John Newton, Author of “Amazing Grace”
Probably many of us have at times considered the nature of public prayer. How are we to pray? Is it to be different than when we pray privately? Perhaps these questions arise even more when we hear others pray publicly and have certain reservations about the manner in which they pray. Regardless of how the questions arise, it is worth some amount of our time to consider the matter.
I have much enjoyed recently reading letters by John Newton. He was a well known and much beloved minister in England in the 18th century. He is most well-known today as the author of the great hymn, Amazing Grace, but there is much more to his life than that. He has a lot of practical wisdom to impart about godliness and the Christian life, I am finding. His letters are very readable and full of valuable counsel. They are mostly very practical and designed for the benefit of general Christian living.
One letter that I have just read gives advice about public prayer. I find his thoughts well worth considering, so I am going to give a very concise summary of his main points. It would be well worth your time to read the whole letter if you would like to think more about public prayer. It can be found in the first volume of his collected works. Here is a link to an online version of the book where you can read the whole letter if interested. (Click on the first selection in the list, “Page 77,” and it will take you to the second page of the letter.)
Here is the brief summary I promised:
1. Prayers can be too long, due to two main causes:
- Unnecessary enlargement upon every circumstance that offers
- Repetition of the same things
2. The prayers of some good men are more like preaching than praying. They rather express the Lord’s mind to the people than the desires of the people to the Lord. Indeed this can hardly be called prayer.
- It might be a good sermon, but will not help those who are there to pray.
- Prayer is made up of “confession, petition, or praise.”
- Too much emphasis on premeditated form will offend against the simplicity which is so essential to good prayer.
3. Many who pray in public have a favorite word or expression that recurs too often in their prayers and is frequently used as a mere expletive.
- The most disagreeable of these is when then name of the blessed God is introduced so often and without necessity.
4. Very loud speaking is a fault; the other extreme of speaking too low is not so frequent, but we must be heard.
- The end of speaking is to be heard, and when that end is attained, we know the appropriate volume to use.
- Loud volume may seem to indicate great earnestness, and that the heart is much affected, yet it is often but “false tire.”
5. The tone of the voice is to be regarded: We must not speak in too familiar a tone (we need due reverence), not must we alter our voice unnaturally in our speech.
- Some have a tone in prayer so very different from their usual way of speaking that their nearest friends could hardly know them by their voice.
- Some use their natural voice, indeed, but in the expression of it which they use upon the most familiar and trivial occasions; this is to lack the reverence due to the almighty God, the consideration of whose majesty should prevent us from speaking to him as if he was altogether such a one as ourselves.
Closing remark: “It is a point of delicacy and difficulty to tell any one what we wish could be altered in his manner of prayer, but it can give no just offence to ask a friend if he has read a letter on this subject.”
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