National Baptist world., 1894-10-12
THE CHRISTIANS NEED.

Quiet Hours for Meditation and Prayer
Necessary for IA Healthy Spiritual Condi-
ton.
What is the chief need of Christians
to-day? Is it not meditatlve spirit
that spirit which loves frequent retire
ment for brief seasons from the world
for solitary thought, determination
and PRAYER? Is not this emphatlcally
true of American Christians. who, too,
often live in a whirl of excitement,
from a mistaken notion that religion
consists mainly of doing, not OF being
in hurrying from one religious actlv1ty
to another, from organization to organ
izatlOn, from committee to committee,
or in hearing sermon after sermon, ad-
dress after address, instead of alternat-
ing these activities with Bible study
meditation. and communion with the
source of all good.
How few read Fenelon, Taylor
and Pascal. Our piety is energetic,
busy, demonstrative; but the receptive
mood, the mood that gave the world
It's philosophers and sages, its stalWart
saints and its martyrs, in ages past,
the mood which reflects God as the
clear lake reflects the overhanging sky,
is unknown to us. Is there not some
thing wrong in this? Does not every
Christian require periods of repose and
recruiting? David said: "Thy word
have I hid in my heart that l might not
sin against Thee" To hide Gods word
in the heart so that, like leaven hid IN
the meal, the truth will SO pervade and
; saturate the whole moral being that
sin can not gain harborage, there must
be secret meditation and prayer.
In the various secular callings of life
this principle is fully acknowledged.
Walter Scott felt it's force so keenly
shat he once said, eff the question
was, eternal company, without the
privilege of returning within yourself
~ solitary confinement for life, should
bay, "'Turnl1ey, lock the cell! " 10
4 develop great thoughts and purposes,
: or to be dominated by them, man
r must live much in retirement. Thought
: never becomes passion till it has been
S brooded over; and, till it becomes a
+ passion, it rarely becomes power.
''The true reason" says a wise
e writer, ''why the thoughts OF men
l. influence them so little, is that they
# fust pass over the mind, like wind
S over the grass, and never really sat
n arate it, When Brunei, the great
S engineer, had an important piece OF
It work to do he used to cast everything
: else aside. go to bed and lie there two
5, or three days, until he had worked the
n whole thing out in his head. 1t was II
r ruison. where he expected to lie TILL te
b ,sse his own picturesque phrase, 'the
rooss grew upon his eyebrows" thai
# the inspired thinker, Bunyan. wrote
It his immortal epic, the "Chrlstlar
G Odvssey." 1t was in the Tower O
D London, where the ghosts Of mprdered
d captains might have gathered nightly
d 60 scare him from his task
e shat Raleigh built up his colossa
d structure, the 'History of the World.
n Mirabea retired, obscure, into the
dungeon of Vincennes, and came fOrtl
S. from it a writer. orator and states
c. suan. Poets we'll known that though
r. and feeling must have broodlng tim
as time to take root, undisturbed and Il
ae silence to make a home, gaining
t. strength from more length of tenure
Or before they can flow forth in harmc
ne niOus numbers 1t was not when h
Nv saw most of the world, but in the force
to retirement of a man who had lost hi
h. health and eyesight. that Milton con
~ posed his massive epic. Solitude, i
Y short, rightly used, is storing {
| power.
~ God has given His great workers p'
l. RODS of solitude and rest for spiritus
20 refreshment and renovation. Nose
,e was sent into the wilderness to be
;r- kerdsman for forty years Christ wa
ca s;ept in the Galilean village as ca
~ center until He was thirty years of ag
- s1efore He began His ministry; ant
a. turing it, He often withdrew from tn
crowd to commune with the Fathe
o+ Who can doubt that it was the hou1
,la spent in his chamber in meditation ar
wv prayer that made Daniel, amid tt
,ot roar and revelry of Babylon, the spi
100 It1.al giant that he was? How, but fl
". kis sojourn in Arabia and his confin
-oo I1ent in prisons, could that indefatig
to BILE worker, Paul have endured tt
~, ceaseless strain and the exhaustlr
;nt drain of his public tolls? Who CO
II, doubt that it was the storing of splrl
.c ual power during his enforced seclusiH
,h- in the castle of Wartburg tn
nd qualified Luther to do the nigh
,a+ work he afterward did? A Ii
III of religious activity is commend
BILE, but it is only one-half
-. a true, rounded Christian life; al
4 us even that half is not what it would
'ne were it the Towering of deep medit
=" tion and prayer. In large towns Il
e" temptations to incessant outwa
WI activity are very great; the opport
sos mites for self-scrutiny, religio
are meditation and communion with o
Heavenly Father are rare. Besid
OF this, every man is beset with mul
Ter plcity of social enjoyments and exci1
On ments-the very waste pipes of spir
ual power. To be a true Christian
out above all, to be a complete, sy
are metrical Christian-one's outward act
not ity must be balanced by proportion
en- amount of time spent in the closet,