the remnant of His heritage? He does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in mercy."
Lord, if conscious of present coldness and lukewarmness, defection and backsliding, restore unto me the joys of Your salvation, and uphold me with Your free Spirit. Keep me from those sins which most easily beset me, and which lead me from the path of duty and of safety. May it be my greatest pain to grieve You, and to requite Your kindness with ingratitude. May it be my earnest and devout aspiration, to serve You with a willing and delighted obedience, and thus in all things to glorify Your holy name.
Have mercy upon any who may have wandered to the far country, and who nevertheless in their spiritual destitution and despair, are wailing out the confession, "I perish with hunger!" Fetch Your prodigal children home to their Father's house. Assure them of the robe and ring, the kiss of welcome and forgiveness. Whisper in the ear of despondency, "God has not appointed you to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ!"
Look in kindness on my beloved friends. May they esteem it their highest honor to be the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty. May it be theirs on the great Day, to listen to the words of the divine Redeemer, "Behold, I and the children whom God has given me!" Meanwhile may grace be given them to "walk in the light, as He is in the light that they may be the children of light."
Bless the young. Keep them in the paths of purity and peace. Bless the aged. May they experience the decline of their existence to be the evening of their days gladdened by Your presence. Bless the sorrowing. Cast the healing tree into the bitter waters and their sorrow shall be turned into joy. Amid loneliest and saddest experiences may it be theirs to avow, "Though He slays me, yet will I trust in Him!"
I also bless Your holy name for all Your servants departed this life in Your faith and fear; beseeching You to give me grace so to follow their good examples, that with them I may be partaker of your heavenly kingdom.
Lord, shine upon my path this day and every day. Hallow its joys, ease its burdens, disarm its temptations. "I will go in the strength of the Lord God."
I anew present my filial petitions, with all conscious unworthiness to be called Your child, yet encouraged by Your own gracious welcome to address You "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Twenty-fifth Evening
"Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." Matthew 5:48
I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him
MY FATHER, bend Your loving eye upon me this night. The cares and duties of another day are over. I am permitted once more to draw near to Your throne of grace, and take shelter in the pavilion of Your faithfulness. If vicissitude is written on all around, with You there is no shadow of turning or change. I would abide under the covert of the Almighty, rejoicing that You are unchanging in Your Fatherhood, ever ready to support the cry of Your needy children. While they are often fainting and faithless, turning back in the day of battle -- You, the Creator of the ends of the earth, the ever gracious Parent of Your redeemed, never faint, neither are You weary. You are perfect in power, perfect in wisdom, and perfect in love. Give me now, as I approach the mercy-seat, a quickened apprehension of my adoption privileges, and enable me, with reverence and trust, to cry, "Abba, Father!"
I thank You for the glorious method of Your own sovereign devising, by which these inestimable mercies and blessings have been secured. "Thanks, eternal thanks be unto You, for Your unspeakable gift of Jesus Christ!" Blessed be Your name that sin's penalty has been paid, and Your people's debt cancelled, all through the doing and dying of our great Surety! Your kingdom of heaven has been secured to all believers.
My special prayer, in the spirit of the words of this morning, is that I may attain a gradual conformity to the will of my Father in heaven. Alas! O God, You know how far short I come of this lofty standard; how, on the contrary, imperfection is stamped on my every attempt to serve You. Were I to be tried and tested by my best hours and best services -- how would I stand condemned! Yet, however distant and feeble the approximation, may it be my earnest endeavor to do Your holy will, because it is Yours.
If, under the consciousness of mournful shortcoming, I have to make the constant confession, "Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect," may I press on, seeking, by the quickening, energizing influences of Your Holy Spirit, to add grace to grace, and virtue to virtue, and attainment to attainment -- until I appear before You perfect in Zion. May Christ now more and more be formed within me, the hope of glory; and may this at least be my joyful anticipation, as it is that of all Your children, that when He shall appear -- we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is!
Fit me meanwhile for the discharge of every personal and relative duty. Inspire me with the love of what is lovely -- and the scorn of what is hateful. May it be my growing experience that in keeping Your commandments, there is great reward. Give me grace to feel and to fulfill my responsibilities for the use of every talent entrusted to my stewardship, that when You come -- You may receive Your own with interest.
Let Your compassionate sympathy be largely bestowed on Your sons and daughters of affliction. Let them know and feel assured that it is Your own way of dispensing blessing. Your people in every age, like their great Lord, have been perfected through suffering. Let them submissively welcome any dealings or discipline, however mysterious, which bring them nearer to You, and which will promote in them resemblance to the Father they love. In the night of sorrow may it be theirs, through their tears, to say, "I shall be satisfied -- when I awake in Your likeness!"
