The Sunrise Prayer Meeting

IN -field we do not watch the Old Year out. We do not dance him out unless we are very young and foolish. For we know that promptly at 6.45 A.M., if not earlier, we shall be shaken and shouted out of warm dreams by our elders, to make ourselves ready in haste, and go and pray the New Year in.

The elders were shaken out of their young sleep so many bitter mornings, and their elders before them, that it is a wonder there is no hereditary aptitude among the dwellers in-field to waken at 6.45 A.M. on every New Year’s Day. But the law of heredity passes on only a strict, and sometimes unreasoning, sense of obligation. We know that we must go to the Sunrise Prayer Meeting though a blizzard be whirling down from the hills, smothering the sidewalks, and tearing the trolley-wires. We must go to the Sunrise Prayer Meeting even if we be the poor, the sick, the afflicted, or all three at once, so long as it is physically possible; we must go certainly if we are only full of sleep and loath to tumble breathless out into the keen dusky cold before the sun rises, while the church-bell tolls and the streets begin to be filled with hurrying shapes. For young and old, rich and poor, glad and sorry, are all making what haste t hey may to the gray church on the Square, to pray the New Year in.

The church, still in its Christmas dress of laurel-wreaths and pineboughs, seems very old and mellow, from shadowy rafter and good Gothic arch to t he last humble pew under the gallery. Lit as for a vesper service, warm, yet touched by the thin gray light and air of winter dawn, it receives, with a sort of special dignity and sober complacence, the silent people who overcrowd its pews. It does not ask them to-day whether they be Orthodox or Unitarian, Methodist or Baptist, black or white, alien or of the old proud stock of the city’s and the church’s elect. Every seat is taken long before the organ begins to grumble and whisper; and while the bell still tolls in the tower above, and the ushers go lightly up and down, hunting a place here and there for some unaccustomed or over-sleeping late arrival, it seems good to those who come here year after year to sit quietly for a little in the solemn, cheerful, crowded hush. Up in the high rafters, old memories glimmer out and fade. There are one’s own Sunrise and New Year thoughts to think before the minister in charge gives out the first hymn, and the congregation stands to sing, —

or ‘My faith looks up to Thee,’ or ‘God moves in a mysterious way.’

Then the minister, standing humbly at the foot of the high pulpit, reads somewhat from the Scriptures: the great Faith chapter from the Hebrews, it may be. And all the people repeat together, with the reverence of children, the Twenty-third Psalm. There is another old, well-beloved hymn; the minister prays and speaks a moment, quietly, and the ‘meeting is open.'

Who will first be moved by the Spirit? There is never long to wait. A voice is lifted: there is much decent craning of necks and straining of ears. — Is it old Deacon Robinson? — or Professor Downey? — or the new Baptist minister? — or some layman less seasoned in public speech and prayer? A little pleased and interested murmur stirs the congregation. It is Deacon Robinson: his silvery head gleams above the front pews, and his sweet, quavering voice gat hers power and assurance as he tells how he has been mercifully permitted to attend the Sunrise Prayer Meeting every year but one since he was a boy, ‘more ’n eighty-five year ago,’ — and how he has always found help and grace there, and how the Lord has always showed him the way and has answered his prayers. For, as he says, ‘When I was seventy year old, I asked the Lord to let me live to be eighty. And so He did. And when I got to be eighty, I asked Him to let me live to be ninety. And He did that, too. And now I’m asking Him to be a hundred. But, after all, I’m not very partik’ler about it.’

Then, perhaps, it is indeed the new Baptist minister; or the pastor of the little colored church, a man whose dark skin and humble place cannot keep him from often saying the keenest word and offering up the bravest petition. But they are not all clergymen and deacons whom the Spirit moves. Men prominent in the professions and industries of the city; young men, who have gritted their teeth and vowed, humorous above their earnestness, to make their maiden speech or die in the attempt, are on their feet. They are not glib with the well-rounded terms of conventional exhortation and prayer, but they speak quickly of the needs of the churches and the city, as eager for the honor of the future as the old men for the past.

Sometimes two voices are upraised at once. One brother prays the other down, as it were, until the more timid or more magnanimous gives in and takes his seat. Favorite hymns and poems are quoted, quaint anecdotes are told; yet always there is an undercurrent deep and strong of reverence, of mystery; a recognition of the past and the present and the future, and of that which makes them one.

In a moment, it seems, the hour is passed, the last hymn is sung, the benediction is spoken. Another hush: and then all over the church there is a rising murmur, of ’Happy New Year!’ ‘ Happy New Year!' as each one turns with a handshake to his nearest likely neighbor. And if there are many who find it hard to give and take the greeting lightly, they are too proud or too strong to let the shadow cross their faces, and the widow under her veil passes the wish with as true a grace as the woman whose stalwart husband, on his annual pilgrimage between church-walls, walks, half-sheepishly smiling, beside her and her flock of children.

Crowding a little, for the young ones must be off to school and the busy ones to the shops and offices, the congregation throngs out into the street. The ‘Happy New Years’ grow louder and more merry, as friends draw together, while sleighs and automobiles fill, and the frosty Square has suddenly become gay with chatter and jingling and light. For while-field prayed in the church, the sun has risen beyond the bare white and purple hills that shoulder up at the broad streetend, and the little city has wakened to another day and another year of unknown sorrow and joy, failure and attainment.

It is a curious old custom, handed down without a break from the days when the church was only a white meeting-house on the village green, and when most of the good people came jingling from far over the snowbound hills to their Sunrise Meeting. Newcomers in-field may not at first understand why it is like no other rite in the whole civic and religious calendar. Yet let them once bow in the quiet church, sing the old, marching, faithful hymns, hear the odd or noble words of reminiscence and hope and thanksgiving and intercession; let them exchange their ‘Happy New Year’s in the church porch and pass out into the gay shining street; and they will feel somehow that the hour has whispered of a thing seldom revealed, — the hidden, hoping, believing, and worshiping heart of a city. They will feel that, for once, an ideal faith has been frankly and simply recognized as the ancient and future glory of the community. However smug, however foolish and covetous and earthy the little city may often seem to be, the Sunrise Prayer Meeting still reassures those who know and love it that the old desire after heavenly things is not dead, though it must soon learn to speak a new and brisker tongue, and to wear a strangely modern garb.

For, indeed, some day there will be no more like Deacon Robinson, with his child-like trust and quaint old-time petitions. Yet it seems that the dwellers in-field will not easily forsake

the assembling of themselves together on t he first day of the year, to think long thoughts of such things as are true and comely and of good report, for themselves and for their city, and to sing with voices half-tremulous, yet proud and confident, —

And it is worth waking early and shivering out in the dark to feel that the friends and neighbors with whom the year-long we traffic in stupid mortal cares and follies are singing such words with us, and thinking hard of them, and more than half-believing them, for even one hour: that the secret heart of the city, for once unashamed, is somehow praying the New Year in, as the sun comes up over the hills.