This article first appeared in In Writing
When we have Library lectures it is our usual pattern to pray before and after the lecture. It is a pattern that is common enough and has been the practice in theological colleges and seminaries down the years as far back as Mediaeval times.
Luther would always begin with prayer, it seems. Calvin's lectures appear to have begun with a set prayer.
May the Lord grant us so to study the heavenly mysteries of his wisdom that we may progress in true godliness, to his glory and our edification.
At the end of the lecture he would then pray extemporaneously. Many of these prayers are in print and are worth looking at. They usually follow a fixed shape. Each one begins Da, Omnipotens Deus (Give Almighty God) then makes a petition arising, sometimes tenuously, out of the lecture, before concluding with an eschatological reference: "so that at last we may be gathered into your heavenly kingdom" or "until at last you gather us into that glory which was won for us by the blood of your only begotten Son." As Donald McKim observes, the emphasis on grace and eschatology in these prayers is typical of Calvin.
Although it is the norm, when Andrew Bonar and Robert Murray M'Cheyne were in Berlin in 1839 as part of their fact finding tour concerning the Jews, they took opportunity to go and hear church historian Joachim Neander lecture. One of the things that struck them about it was the lack of prayer. Not how it was in the College in Edinburgh. They wrote of Neander
In the midst of his dissertation the bell rang, and immediately he closed his papers, scarcely finishing the sentence, bowed to the students, and was the first to leave the classroom. There is no prayer either at the commencement or close, for this would be considered Pietism.
Neander, a Jew by birth, was a good Lutheran but no Pietist. Hence no prayer. Neander is unusual. There have been lecturers who will ask a student to pray for example but most evangelicals will follow the traditional pattern. There is a story that in one lecture room where it was the lecturer's practice to ask a student to pray, a student had fallen asleep and when his neighbour nudged him and said “he's asked you to pray”, the poor student stood and prayed - in the middle of the lecture!
Most prayers before and after lectures are unremarkable. Professor John Murray of Westminster Seminary is perhaps the exception. Edmund Clowney wrote that
All who heard John Murray’s classroom lectures will remember his prayers that began the lecture hour.
Clowney had hoped that recordings of some may have survived but no example has been found. His guess is that Murray himself would have seen to it that no recording of a prayer would have been made. Clowney adds that
when he prayed those prayers, he stood before the throne not before a class. Even when delivering lectures he may have delivered many times before, he would prepare himself afresh. From his opening words of prayer, students knew that the work before them was more than the exercise of a classroom.
‘Fear of God dominated Professor Murray’s classroom,' recalled Walter Chantry. ‘Each period began with prayer from the professor’s lips which brought all into the presence of an awesome God.'
Neander's attitude and that of Murray contrasts with the practice of some 19th century lecturers who were quite happy to have their classroom prayers printed with their published lectures. Examples include the Anglicans Thomas Wade Smith (On the catechism, confirmation & communion services) and Luke Booker (The Lord's Prayer). Perhaps it was an Anglican thing.
Probably the most interesting anecdote with regard to classroom prayers concerns the eccentric Scot John Duncan, one time lecturer in Hebrew at New College, Edinburgh. Apparently, on at least one occasion his prayer at the opening of his class prolonged itself for the whole hour and it was only the ringing of the bell at the end of the hour that woke him to a realisation of what he had done. That may sound incredible but it was reported by eye witnesses including James Duff McCulloch, a student of Duncan's and later Principal of the Free Church College, Edinburgh. It was not uncommon for Duncan to be inordinately long in public prayer. Interestingly, his explanation, which was not pleaded as a mitigation or an excuse, was this "I fear I have been very long today; but when one thinks he has got in, it is very difficult to get out again!".
