Pensees: On Public Prayer - A Book Review

On Public Prayer - A Book Review

Title: Thoughts on Public Prayer
Author: Samuel Miller
Publisher: Sprinkle Publications
Number of pages: 306
Purchased: 12/01/04 CVBBS.com $10.35
Rating: **

Review: I was drawn to “Thoughts on Public Prayer” by its unique subject matter. Never before had I heard of someone writing specifically on public prayer. As a pastor, I engage in public prayer every week. More often than not, no preparation is made specifically for my prayer. My words and even the subjects I cover in prayer are chosen spontaneously. In my religious tradition, prepared prayers smacked of formal liturgy. Samuel Miller (1769-1850; joined Archibald Alexander to become the second professor at the new seminary in Princeton) gave me cause to think otherwise: “While, on the one hand, the reading or recitation of prescribed prayers is by no means the best method of conducting the devotions of the sanctuary, and is liable to many weighty objections; so, on the other hand, it is a great mistake to imagine that sacred attention to the mode of conducting this service, and preparation for it can be safely neglected, or made the object of only occasional or superficial study” (p. 139). Miller contends that the minister “who wishes to make the most of his service in the sanctuary, for the glory of God, and the best edification of his people, is bound to pay a greatly increased attention to the whole subject of public prayer” (139).

After a chapter of introductory remarks, Miller proceeds to cover the history of public prayer (praying toward the East, prayers for the dead, prayers to the saints and to the virgin Mary, prayers in an unknown tongue, responses in public prayer, and posture in public prayer). He then interacts with the claims of liturgies. As a Presbyterian, Miller does not favor liturgical worship, but neither does he despise it. “We are very far from pronouncing, or even thinking, that it is unlawful to conduct prayer, either public or private, by a form…. We only contend, that such forms are not indispensable, as some contend, to orderly and edifying public prayer; … [and] this is not, on the whole, the best mode of conducting the devotional services of the sanctuary” (p. 138.).

Miller then devotes one chapter each to “frequent faults in public prayer” and “characteristics of a good public prayer.” The first fault he lists is “the over frequent recurrence of favorite words, and set forms of expression … Among these are the constant repetition in every sentence or two, of the names and titles of God” (p.178-79). He says, “With many, these appear to be mere expletives; with others, they seem to furnish a kind of resting place for the mind, to afford an opportunity for reflecting on what is to follow” (179). He says that this meaningless repetition of God’s name or expressions “renders [our prayers] cheap, and, after a time, not merely superfluous, but disgusting” (179). It actually can be more serious than that. “If the constant repetition of the name of the Most High, even in prayer, be not ‘taking the name of the Lord our God in vain,’ it certainly approaches very near to that sin” (179).

In his list of “characteristics of a good public prayer,” Miller states that one “important feature of great excellence in public prayer, is a desirable degree of variety.” Miller complains: “Truly it is with an ill grace that some of our ministers find fault with the sameness of liturgies, when their own prayers have as much of this quality as any that we hear read, with the disadvantage of being decidedly inferior both in matter and manner” (237).

Public prayer is a matter of which “every minister of the gospel ought to be a close student, and a diligent learner to the end of life” (274). Samuel Miller’s “Thoughts on Public Prayer” is a very helpful and stimulating to today’s preacher not to just “get up and pray,” but to carefully and deliberately form his own “thoughts on public prayer.”