O God, hasten the happy day when all shall know You. Gracious Shepherd, fetch home Your unfolded sheep! Gracious Father, fetch home Your wandering prodigals! Gracious Spirit, let the shower of Your divine influences come down in its season; let there be showers of blessing!
I commend my dear friends to Your care and protection. May it be with them also an increasing aim to attain a gradual resemblance to the image, and conformity to the will, of their Father in heaven, and thus be filled with all the fullness of God.
With filial devotion, I would sum up my evening petitions in the ever-precious words "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Twenty-sixth Morning
Philip said, "Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us." Jesus answered: "Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father." John 14:8-9
And He said unto them, When you pray, say
MY FATHER, enable me this morning to worship You in spirit and in truth. "No man has seen God at any time." But I desire, with reverence and filial love, to lay hold on the glorious declaration that "the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him." In You, Christ, in Your divine, human person, I have the image of the invisible God. Set in this cleft of the Rock of Ages, as in the case of Your honored servant of old, You have made all the glory of the infinite Godhead to pass before me, and have blessed me with the same revelation of the divine character and attributes, "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious."
I delight to follow Your footsteps on earth; to behold You feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, healing the sick and helping the helpless, calming the sorrowful, giving heart and hope to the prodigal, the wandering, the lost. And in all this mission and ministry of love, You were the great Revealer of the mystery hid from ages and generations, "the brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image of His person." In answer to the quest, "Show me the Father," You have given the gracious answer, "He who has seen Me, has seen the Father." May it be mine to say, "From henceforth I know Him and have seen Him!"
Blessed Savior, You know my special burdens, my peculiar sources of unrest and disquiet, my cares and perplexities, the besetting sins which hamper and impede me. Make me possessor of that peace here, which is the prelude to glory hereafter. May I find that the best preservative against temptation, is realizing the infinite obligations under which I am, to redeeming love; that I am not my own, but bought with a price! Enable me with appropriating faith to say, "He loved me, and gave Himself for me!" Transform me more and more into that same image and likeness. Give me a child's obedience and submission, a child's trust and affection and love. May the divine words spoken by divine lips form the motive power and principle of life: "I must be about my Father's business!"
Bless all means and instrumentalities for the promotion of Your cause throughout the world. O Lord arise, and have mercy upon Zion, and show that the time to favor her, yes the set time, has come. May the Holy Spirit come down on every branch of the church universal, in all the plenitude of His gifts and graces.
Bestow Your guardian care on those near and dear to me. May they too be able to say, "We beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." I would leave all that concerns alike them and myself to Your better direction, saying, "Undertake for us!"
Bless those in sorrow. Let them rejoice in the assurance that the roll of Providence is in the hand of Him who pre-eminently by experience "knows their sorrows." When the causes of severe discipline are often unrevealed to the eye of sense, may they trust "that same Jesus" who felt for them, and wept for them, and bled for them; and behold in His exalted sympathy the reflection and pledge of the Father's love, whose name and nature He came to reveal.
I invoke Your favor on this the morning of a new day. I would enter on its duties, trusting alone in the merits and mediation of the divine Redeemer, who taught us thus to call You "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Twenty-sixth Evening
"As the Father has loved Me so have I loved you! Continue in My love." John 15:9
I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him
MY FATHER, let me go to sleep with this most blessed and amazing assurance falling on my ear. Reveal to me, however poorly and inadequately I may grasp the reality, the ineffable love existing between You and Your dear Son, that I may be enabled in some feeble measure to comprehend what is the height and depth and length and breadth of Christ's love to me the interest He feels in me and in my eternal salvation. Come, Lord Jesus, as You did to Your wayward and erring disciple of old. Let me hear Your solemn words challenging on my part unreserved obedience and gratitude and heart-consecration, "Do you love Me?"
Feelingly alive to the infinite obligation under which I am laid to You, may it be mine in sincerity of purpose, and in the sight of the great Heart-Searcher, to make the avowal, "Lord, You know all things; You know that, despite of stumblings and faintings, of weaknesses and fears, departures and backslidings, it is at least my earnest desire to love You. Here is my heart. Take it this night and make it Your own. I lay afresh my vow on Your altar. Sprinkle my unworthy offering and imperfect service with the 'much incense,' that thus my evening prayer may ascend, acceptable and accepted, into the ear of my Father in heaven."
Come as You did at eventide to Your disciples of old, and breathe upon me, and say, "Peace be unto you!" May I know that there can be no unrest or disquietude to the soul that has fled to the unfailing Refuge; that there can be no discord or disharmony where the heart has responsively listened to that divinest music, "Come unto Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
May it be my habitual aspiration to walk in the path of holy obedience, listening at every turn of life, to this evening's gracious monition, "Continue in My love." Give me greater singleness of eye and simplicity of faith. May it be my growing experience that Your favor is life, and Your loving-kindness is better than life. May I seek in all things, and especially in my appointed sphere, to glorify Your holy name.
