Prayers and hymns for morning and evening and other times and occasions

Front matter

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Preface

T)RAYER is the humble address which sinful and needy creatures present to the Creator in the name of Jesus, — the earnest supplication in which, while they adpre the Divine perfections and dispensations, they implore the forgiveness of their sins, and the continuance of their daily bread, and the salvation of their immortal souls.

Many books have been published to facilitate the discharge of the duty of Prayer, whether the Christian is called to the discharge of the duty in the closet, the parlour, or the church. This volume offers assistance to the worshipper in his own private retirement, or while conducting worship in the family.

Of course, those whose minds are richly furnished with devotional sentiments, and who, by means of a retentive memory and a ready utterance, can give instant expression to their sentiments in a continuous flow of appropriate language, have no need of such assistance.

But there are many who, though full of devout affections, and desirous of holding daily communion with their vi PREFACE.

Heavenly Father, have neither such quickness of recollection, nor such facility of expression, as they deem suitable and necessary for the worship of the Almighty at the throne of grace. These persons naturally have recourse to devotions which other worshippers have committed to writing and put forth in aid of the service of the closet or of the family altar. And, in this matter, let the diffident, instead of neglecting devotional exercises, serve God, and serve Him acceptably, with their whole heart and soul, till they acquire such a command of extemporary prayer as will enable them to serve Him with greater freedom.

The use of forms, however, has some advantages. It may perhaps aid the worshipper in the recollection of many things which he would gladly remember at the throne of grace. And in this way, he will be enabled both to extend his grateful acknowledgment of mercies, and to perceive that he needs to supplicate on many points which might have escaped his recollection.

Prayers are not merely vehicles of devotion ; they may be regarded as remembrancers of duty : and in this respect also, the use of forms is not without its peculiar advantages. How full soever extemporary prayers may be, it is probable that forms which have been composed at leisure will be more comprehensive, — indulging neither in favourite topics nor in a peculiar phraseology, such as insensibly occupy the mind and memory of the offerer of extemporary prayer. And thu3, in the use of the forms,

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the worshipper is^ more extensively reminded of duty, and Prayer becomes a more valuable teacher, instructing the worshipper, from day to day, in the various lessons of heavenly wisdom, for the guidance of his conduct in the world.

But whether the worshipper extemporizes his prayers or employs forms of 4evotion, let him remember that in neither case have the words any value, unless the understanding and the affections go along with them ; that the offering of prayer, like the singing of psalms, and the performing of all other ^uties, finds no acceptance with God, unless it be* hallowed with the influences of the Holy Spirit ; and that the indwelling of the Spirit within us is manifested, not by fluency of speech and copiousness of scriptural language, but by an increasing liveliness in the exercise of the Christian graces.

To a series of forms of prayer, a collection of Hymns seems to be a suitable appendage.

The word ' Hymn ' is of Greek origin, and primarily it seems to have meant among the heathen Greeks, an ode or song, in which were celebrated the praises of divine or human beings, — of deities or heroes. But under the Christian revelation, its application is generally restricted to the praise, the worship, and service of the One True God, although indeed, as in ancient times, it is still frequently didactic, and teaches the doctrines and duties of the gospel, without any special reference to the worship of viii PREFACE,

God; and its metrical or rhythmical structure renders it more easily and more naturally susceptible of the accompaniment and embellishment of music, than instructions or admonitions which are expressed in the ordinary language of prose.

No such word as ' Hymn ' occurs in the Old Testament or Jewish portion of the English Bible. But the book containing the poetical pieces of David, and bearing in our English Bible the title of the Book of Psalms, is called in David's own language by a name (Sepher Tehillim) which might be more literally translated ' The Book of Praises,' or *The Book of Hynms,' than *The Book of Psalms.' The Alexandrian Jews, who, about two hundred years before the Christian era, translated the Jewish or Hebrew into Greek, preferred the word * Psalm ' to the word * Hynm,' merely, as it should seem, because * Psalm' intimated the instrument (the Psaltery) to the music of which David's odes were sung.

