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 surely not often, make it hard to keep it. But it is extremely important, for the man who would walk closely and humbly with his God, to end the day deliberately at His feet. And here accordingly is another occasion for watchfulness, and for method, and for will. Do not drift into the night. Have a settled hour when, as a habit, you lay interests and intercourse of other sorts down, and turn unhurried to the holy interview, spreading open your Bible by the lamp, the Bible marked and scored with signs of past research, and then kneeling, or standing, or pacing, for your prayer—your prayer which is to be the very simplest (while most reverent) speech with the Lord.
PRAY AS A PRIVATE CHRISTIAN.
In such acts of worship, morning and night, thought for others, for dear ones, for parishioners, for colleagues, will have its full place of course. Let it be so, with an ever-growing sense of the preciousness of the work of intercession. But I do meanwhile say to my Brother in Christ, take care that no pre-occupation with things pastoral allows you to forget the supreme need of drawing out of Christ's fulness, and out of the treasures of His Word, for your own soul and life, as if that were the one and solitary soul and life in existence. We Clergy are in danger of becoming too official, too clerical, even in our prayers. We are the Lord's Ministers; we have a cure and charge of souls as the unordained Christian has not; and let us daily remember it, humbly and reverently. But also we are, all the while, sheep of the flock, absolutely dependent on the Shepherd, men who for their own souls' acceptance, and holiness, and heaven, must for themselves "live at the Fountain." We have to serve others, and "lay ourselves out" for them, daily and hourly. But on that very account, that "our selves" may be, if I may say so, worth the laying out, we must see that "our selves" are, in their own innermost life and experience, filled with the Spirit of God, filled with the presence of an indwelling Lord Jesus Christ by the Spirit. And so we must worship Him, and draw on Him, and abide in Him, and acquaint ourselves with Him, just as if there were no flock at all, that we may the better be of use to the flock.
LIVE BEHIND YOUR MINISTRY.
I am sure that this is an important point for the thought and practice of the young Clergyman. While never really forgetting his ordained character, let him, for the very purposes of his ordained work, continually "live behind" not only the work but the character; living in the presence, in the love, in the life, of his Lord and Head, simply in the character of the redeemed sinner, the personal believer, the glad younger Brother of the glorious Firstborn, the living Christian with the living Christ; "knowing whom he has believed," [2 Tim. i. 12.] and walking by faith in Him.
FOR THE MINISTRY'S SAKE.