Look in great kindness on the afflicted those who are treading with downcast spirits the pilgrim-way. Under the shadow of the cross may they too find consolation and peace, the peace which the world can neither give nor take away.
Meet my beloved friends this night on the mount of prayer. May they be able to say, "Lord, it is good for us to be here." May I and they together live conscious of a true though invisible fellowship in You; and when earth's separations are ended, may we together meet where ties can never be sundered, or friendships fail.
Anew I supplicate Your blessing. Watch over me during the unconscious hours of sleep. Abide with me, blessed Savior, for it is toward evening and the day is far spent. Thus may each day prove like an Emmaus journey with You at my side; and continuing in Your love now, may it be mine at last, through the gate of death, to be ushered into its full and everlasting fruition!
Meanwhile, in that glorious anticipation, I would repeat earth's holiest, most comprehensive prayer "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Twenty-seventh Morning
"In my Father's house are many mansions. I am going to prepare a place for you." John 14:2
And He said unto them, When you pray, say
MY FATHER the Father who has given me the manifold blessings and endearments of an earthly home I praise You for the glad assurance of "the many mansions." If You have bestowed upon me mercies in possession, You have promised more in reversion. I thank You for the name "house and home of my Father," the house purchased by the elder Brother, and which He has gone to prepare for the final reception of His church and people.
I come to You this morning acknowledging with gratitude, the mercies of the by-past night. May the radiance of the natural sun be to me the emblem and pledge of brighter and better spiritual realities. Shine into my heart with the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Listen to my confessions of sin. How poor and inadequate the return I have made to You for Your superabounding goodness! Above all, how little have I realized and manifested the infinite obligations under which I am to redeeming love! I bless You that by Him who is the Way, and the Truth, and the Life the gates of these many mansions are ever open, and the welcome ever ready that there are mansions for all and crowns for all Your people. The best of earthly heritages must fail, but this is an inheritance which is incorruptible and undefiled, and that fades not away.
Meanwhile, fit and strengthen me for the duties of life and of the earthly home. May a sense of Your presence and nearness and love, be interfused with my varied occupations. May I seek to have the character of heaven impressed on me now, that so, when called hence, the Father's heavenly mansions may be no new or strange dwelling-place, but that death may in reality be a final summons and a final welcome home.
Bless all Your sorrowing children. Let them accept with unmurmuring submission, the discipline of Your providence, however dark and mysterious. May they see and own that You, who has prepared the many mansions, are by these very dealings preparing them for their possession. Forbid that affliction should be unsanctified that any should dare to impeach or arraign Your faithfulness. Let them trust the promised needs-be. When You bring a cloud over the earth, may the rainbow be seen in the cloud. Draw near in especial mercy to the bereaved. In the decay and perishing of earthly good in mourning over vacant seats in the earthly home may they know what it is to claim an indestructible heritage in the Father's house above. May the dying look to Him, who by dying has abolished death, and opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers.
Bless my dear friends. Make them members of that family which alone can never be disrupted or broken linked to You and to one another in the bonds of the everlasting covenant.
And now, Lord, what do I wait for? My hope is in You. I laid me down last night and slept; I awoke this morning; because You did sustain me. Be with me throughout the coming day. Keep me from, and keep from me all that would be detrimental to my best interests, or that would assail or imperil my peace. May the petitions of the divinely-taught prayer follow me wherever I go "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Twenty-seventh Evening
"Is not Israel still My son, My darling child?" asks the Lord. "I had to punish him, but I still love him. I long for him and surely will have mercy on him." Jeremiah 31:20
I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him
MY FATHER, accept of my thanks for the renewed mercies of another day. Before I lie down to sleep, I would listen to this tender whisper of Your parental love, "I still love him. I long for him and surely will have mercy on him." Lord, I can have no real blank, when I have the conscious assurance of Your presence and blessing, and the sense of Your pardoning love. You are ever remembering me. In the midst of merited and deserved wrath, You are remembering unmerited and undeserved mercy. How precious are Your thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand!
Everything in myself might well sink me in despondency and despair. Everything in You leads me to peace and hope and encouragement. Keep me near Yourself. I need daily, hourly washing at the opened fountain. I need daily, hourly supplies of promised grace. Enable me ever to be traveling between my own emptiness and the infinite fullness treasured up in Christ. Let me live habitually in an unfaltering trust in Your guidance. May my plans and purposes be subservient to Your holy will. Preserve me from what is unworthy of the Christian name and profession from all that is unkind and unloving, all that is censorious and uncharitable, all that would exalt myself at the expense of others. Let the same mind be in me, which was also in Christ Jesus.
Bless my beloved friends. Hallow earthly bonds by making them spiritual and heavenly ones.
