To My Younger Brethren | Page 5

failure, yes, I repeat it, a failure,
be the outside and the reputation what they may, if you do not walk
with God in secret. But therefore your life and work are a daily and
hourly occasion for the positive resolve, in His Name, that walk with
Him you will. Recognize the risks, right and left, the risks brought by
pastoral activities and interests, and those brought by pastoral
loneliness and uncheerfulness. Remember the vital necessity amidst
those risks. And then you will the more deliberately purpose and plan
how to guard your secret devotions, and how to order your secret hours
even when devotion is not your direct duty, so that your Lord shall be
indeed there, at the centre, "a living, bright Reality" to you.
SECRET DEVOTION.
Let me plunge into the midst at once, with a few simple suggestions on
SECRET DEVOTION.
LET IT BE DELIBERATE.
I ask my younger Brother, then, to keep sacred, with all his heart and
will, an unhurried time alone with the Lord, night and morning at the
least. I do not intrusively prescribe a length of time. But I do most
earnestly say that the time, shorter or longer, must be deliberately spent;
and even ten minutes can be spent deliberately, while mismanagement
may give a feeling of haste to a much longer season. Do not, I beseech
you, minimize the minutes; seek for such a fulness of "the Spirit of
grace and of supplications," [Zech. xii. 10.] as shall draw you quite the
other way. But if the time, any given night or morning, must be short,
let it nevertheless be a time of quiet, reverent, collected worship and
confession and petition. One thing assuredly you can do: you can, if
you will, secure a real "Morning Watch" before your day's work begins.
I do not say it is easy. Young men very commonly sleep sounder and
longer than we seniors do; they are not always easy to rouse in a
moment. But they can direct some of their energy to contrive against
themselves, or rather for themselves, how to secure a regular early

rising to meet their Lord. Most ingenious, not to say amusing, are some
of the devices which friends of mine have confided to me; schemes and
stratagems to get themselves well awake in good time. But after all, in
most lodging-houses surely it must be possible to be called early, and
to instruct the caller to show no mercy at the chamber door. Anyhow, I
do say that the fresh first interview with the all-blessed Master must at
all costs be secured. Do not be beguiled into thinking it can be arranged
by a half-slumbering prayer in bed. Rise up--if but in loving deference
to Him. Appear in the presence chamber as the servant should who is
now ready for the day's bondservice in all things but in this, that he has
yet to take the day's oath of obedience, and to ask the day's "grace
sufficient," and to read the day's promises and commands, at the
Master's holy feet.
A PRACTICAL SUGGESTION.
I do not recommend an unpractical physical mortification as the rule for
such early hours with God. Fully believing that there is a place for
definite "abstinence" in the Christian (and certainly in the ministerial)
life, I do not think that that place is, as a rule, the early morning hour.
Very many men only procure a bad headache for the day by beginning
any sort of earnest mental effort without food. Such men should take
care accordingly to eat a chotee házaree (as old Indians say), "a little
breakfast," however little, before they pray and read. There are
appliances, simple and inexpensive, by which the man in lodgings can,
without giving any one trouble, provide himself with his cup of cocoa
or coffee as soon as he is up; and he will be wise to do something of
this sort, if he is a man whose work by day is heavy for both body and
spirit, and who is thus specially apt to find the truth of what doctors tell
us, that "sleep is, in itself, an exhausting process."
But at any cost, my dear friend and Brother in the Ministry, we must
have our Morning Watch with God, in prayer and in His Word, before
all the day's action. Not even the earliest possible Church service can
rightly take the place of that.
GOOD HOURS AT NIGHT.

It is obvious to add that punctuality and early hours in the morning will
bring into your life another rule; that of punctuality and reasonably
good hours at night. No temptation is greater, sometimes, for the man
alone than to ignore or break such a rule. And no doubt the exigencies
of pastoral life, sometimes, but