But in various passages these Alexandrian translators speak of the Hymns of David, as do also other Greek translators. From the Greek translation of the Old Testament or Jewish Scriptures, the word * Psalm ' passed into the New Testament : for the Apostles, writing in Greek, naturally spoke of the compositions of David under the name of Psalms ; but they did not so speak, without speaking also of hymns and odes and songs^ all which names may be found in titles of Psalms in the Greek Bible. The hymn which Jesus, on the evening preceding

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His death, sung with His disciples, before He left the Paschal table, was probably a part of the Paschal Hymn, which comprehended the 113th and five following Psalms. Perhaps also to the Psalmody of the Jewish Church the primitive Christians soon added spiritual songs of their own, in which the doctrines and blessings of the gospel were more plainly set forth than in the writings of David and of the other Jewish Prophets. Many expositors have supposed that the Apostle Paul quotes such a song in his Epistle to the Ephesians : for the quotation, * Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light,' makes, in the original Greek, three Anacreontic verses, and may have been the commencement of a spiritual ode. We learn from a letter which the younger Pliny, governor of Bithynia, wrote to the Emperor Trajan at the beginning of the second century, about seventy years after Christ's death, that the Christians met together before light on a stated day, and sung a song to Christ as a God. The twilight hymn of the Greeks, which begins * O joyful Light,' came down most probably from the earlier part of the third century, whether the author of it was Athenogenes the Martyr, or some other devout and orthodox Christian.

In the Latin Church, metrical hymns were, if not introduced, widely disseminated in the fourth century, under the auspices of St Ambrose, whose h3nnns were a model to his contemporaries, and gave the name of Ambrosian to h)rmns of a similar nature. But in the Greek Church, it would appear that still for several centuries only rhyth-

X PREFACE,

mical hymns were used in the public worship, although Gregory Nazianzen furnished metrical hymns to the Greeks as early as Ambrose had done to the Latins.

When Luther introduced the Reformation among his countrymen, the Germans, a great change speedily took place. A vernacular Bible was put into their hands ; and vernacular h)nnns, translated from the best of the old Latin h)rmns, or composed expressly for the use of the Protestant Church, enabled the people to take a share again in the public services of religion with audible voices and affectionate and intelligent hearts. Such of the states and cities as were able to establish the Protestant doctrine among them, adopted vernacular h)rmn books. Many of the hymns were merely translations of the more devotional parts of the Psalms ; and frequently, such was the arrangement of the h)rmns, that they suggested and taught the whole system of doctrinal and practical religion in a regular order.

The Church of England, like several other Protestant Churches, adopted a metrical Psalter along with a few h)rmns, which were partly borrowed from the Lutherans. But the English clergy, although they are restricted to the prayers of the Liturgy, have ample freedom in the matter of H)rmnody, as is testified by the many valuable Hymnals which have appeared in all parts of England.

With regard to the h3nmns which form the Second Part of this volume, a great portion of them may be viewed as

PREFACE. ' xi

Metrical Prayers, differing in little or nothing from prose prayers, save in this, that the worshipper, if he so pleases, can accompany them with the melody of song. Almost all the following hymns of this class express, like the prayers, the effusions of an individual worshipper; but they are not so strictly limited to the praise of the Almighty and the ordinary topics of devotion, as not occasionally to hold forth, in a special manner, some of the duties of the Christian life, and of the graces of the Christian character.

Note. — The prayers in this volume, it will be observed, are expressed as the language of individual worshippers. They may be made applicable for family worship, by simply changing /, me^ my, mine^ into we^ us, our, ours.

It may be mentioned that a small volume, comprehending the Prayers for the First Week in this collection, as also a few of the other Prayers, and forty of the Hymns, were published in 1862.

Contents

PRAYERS,

FIRST WEEK.

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