Pity Your afflicted ones, those environed with trouble. Make for them a way in the sea, and a path in the mighty waters. Speak Your own balm-word of comfort, "Peace, be still" and give grace proportioned to the hour of trial. May they harbor no unkind suspicions of Your faithfulness, owning Your hand alike in giving and in taking. The blessing is conferred by You, and the grant or loan is revoked by You. Direct their hearts into Your love, and into the patient waiting for Christ.
Bless Your whole church. Feed every lamp with the oil of Your grace. Hasten the time when the summons shall be heard, " Arise and shine; for your light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon you!"
I would lie down to sleep this night feeling that it is You, O Lord, who alone makes me to dwell in safety. Give Your ministering angels charge concerning me and mine. Keep us, keep us, King of kings, beneath the shadow of Your wings; and when I awake, may I be still with You.
I ask all in the name of Him whom You always hear, and who, when on earth, taught me to call You "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Twenty-eighth Morning
"Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven." Matthew 5:16
And He said unto them, When you pray, say
MY FATHER, adored be Your name for Your sparing mercy. You have awakened me again to the brightness and the blessings of a new day. Defend me today, by Your mighty power; and grant that I fall into no sin, nor run into any kind of danger, but that all my doings may be ordered by Your governance, to do always those things that are pleasing in Your sight.
In the light of the sun which now shines upon me, may I have the image and emblem, the symbol and pledge, of a better radiance. I thank and praise You if You, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined into my heart. Great Sun of Righteousness, disperse the lingering shades of darkness and unbelief. Above every other mercy and blessing, may I hail, morning by morning, the brightness of Your rising. Enable me all the day joyously to walk in the light of Your countenance.
In self-renouncing lowliness, I would plead the merits of Jesus. I confess anew my manifold transgressions in all their turpitude and aggravation. I have no extenuation to offer. You are justified when You speak, and clear when You judge. Father of heaven, have mercy upon me, a miserable sinner! Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, grant me Your peace.
And with the righteousness imputed, bestow upon me also the righteousness that is implanted. May the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, be diffusive in my heart and life. In accordance with His divine injunction, let my light so shine before men that its reality and influence may be felt and owned. May I be more and more conscious of my responsibility and privilege, as that of all Your true believing children, to "shine as lights in the world." By meekness and gentleness, by kindness and unselfishness, by integrity and stainless purity may others take knowledge of me, that I have been with Jesus. However lowly and restricted my sphere, may it be my humble aim and aspiration to be a light-bearer, and thus to glorify my Father who is in heaven.
Bless those near and dear to me. May they, too, be linked in close and endearing filial bonds to the same gracious Father.
Compassionate all in sorrow. May those laid on beds of sickness and suffering be found shining witnesses for You, and attest by patience and submission, the sustaining power of Your grace.
Have mercy on Your church universal. Quicken and stimulate her to realize her true position as a light set in the moral and spiritual heavens to scatter far and wide the beams of truth. Amid all the environing clouds of error, may she come forth as fair as the sun, and as clear as the moon. May many among her faithful servants be found to shine, now, as the brightness of the sun, and at last, in the kingdom of their Father, as the stars forever and ever.
I ask these, and every other needed blessing, in the name and for the sake of Jesus Christ, my only Lord and Savior, who when on earth taught me to call You "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Twenty-eighth Evening
"The father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet." Luke 15:22
I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him
MY FATHER, I commit myself to Your gracious keeping this night, as unto a faithful Creator.
How wondrous are Your loving dealings toward those who, with prodigal footsteps and truant hearts, have wandered from Your home, and justly forfeited all claim on Your pity and compassion! You are God, and not man. Had Your thoughts been as our thoughts, or Your ways as our ways, long ago would we have been denied Your presence and favor our plea rejected, our tears mocked, left to perish with hunger, unpitied and unsuccoured, in the far country of our alienation.
But You have not so dealt with us. In figure and in parable, yet in gracious reality, You have ever waiting for Your prodigal child, with the best robe, the ring of adoption, and the shoes of liberty. You are ready with paternal compassion to meet, with paternal love to welcome.
It is thus, Father, You have dealt with me. The past is a long record and memorial of Your forbearance and faithfulness, mercy upon mercy, kindness upon kindness.
I thank You especially for the doing and dying of my divine Redeemer, through whom alone these badges and pledges of covenant love have been secured. My guilt, which in itself could not be cancelled, has been transferred to Him. Self-renouncing and sin-renouncing, I look anew to the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. I rejoice to think that He is now, as the great Intercessor within the holiest of all, pleading for me the Prince who has power with God, and must continually prevail. Make me personal partaker in His first, that I may participate at last in the glory of the second, resurrection, when "the Lord my God shall come, and all His saints with Him."
