With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray, 13

THIRD LESSON.
‘Pray to thy Father, which is in secret;’ Or, Alone with God.
‘But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine inner chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret shall recompense thee’—Matt. vi. 6.
 
AFTER Jesus had called His first disciples, He gave them their first public teaching in the Sermon on the Mount.  He there expounded to them the kingdom of God, its laws and its life.  In that kingdom God is not only King, but Father, He not only gives all, but is Himself all.  In the knowledge and fellowship of Him alone is its blessedness.  Hence it came as a matter of course that the revelation of prayer and the prayer-life was a part of His teaching concerning the New Kingdom He came to set up.  Moses gave neither command nor regulation with regard to prayer:  even the prophets say little directly of the duty of prayer; it is Christ who teaches to pray.

This post continues what is intended to be a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. I thank the Christian Classics Ethereal Library for making this public domain work available. To see their post of the book, go here. The previous post is here. As usual in this blog, long quotations are in this color.