To be near unto God - pagina 514

and

that, if prayer is to be maintained, if it shall continue to be a power in the whole church, in every home, for every member of that home, for great and small alike, both must be practiced; as well the prayer from one's own soul, as the written prayer which all can pray, because all have been

instructed in its use. Our praise in hymn and psalm would also be of an higher order if every one of us were born poets and if we never sang hymns from a book, but always from our own inspiration and impulse. But this we do not do. can not. are no poets. And no public praise would be possible if the same hymn were not sung together. This also leads to abuse. upon hymn is sung by more than one person in the congregation with the lips, in which the soul has no part. But who

We

We

Hymn

will for this reason banish hymns and psalms from worship in God's house? This would be a reaching out after overspirituality which would mean death to public worship.

But there

is still

a

more

significant reason.

we not know from experience

when

Do

the soul seeks to draw near unto God, nothing at times is more helpful than to repeat to oneself some inspired verse from the Psalms, which we have learned when a child, and which by its devotional language of itself takes us out of our ordinary world of thought and lifts up the soul to God? When we wanted to pray, and prayer would not come, has not the Our Father frequently been the grateful means of bringing us into the prayerful mood? The Scripture also is a formulary, and always remains the same. And is not reading of Scripture before prayer continually the means that 506

that

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