Meanwhile, may it be my constant desire to copy His holy example, and to be transformed into His divine likeness, seeking the supremacy of goodness and purity, holiness and love doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with You. If You send me blessings, may I ever seek to accept them with humble gratitude. If You see fit to withdraw them, let me reverently say, "Your will be done;" hearing Your voice amid the small trials and vexations of life, as well as in the midst of its great crisis hours "Be still, and know that I am God."
Promote the cause of truth and righteousness throughout the earth. Renew the plentiful rain, whereby of old You did refresh Your heritage when it was weary.
Whatever be the outward badge of Your varied churches, may there be this common bond of hallowed union, "One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all." Hasten the time when the song of rejoicing nations will be heard, "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace," and when a Father's name will be known and adored and loved all the world over.
I pray for the sick and the afflicted, the sorrowful and the dying. To the Lord our God belong the issues from death. May those bereft of near and dear friends anticipate reunion with their loved and lost amid the unending fellowships of the better world. Amid the manifold uncertainties of existence, may I keep ever vividly before me the great hereafter; and be so living, that when the supreme hour overtakes me, it may be as an angel whispering, "The Master is come, and calls for you."
Watch over me during the hours of silence and darkness. Let me rise tomorrow refreshed for service. Meanwhile, I would retire to rest and close my eyes in sleep with the divine and gracious words on my lips "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Twenty-ninth Morning
"It will happen that in the very place where it was said to them, 'You are not My people,' they will be called 'sons of the living God.'" Romans 9:26
And He said unto them, When you pray, say
MY FATHER, the God of all the families of the earth, ever living, ever loving draw You near to me, enabling me to exult in this gracious, paternal relationship, the thought of which is so well fitted to dismiss distrust and anxiety, and to inspire confidence and affection. Another sun has risen, another morning has dawned upon me. Let me partake also of the better inner sunshine, the sweet sense of Your covenant favor, of sin forgiven and forgotten, the soul hushed to rest in realized fellowship with You. It is by Your grace I am what I am. It is Your grace which finds us. It is Your grace which saves us. It is Your grace which keeps us. It is Your grace which enables us to appropriate the privileged and honored name, "children of the living God."
Strengthen me, good Lord, for the duties which are before me this day. I cannot forecast its perils and dangers and temptations. I implore the continuance of Your sovereign, sustaining, restraining grace to keep me from falling. Hold me up and then I shall be safe. May I know, in my happy experience, that I can do all things, and endure all things, through Christ who strengthens me. When tempted to worldliness, or sloth, or self-indulgence, forgetting and forsaking my covenant engagements, thus imperiling my spiritual interests may I think of Him who, as a Son, with holy, unfaltering consecration, surrendered His will to the will of His Father in heaven. Conform me to His image; mold me by His holy example. In every difficult and perplexing path, may this be my guiding maxim and direction "How would my Lord and Master have acted here?" and knowing His will, may I delight to do it.
I would pray this morning especially for others for all the children of God that are scattered abroad. Hasten the time when the glad ascription shall ascend, "Behold, we beseech You, we are all Your children." Fetch home the wanderer. Awaken memories of a divine home and Father in the heart of the prodigal. In the case of individuals and families and nations alike, may the promise be fulfilled, "In the very place where it was said to them, 'You are not My people,' they will be called 'sons of the living God.'"
Pity the afflicted; comfort the mourner; sustain the dying. Be a Father to the fatherless, the stranger's shield, and the orphan's stay. May the consciousness of Your presence and favor, lessen every cross and sweeten every care.
I anew commend myself to Your gracious keeping and guidance this day. Watch over me for good; and may every power of my body and every faculty of my mind combine in devotion to Your sole service and glory. With the prayer of all prayers I would close and sum up my own imperfect petitions, saying "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Twenty-ninth Evening
"Whatever you shall ask of the Father in my name, He will give it you." John 15:16
I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him
MY FATHER, I desire, on this the evening of another day, to enter Your sacred presence in the name of Jesus. Where would I be, but for such a Savior! I have no plea of my own. My best thoughts how sinful and unworthy! My best prayers how cold and languid, requiring themselves to be prayed for! If You, Lord, would mark iniquities who could stand! My own heart condemns me; and You are greater than my heart. You know all things. But through Him, the ever-living Elder Brother on the throne, the all-prevailing Advocate and Intercessor, I am encouraged to approach the throne of the heavenly grace. I bless You for His own assurance that no petition to the Father, presented in His name, will rise unheard and unanswered, but that whatever we ask, if it is in accordance with Your divine and holy will, shall be bestowed.
I pray this night for the pardon of sin, the gracious sense of acceptance, peace and joy in believing, support and support for the future. Blessed Jesus, let down Your censer full of incense, that my petitions may ascend with acceptance before the Father's throne, and reach with acceptance the Father's ear. Open the windows of heaven, and shower down the promised blessing. May the thought that You are ever praying for me, as You did for Your disciples on earth, that my faith fail not, keep me loyal to You, and prevent me doing anything that would be dishonoring to Your love.
