My House of Prayer

Jesus Christ, when in a sublime act of indignation He drove out the desecrators of the temple, applied the words to the outer courts of that noble material building. But He Himself has taught us not to limit the phrase, but to give it the widest possible meaning. It is not for us to speak of God's house of prayer as if it were restricted to any one locality, or as if it described any particular kind of structure. God's house of prayer may be found anywhere, everywhere. Wherever the human heart reaches out with holy longing towards the Divine Father, and craves the blessing of His presence; wherever He unveils the glory of His truth and the beauty of his love, responding to the eager desires of His pleading children, there is His house of prayer. It may be grand in form, or poor and mean; there may be no material structure at all, but the solemn temple of Nature itself, yet shall it; be consecrated for worship by the prayers which ascend to God. Yet, we still find it necessary to establish and set apart places of worship, and because we frequent them for this holiest of purposes, we speak of each of them as a house of prayer. As it is necessary that we should consecrate one day out of the week for the special purposes of religion, so we find it desirable to meet at some regularly appointed spot to engage with our fellows in acts of devotion. And the reasonableness becomes apparent. We want such places for convenience' sake. If social religion is to have any existence at all, if the communion of the saints is to be a reality, if there are to be united praise and prayer and instruction in Divine truth, then men and women must know where they are to gather for these purposes. Further, it is not merely a matter of convenience; it is helpful to our spiritual and daily life. We want as places of worship some which are unassociated with our secular affairs — places which seem to stand away from the cares and worries and strivings of our common life — where we can give our minds and hearts a season of rest — an opportunity of calmly, and without distraction, contemplating and estimating the character and meaning, the worth or worthlessness of the work we are doing in the world. Of course this might be done at home, in the shop, in the office, in the chamber, but not so effectually, not so thoroughly, as in the quiet place specially devoted to religious worship. There, seeming to stand at a distance from worldly avocations, we judge them and our relation to them more impartially and honestly.

(W. Braden.)