ime in secret. Public prayer has so many besetting sins, it
is open to so many temptations, distractions, and corruptions, that it is
almost impossible to preserve the real essence of prayer in public
prayer. But in secret all those temptations and distractions are happily
absent. We have no temptation to be too long in secret prayer, or too
loud, or too eloquent. Stately old English goes for nothing in secret
prayer. We never need to go to our knees in secret trembling, lest we
lose the thread of our prayer, or forget that so fit and so fine
expression. The longer we are the better in secret prayer. Much
speaking is really a virtue in secret prayer; much speaking and many
repetitions. Also, we can put things into our secret prayers that we
dare not come within a thousand miles of in the pulpit, or the prayer-
meeting, or the family. We can enter into the most plain-spoken
particulars about ourselves in secret. We can put our proper name upon
ourselves, and upon our actions, and especially upon our thoughts when
our door is shut. Then, again, we can pray for other people by name in
secret; we can enter, so far as we know them, into all their
circumstances in a way it is impossible to do anywhere but in the utmost
secrecy. We can, in short, be ourselves in secret; and, unless it is to
please or to impress men, we had better not pray at all unless we are
ourselves when we are engaged in it. You can be yourself, your very
worst self; nay, you must be, else you will not long pray in secret, and
even if you did you would not be heard. I do not remember that very much
is said in so many words in her after-history about Christiana's habits
of closet-prayer. But that Secret taught her the way, and waited till
she had tasted the sweetness and the strength of being a good while on
her knees alone, I am safe to say; indeed, I read it between the lines in
all her after-life. She was rewarded openly in a way that testifies to
much secret prayer; that is to say, in the early conversion of her
children, in the way they settled in life, and such like things. Pray
much for those things in secret that you wish to possess openly.

5. But perhaps the best and most infallible evidence we can have of the
truth of our religion in this life is in the steady increase of our
secret sinfulness. Christiana had no trouble with her own wicked heart
so long as she was a woman of a wicked life. But directly she became a
new creature