May I ever exercise a jealous scrutiny over my thoughts and words and actions. Preserve me from all pride and vain-glory; from all selfishness and covetousness; from all that would lead me to exalt myself; from all guilty and unworthy compromises with the world, the flesh, and the devil; from neglect of pious duty; from evading solemn responsibilities; from tampering with the leadings of Providence, the dictates of conscience, or the teachings of Your holy Word. In childlike faith, may this be my habitual inquiry: "What would You have me to do?" And knowing Your will, may I delight to perform it; seeking in this, as in all things to follow the example of Him who was meek and lowly in heart, and whose constant, unwavering aim and aspiration was to be about His heavenly Father's business. Let this mind be in me, which was also in Christ Jesus.
Bless my dear friends; reward my benefactors. Sanctify Your dealings to poor afflicted ones. In the multitude of the sorrows they have in their hearts, may Your comforts delight their souls.
Pity a dark and benighted world. Terminate the curse of slavery; sheathe the sword of war; turn away the battle from our gates. It is You, Lord, who alone makes us to dwell in safety.
I anew commend myself to Your watchful care during the hours of sleep and darkness. Lying down to my nightly rest in Your fear, may I awake in Your favor, fitted for the duties of a new day. Meanwhile, in full and confident reliance on the Savior's own words of promise just read, I would sum up my imperfect with His all-perfect prayer, and in filial love call You "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Thirtieth Morning
"But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you." Matthew 6:6
And He said unto them, When you pray, say
MY FATHER, who sees in secret, to whom the darkness and the light are both alike the night shining as the day I enter this morning the little sanctuary of devotion. Draw near to me, and fulfill Your own gracious promise as the prayer-hearing and the prayer-answering God. With the door shut, and the din and distraction of the world excluded, I would wait upon You in Your own appointed way, in the still and hallowed hour. May I worship You who are a Spirit in spirit and in truth, and know what it is to dwell in the secret place of the Most High, and to abide under the shadow of the Almighty. Enable me to dismiss from my thoughts whatever is vain, frivolous, and sinful. O great Recompenser, give me that best of recompenses, the blessed sense of Your favor and love, hushing unrest and disquiet, and filling me with all peace and joy in believing.
I acknowledge with gratitude and thankfulness, the mercy which spares me from day to day the bounties alike of creation, providence, and grace, which have been so liberally bestowed. From the humblest crumb of providential goodness, to the richest blessings of redemption, I am indebted to You. As a continual pensioner on Your loving-kindness, let me show forth my gratitude not only with my lips, but in my life, by giving up myself to Your service, and by walking before You in holiness and righteousness all my days, to the glory of Your holy name. Stimulate and quicken me in pursuing the Christian race. Let nothing in my vacillating heart within, and a treacherous world without, dim my faith or impede my progress. Let me more and more realize the possession of the rest of grace here, the pledge of the everlasting rest of glory hereafter.
In all my ways guide me by Your counsel, and help me implicitly to trust Your faithfulness. Man's word may falter and fail, but the word of the Lord is tried. It is like the stars of the skies, "forever and ever." Amid the varying scenes of changeful life, give me strength and endurance, patience and submission, loyalty to truth and rectitude. Inspire me with a spirit of charitythe love which is patient and is kind, which is not easily provoked, which thinks no evil. I rejoice in Your own recorded promise for every step and stage of the journey, "I will instruct you and teach you in the way that you should go; I will guide you with My eye."
To You, my Father in heaven, I commend my beloved friends. Enable them to participate in all the blessings and benefits of the everlasting covenant. May they too know the hour of prayer, with its gracious recompenses. As good stewards of the manifold grace of God, may they be made recipients of the great recompense at last coveting, above earthly approbation, the "Well done!" of the divine Master and the righteous Judge.
Have mercy on Your afflicted ones. Recompense them also with the assurance, "Whom the Lord loves He chastens. Let them lie passive in the arms of Your mercy, breathing only the divinely-taught words, "Even so, Father!" Other refuges may fail, other props be removed: may they find in You an unfainting, unfailing refuge and portion and friend.
