Article June 20, 1925 Issue

Signs of the Times

with contributions from Louise Collier Willcox, V. H. Copley Moyle, William Meara

[From the Daily News, Alexandria, Indiana, Nov. 28, 1924]

In these days when it is not uncommon to hear a minister praised because of his "beautiful prayers,"—by "beautiful" being meant ornateness of phraseology,—it is refreshing and timely that a clergyman has seen fit to declare that simple prayers, like that taught by the Founder of Christianity, are best. Prayers hardly are a fit subject for studied oratory. Those that come from the heart not infrequently are marked by unconscious eloquence. But it is contrary to the spirit of Christianity that one should compose supplications to the Almightly with regard rather to what man will think of them than how the Deity will view them. And it is to be feared that it is the effect on the congregation rather than the effect on God which is in the minds of the authors of some of these elaborate prayers against which we are warned. Moreover, the effect of such prayers on the congregation is likely to be other than what the minister intended; for the very complexity of the language may divert the listeners' thoughts from God to the orator.

Christians have been counseled by the supreme authority on such matters not to pray ostentatiously, as the hypocrites do, "that they may be seen of men," but to address God in the simple, earnest way in which a child would present a plea to his father. And it would seem that that advice was intended to apply to public prayers as well as to those spoken in the secrecy of the closet.

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