A Book of Private Prayer for Morning and Evening

J. R. MacDuff, 1890
 

INTRODUCTION

"Our 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."

"I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him, Father!" Luke 15:18

If the Lord's Prayer has been called "The Beautiful Gate of the Temple," "Our Father" may well be designated its Golden Key.

It was the mission of Christ, the Divine Author of this prayer, to reveal "the Father," the new Paternal name: "I have manifested Your name unto the men whom You gave me out of the world." "I have declared unto them Your name, and will declare it" (John 17:6, 26). "My Father, and your Father; my God, and your God" (John 20:17). How He delights to interweave it with parable, and miracle, and intercessory prayer, and last agony, and first resurrection words! It was the object and end of the work to be accomplished on behalf of His redeemed people, "That you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 5:45).

Our MORNING motto-verse throughout this volume, is the answer to the disciples' request, "Lord, teach us to pray!" — "And He said unto them, When you pray, say, Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name," etc.

"Father!" it forms also the central jewel-thought in the choicest of His parables, from which we have taken our corresponding EVENING motto-verse: "I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him, Father".

All the true Christians have loved to acknowledge and reverence the same adorable Name "Father". Whatever otherwise be their discords, there is here, "concerted harmony."

Take the most familiar of liturgies. The chord struck in its opening prayer is, "Almighty and most merciful Father." It is echoed in the commencement of the sublime Te Deum: "All the earth worships You, the Everlasting Father" — "The Father of infinite majesty." It stands at the threshold of the apostles' creed: "I believe in God, the Father Almighty." It is taken up in the beautiful prayer: "Lord, our heavenly Father, Almighty and Everlasting God, who have safely brought us to the beginning of this day." It heads the prayer for kings and rulers. It initiates the grandest portion of the Anglican litany: "O God, the Father of Heaven, have mercy upon us, miserable sinners!" It closes the same with the prayer: "We humbly beseech You, O Father, mercifully to look upon our infirmities." The comprehensive General Thanksgiving which terminates all, enshrines the same loving and gracious formula, "Almighty God, Father of all mercies;" while this "our Father," like an angelic strain, follows in refrain, blending throughout the entire service of sacred song.

"Our Father," says Neander, "because Christ has made us His children. Our Father in Heaven, that the soul may soar in prayer from earth to heaven, with the living and abiding consciousness that earth and heaven are no more kept asunder. To this the substance of the whole prayer tends."

"What," says Hall, "if property, credit, health, friends, and relations were all lost; you have a Father in Heaven!" "We yield ourselves," was the prayer of Sir Philip Sidney, "unto Your will, O Lord, our Father, because You are our Father, and joyfully embrace whatever task You shall set us to do, whatever sorrow You will have us to bear." Bernard of Clairvaux thus describes the last moments of his brother Gerard: "Resting on the word, 'Father, Father' he turned to me and smiling said, 'Oh how gracious of God to be our Father—and what an honor for men to be His children!'" "O my Heavenly Father!" was Luther's final prayer, "the God and Father of my Lord Jesus Christ, You the source of all consolation, I thank You for having revealed unto me Your Well-beloved Son." Then, thrice over, the parental name was repeated, and with it Luther's last battle was ended. Prayer was turned into praise.

The words of one of the last, though not the least bright or saintly of these attesting witnesses we may quote, are those of Frances Ridley Havergal. She tells us that on her confirmation day, as she sank on her knees at the service, she gave voice to the spontaneous utterance, "My God! oh my own Father!" (The italics are hers.)

"My Father!" That word may well relegate to the Great Day of disclosures, a thousand problems and enigmas now waiting solution!

The injunction of the Master, moreover, as He sounds the invocation of the universal prayer, would seem to have special reference to private devotion: "When you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen." Like Daniel, as he kneeled upon his knees, and prayed with his window open toward Jerusalem, so may we have our chamber-window open toward the Heavenly Jerusalem — the Father's house — and thence listen to the divine voice, "I will be a Father unto you, and you shall be my sons and daughters!" (2 Cor. 6:18).

"The heart of the compassionate Eternal
Stoops from the glory of the mercy-seat,
And breaks, in ecstasy of love Paternal,
Over His creature bending at His feet."

Let us live each day, as it were, under the influence of that divine Name, inspired by the word and example of Him who said, "I live by the Father" (John 6:57). As we greet the morning light, let Our Father, with its suggested fellowship — the thought of Christian brotherhood — be to us as the sweet tones of the silver trumpet sounded by the temple-priest of old, which woke up Jerusalem to a new day of duty and service.

Father! — My Father! At evening, with perhaps a more realized assurance of personal need, let it be like the curfew chime, which invites and hushes to night-rest and repose — a Father's gracious lullaby: "So He gives His beloved sleep."

Yes, He is the Father of distant orbs; the watchful Parent of other suns and planets. So that this universal prayer, though more especially the prayer of the redeemed from the earth, throbs and pulsates through infinite space — like the stone cast into the quiet lake, deepest in the center of ransomed humanity, but carrying its concentric circles to the wide circumference of space and being.

Thus, by day and by night, in sickness and in health, in joy and in sorrow, may we, dismissing all servile fear, cleave to that Name with its inspiration of confidence and trust — the Fatherly hand to guide us, the Fatherly heart to love us, the Fatherly compassion to pity us—until the hour of death finds the same filial parting prayer on our lips which consecrated the closing moments of the Great Brother-Man, — "Father, into Your hands I commend my spirit!"

Heavenly Leader, still direct us, still support, console, protect us, until we safely stand in our Fatherland. When that Fatherland is reached, "My Father" will be the passport and password at the Golden Gates! And when the great family meeting is consummated in the Home of heaven, the refrain of earth will be the refrain of eternity. The welcome of Him who taught us the words will be, "Behold I, and the children whom You have given Me!" "In my Father's house are many mansions!" "Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father!"

"Now unto God and our Father—be glory forever and ever! Amen." (Phil. 4:20)

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.

In lowliness of heart and mind,
I make my humble wishes known,
I only ask a will resigned,
O Father, to Your own!

Beneath Your watchful, loving eye,
I supplicate for peace and rest,
Submissive in Your hand to lie,
And feel that it is best.

My burdened spirit sighs for home,
And longs for light whereby to see;
I, like a weary child, would come,
O Father, unto Thee!

Though oft, like letters traced on sand,
My weak resolves have passed away,
In mercy lend Your helping hand
Unto my prayer today.
  Whittier