Having now obeyed the injunction and enjoyed the privilege of praying to my Father in secret, I would go forth to the duties of a new morning in simple dependence on Your grace and strength. When I close the day, may I be happy in feeling that I have no saddening or accusing thought in the retrospect; enjoying rather the consciousness of having done or even desiring to do something, however lowly, in promoting the great end for which existence was given to show forth the praises of Him who has called me out of darkness into marvelous light. So shall I now, with deepening fervor and filial love, invoke Him who sees in secret, and say "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Thirtieth Evening
"He chose us in Him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love He predestined us to be adopted through Jesus Christ for Himself, according to His favor and will, to the praise of His glorious grace that He favored us with in the Beloved." Ephesians 1:4-6
I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him
MY FATHER, I thank You that You encourage me with filial boldness and confidence to approach the throne of the heavenly grace. If I am received into Your family and made one of Your children by adoption if a wanderer once, I have now received the paternal forgiveness and the paternal welcome it is not my own deserving, but "according to the good pleasure of Your will." Salvation from first to last, is of Your free, sovereign, unmerited grace. This will be the history of Your ransomed church and people forever in heaven: "Those He predestined, He also called; and those He called, He also justified; and those He justified, He also glorified." Bestow upon me tonight the spirit of adoption, enabling me now to cry, "Abba, Father!"
I come to You in the name of Him whom You hear always, and who is at Your right hand exalted a Prince and a Savior. All I am, all I have, all I hope for flows from Your riches in glory through Christ Jesus. Every other mercy I enjoy is hallowed, consecrated, transfigured through Him. Blessed be Your name for His all-sufficient merits and spotless sacrifice. My best actions are full of blemishes; my purest aims and motives are mingled with selfishness; my best righteousness is marred with imperfection and defilement. But He has finished transgression, and made an end of sin, and made reconciliation for iniquity, and brought in an everlasting righteousness. May I stand now, accepted in the Beloved, hearing Your divine voice saying, "I will be merciful to your unrighteousness; your sins and your iniquities will I remember no more."
Give me grace to walk worthy of You unto all well-pleasing, being fruitful in every good word and work. Wean me from all that is fleeting and perishable. Let it be my highest joy to follow You and my deepest pain to grieve You. Even when You see fit to cross my wishes and disappoint my hopes, may I accept all as the will and bidding of a heavenly Father, the doing and the dictate of Your ineffable love. Thus, whether You bless or chasten; whether it be mercies bestowed or mercies withdrawn, may I equally seek to glorify Your holy name.
Graciously look on Your whole Church. Graciously look on the whole world. Fulfill Your own sure decree, when You shall gather together in one, all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and in earth. Hear the perpetual cry which is ascending from suffering, sorrowing humanity. Fetch home to Your fold, wanderers from the flock, and number them among the remnant of Your true Israelites.
Bless my beloved friends. If some are separated by long distance, may we enjoy unseen fellowship at the mercy-seat; and at last, in the full vision and fruition of the beatific presence, may we be reunited in those bonds which neither trial nor death can any more sunder, where sin and sorrow are no longer to be feared. Meanwhile, may we rejoice in this hope of the glory of God.
Compassionate the sorrowful. There are unknown and unspoken afflictions cognizant alone to You. Heavenly Father, have mercy on each of Your suffering children! We all have our varied and appointed seasons of tribulation. May we feel trials to be easy, and crosses to be light, when borne in a spirit of uncomplaining submission to Your divine will. When You bring a cloud over the earth, may the rainbow of promise be seen in the cloud.
Listen to these my evening petitions, for the sake of Jesus Christ, Your only Son, my Savior, who, when on earth, alike unfolded the filial name and taught the filial prayer "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Thirty-first Morning
"Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father." Matthew 13:43
And He said unto them, When you pray, say
MY FATHER, who has translated me out of darkness, into the kingdom of Your dear Son, draw near to me and bless me. Lift up the light of Your countenance upon me, and give me peace. May God the Lord, who has showed us light, enable me to bind my morning sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar.
You have graciously spared me to enter on the duties and engagements of another day. Be about my path all the day long. Let me resume my pilgrim journey, leaning always on Your omnipotent arm. I would dwell on the memories of Your great goodness, and accept these as pledges for the future. You have been my help leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of my salvation! I would seek to meditate with adoring wonder, love, and praise on Your kingdom of grace here, and on Your kingdom of glory hereafter. I rejoice to think of the countless multitudes who have already entered within the gates of Your church on earth, and the countless multitudes who have entered within the golden gates of the heavenly Jerusalem, members of the church triumphant, who are serving You day and night in Your temple, and shining forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.
Lord, prepare me for that bright future, by entering upon the privileges and possessions of a gracious present. May I know the truth of the words, "We who have believed, do enter into rest." Enable me now to stand arrayed, glorious and glorified, in the imputed righteousness of my divine Redeemer. I have no inherent nor personal merit. Whatever good I have, is a derived and borrowed radiance from Him, the all-glorious Light of the world. "In Him was life, and the life was the light of men." It is alone in His reflected beams, that I can listen to the summons, "Arise and shine; for your light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon you!" May it be mine with deepest thankfulness and joy, to respond: God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined into my heart with the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ. In that face under the beams of that great unsetting Sun, the full vision and fruition of God may I live forever. Partially now, fully then, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, may I be changed into the same image, from glory to glory.
