Lord, Teach Us - PrayerMeetings.org

Lord, Teach Us
To Pray SERMONS ON PRAYER
BY
ALEXANDER WHYTE, D.D., LLD. HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LIMITED LONDON
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PREFACE IT is not the purpose of this Prefaw to anticipate the biography of Dr.
Whyte, now being prepared by Dr. G. Freeland Barbour, or to provide a
considered estimate of the great preacher's work as a whole. But it may be
well briefly to explain the appearance of the present volume, and to take
it, so far as it goes, as a mirror of the man. The desire has been
expresied in various quarters that this sequence of sermons on prayer
should appear by itself. Possibly it may be followed at a later date by a
representative volume of purses, taken from different points in Dr. Whyte's
long ministry. It is a curious fact that he who was by general consent the
greatest Scottish preacher of his day published during his lifetime no
volume of Sunday morning sermons, though his successive series of character
studies, given as evening lectures, were numerous and widely known. ,
At the close of the winter season, z8"5, Dr. Whyte had brought to a
conclusion a lengthy series of pulpit studies in the teaching of our Lord.
It was evident that our Lord's teaching about prayer had greatly fascinated
him: more than one sermon
LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY upon that had been included. And in the winter of x885-0, he began a series
of discourses in which St. Luke xi. x, " Lord, teach us to pray," was
combined with some other text, in order to exhibit various aspects of the
life of grayer. The most of these discourses were preached in x8g5-g6,
though a few came in r8g7 ; and at intervals till xc3o6 scone of them were
re-delivered, or the sequence was added, to. 4n the. whole, in 'Dr. Whyte's
later ministry, no theme was so familiar to his congregation or so beloved
by himself as " Luke eleven and one." To include the whole series here
would have made a volume far too bulky: in a sequence stretching over so
long a time and dealing with themes so closely allied, there is a
considerable amount of repetition: it was necessary to select. Far
ihstaace, Paul's Prayers and Thanksgivings were dealt with at length, and
are here represented only by two examples. Further, it has not been
possible to give the sermons in chronological order ; Dr. Whyte dealt with
the aspect of the matter uppermost is his mind for the week, and followed
no plan which is now discernible: for the grouping; therefore, as for the
selection, the present editors are responsible. They page that the volume
so selected and arranged may be a sufficient indication of the style and
spirit of the whole sequence 1 The ' The sermons on Jacob and the Man who knocked at midnight an parallel to'
the extent of a fear seatenees, and that on
PREFACE Scottish pulpit owes much to " Courses " of sexmons, in which some great
theme could be deliberately treated, some vast tract of doctrine or
experience adequately surveyed. ?his method of preaching may be out of
fashion with the restless mind of to-day, but in days when it was patiently
heard it had an immensely educative effect: it was a means at once of
enlarging and deepening. And Dr. Whyte's people were often full of
amazement at the endless force, freshness and fervour which he poured into
this series, bringing out of " Luke eleven and one," as out of a treasury,
things new and old.
Nobody else could have preached these sermons,
-after much reading and re-reading of them that
remains the most vivid impression : there can be
few more strongly personal documents in the whole
literature of the pulpit. Of course, his favourites
appear Daute axed Pascal; Butler anal Andrew,
Bunyan and Edwards: they contribute thAe
gift of illustration or enforcement, and fade away.
But these pages are Alexander Whyte: the glow
and radiance of them came out of that flaming
heart. Those who knew and loved him will wel
come the autobiographic touches: In one of the Blij ah to the extent of a paragraph or two, with studies prevloudy
published in the Bibls Charadws. But they are so characteristic of the
preacher, and so vital to the series that it has been deemed wise to give
them, even though they are slightly re. minnoont of matter which has before
appeared.
