A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life by William Law

Author:William Law
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Seedbed Publishing
Published: 2019-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XII

PRAYER

Concerning that part of devotion which relates to times and hours of prayer. Of daily early prayer in the morning. How we are to improve our forms of prayer and increase the spirit of devotion.

1. Having in the foregoing chapters shown the necessity of a devout spirit in every part of our common life, in the discharge of all our business, in the use of all the gifts of God, I come now to consider that part of devotion which relates to times and hours of prayer.

I take it for granted that every Christian that is in health is up early in the morning; for it is much more reasonable to suppose a person up early because he is a Christian than because he is a laborer, or a tradesman, or a servant, or has business that wants him.

We naturally conceive some abhorrence of a man that is in bed when he should be at his labor or in his shop. We cannot tell how to think anything good of him who is such a slave to drowsiness as to neglect his business for it.

Let this therefore teach us to conceive how odious we must appear in the sight of heaven if we are in bed, shut up in sleep and darkness, when we should be praising God; and are such slaves to drowsiness as to neglect our devotions for it.

For if he is to be blamed as a slothful drone that rather chooses the lazy indulgence of sleep than to perform his proper share of worldly business, how much more is he to be reproached that would rather lie folded up in a bed than be raising up his heart to God in acts of praise and adoration!

2. Prayer is the nearest approach to God and the highest enjoyment of him that we are capable of in this life.

It is the noblest exercise of the soul, the most exalted use of our best faculties, and the highest imitation of the blessed inhabitants of heaven.

When our hearts are full of God, sending up holy desires to the throne of grace, we are then in our highest state, we are upon the utmost heights of human greatness; we are not before kings and princes but in the presence and audience of the Lord of all the world and can be no higher, till death is swallowed up in glory (1 Cor. 15:54).

On the other hand, sleep is the poorest, dullest refreshment of the body, one that is so far from being intended as an enjoyment that we are forced to receive it either in a state of insensibility or in the folly of dreams.

Sleep is such a dull, stupid state of existence that even amongst mere animals we despise them most which are most drowsy. He, therefore, that chooses to enlarge the slothful indulgence of sleep, rather than be early at his devotions to God, chooses the dullest refreshment of the body, before the highest, noblest employment of the soul;

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