Meanwhile, reveal Yourself more and more to me as the home and refuge and resting-place of the soul. Other refuges sooner or later fail. Their memorial perishes with them. But You are the same, and Your years shall not fail. May I know this eternal shelter in the clefts of the Rock of Ages. Hide me there until all earth's calamities are overpast. I know not what entanglements may hinder me in prosecuting my pilgrim way, what temptations may overtake me, what sorrows may darken me. But He who is with me and for me, is greater than all that can be against me; so that I may boldly say, "The Lord is my helper." I will go in Your strength, making mention of Your righteousness, even of Yours alone.
Bless the means that are being used for the extension of Your cause, for the overthrow of iniquity, and for the good of mankind. Out of weakness, may Your churches be made strong, wax valiant in fight, and turn to flight the armies of the aliens.
Sanctify affliction to Your true children. Let them feel secure in a Father's tried love. May the suffering glorify You on their couches of pain. May those called to the supreme hour of all exult in death as the door leading to everlasting life. May those mourning their loved ones rejoice in the prospect of a meeting where separation is unknown, and of receiving together from divine lips the gracious welcome, "Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom."
Anew I supplicate Your favor. Enable me to live more and more under the powers and realities of the world to come, cherishing a habitual impression of the surpassing magnitude of eternal realities. Let me go forth to my secular occupations this day, panoplied in the whole armor of God. Let me seek to hear the divine word of the great Redeemer, "Let your light so shine before men, that they, seeing your good works, may glorify your Father who is in heaven." May I be enabled to shine forth now, however feebly and imperfectly, in the sphere, whatever it be, which You have assigned to me, striving not so much after great things, as glorifying You in all things. Let life be a uniform and habitual act of consecration to You, that so at last an abundant entrance may be ministered into the heavenly kingdom.
Meanwhile, with profound trust and lowly reverence I would call You "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."
Thirty-first Evening
"That you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven." Matthew 5:45
"Now therefore you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God." Ephesians 2:19
I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him
MY FATHER, O gracious One, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, inspire me this evening with renewed confidence and trust as I approach Your presence. How wondrous are the honors of Your believing people! Once aliens from You, forfeiting all claim to Your favor, we can now listen to the voice of paternal love: "Now therefore you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God."
Who can realize the wealth of this divine patrimony? Justified, accepted, pardoned, adopted, sanctified, and finally glorified God my Father, Christ my Elder Brother, heaven my everlasting heritage and home!
I would approach You tonight as one of Your covenant children, yet feeling how little I have been enabled to realize and appropriate such spiritual privileges such privileges and blessings in possession, such glory in reversion. You know how far short I have fallen of my best aims and aspirations. How little have I felt the evil of sin and of my own sin in particular! How little have I cultivated and imbibed the pilgrim spirit! How inadequately have I sought the one thing needful! How often have the allurements of an engrossing world without, fostered a procrastinating spirit within! How prone to surrender imperishable interests, for things which perish with the using!
If conscious of declension, the lack of former delight in Your service and of full consecration of heart to You, give me grace to be watchful and to strengthen the things which remain which are ready to die. "Return, O holy Dove! return, O Messenger of peace and comfort and rest!" Restore, Lord, unto me, the joys of Your salvation, and uphold me with Your free Spirit. Enable me to live and walk and act as seeing You who are invisible, realizing Your presence and nearness; ever grateful and thankful for unmerited temporal mercies, but seeking that these may not be allowed to obscure higher destinies, or thwart the great design and purpose of my being, set forth in the words of this morning by infallible lips, "That I may be a child of my Father in heaven."
May the voice of rejoicing and salvation be heard in the dwellings of those near and dear to me. May they also be set among Your adopted family, and exult in the tie which unites them to the household of God.
Bless Your church everywhere. Give efficacy to the gospel message as the power of God unto salvation. Fetch home all prodigals in the far country of worldliness and sin. "Lost and found," may they be found never to be lost again. By Your omnipotent grace, may many now at a distance from You become fellow-citizens with the saints in Your church on earth, and, at last, fellow-citizens with the glorified in the church above.
Look in tenderest pity on the afflicted. May trials prove to be heart-searchers, ever leading closer and nearer to You. Comfort and sustain the sick and the afflicted. Spare those who are useful and valued. Prepare the dying for death. Calm the waves of ebbing life. May those appointed to death see the heavenly mansions looming through the mists of the dark valley. Let them pass from a death full of hope to an immortality full of joy. And grant, gracious God, that when my time of waiting and watching and working terminates, I too may be ready at the summons to leave the earthly watch-tower, and enter within the gate into the celestial city!
In this divine trust and confidence I would now both lay me down in peace and sleep, while praying the filial prayer which divine lips have taught me "MY Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. May Your kingdom come. May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."