Viii LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY sermons he recommends his heams so to read the New.- Testament that it
shall be autobiographic of themselves : i# ever a man read his Bible so, it
was he. The gist Psalm and many another classical passage of devotion took
on a new W and savour because, with the simplest sad. intensest sincerity,
he found his own, autobiography in them. Who that heard it spoken could
ever forget the description; wen on one of the following of the wintry walk
a# one who thought himself forsakes of God, antis the snows of Schiehaition
.
made him cry, " Wash me, and I shad be whiter than snow," and brought back
God's pesos to his heart ? But in a more general sense this whole volume is
autobiographic. " Deliver your own mere '· was his counsel to his colleague
- J*hm Kelman. He did so himself ; it is here. One or two ingredients inn
it are specially noteworthy.
I . -One is his wonderful gift of .Tix*maam. It
is ~eristic of him that, in his treatment of his
chosen theme, he should give one whose -discourse
to the use of the imagination in prayer. Rut there
is smrcely a serum which does not at some pct
illustrate the theme of that discourse. . Here was s
soul " full of eyes." He had the gift of calling up
before himself that of which he spoke ; and, speak
ing:with his eye on the object, as he loved to gut it,
he made his hearers see it too with a vivida' an which
often startled them and occasionally amused diem.
PREFACE' The Scripture scene was extended by some lifelike
touch which increased the sense of reality without
exceeding the bounds of probability. A case. in
point is the man who knocked at midnight. " He
comes back; he knocks again: `Friend ! ' he cries,
till the dogs bark at him." And sometimes the im
agination clothes itself in a certain grim grotesquerie
which arrests the slumbering attention and is en
tirely unforgettable, as in the description of the
irreverent family at prayers; their creaking chairs,
their- yawns and coughs and sneezes, their babes
of talk unloosed before the Amtn is well uttered.
These pages contain many instances of the imagina
tion which soars, as he bids her do, on shining wing,
up past sun, moon and star`s, but also of a more
pedestrian imagination, with shrewd eyes and a
grave smile, busy about the criticism of life and
the healthy castigation of human nature.
a. Along with this goes a strongly dramatic instinct. This provides some
words and phrases in the followmg pages, which might not stand the test of
a cold or pedantic criticism. A strict editorship might have cut them out:
Dr. Whyte himself might have done so, had he revised these pages for the
press. But they have been allowed to stand because they now enshrine a
memory: even after twenty-five years or more, they will bring back to some
hearers the moments when the preacher's eyes were lifted off his
manuscript, when his hand
LORD, TF4ACH US TO PRAY was _ suddenly flung out as though he tracked the movements of an invisible
presence, when his voice expanded into - a great cry that rang into every
corner of the church. In this mood the apostrophe was instinctive: " a
Paul, up in heaven, be merciful in thy rapture ! Hast thou .forgotten that
than also was once a wretched man?" Equally instinctive to it is the
tendency to visualise, behind an incident or as instance, its scenery and
background: - " the man of all prayer is still on his gases . . . . See !
the day breaks over his place of prayer ! See ! the Kingdom of God begins
to come in an the earth." Occasionally--very oio
bat all the -more effectively because so seldom-the dramatic instinct -
found fuller scope in a lengthy
quotation from Shakespeare or even- from Ibsen.
The intellectual and spiritual effect was almost, overwhelming the morning
he preached on ettr Lord's prayer in Cede. Dwelling for a moment on the
seamless robe, with " the blood of
the , and of the cellar. " upon it, he suddenly
broke off into the passage from Julius Cmar;: Yon all do- know °this mantis : I remember The first time Caesar ever put
it oa. It was a daring exp6rirnent-did ever any other preacher link these two
passages together ?--but in Dr. Whyte's hands extraordinarily moving. - The
sermon closed with a great shout, " Note .let it
PREFACE work J " and his hearers, as they came to the Communion Table that morning,
must have been of one heart and mind in the prayer that in them the Cross
of Christ should not be " made of none effect."
3. It was Dr. Whyte's own wish that he should be known as a specialist in
the study of sin: he was willing to leave other distinctions to other men.
No reader of these pages will be surprised to discover that, in the place
of prayer which this preacher builds, the Miserere and the De Profundas are
among the most haunting strains. The question has often been asked--Did Dr.
Whyte paint the world and human nature too black ? Even if he did, two
things perhaps may be said. The first is that there are so few specialists
now in this line of teaching, that we can afford occasionally to liste