Steele takes up a problem every praying person knows: the mind that drifts during prayer, reading, and preaching. He works through the causes of that drift one at a time, attaches a remedy to each, and answers the excuses a discouraged reader is likely to make.
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"A Remedy for Wandering Thoughts in the Worship of God" is Richard Steele's treatise on why the mind drifts during prayer, reading, and preaching. Steele defines a distraction as a secret wandering of the heart from God during a duty in hand, pairs each cause of it with its own remedy, and answers the common excuses.
How the argument unfolds
01
The text. Steele preaches from one phrase of Paul's, "that ye may attend upon the Lord without distraction," and treats the book as an exposition of it.
02
The definition. "A distraction is a secret wandering of the heart from God during some duty in hand." Secret is the load-bearing word: what makes the fault serious is that it has the character of hypocrisy.
03
The kinds. He sorts them by source (the devil, the understanding, the fancy, the senses), by matter (good, indifferent, or bad), and by character (sudden or deliberate, willing or unwilling, long or short).
04
The duty and the excuses. Undistracted worship is both possible and necessary, and Steele answers the four standard replies: it cannot be done, it is too hard, everyone is guilty of it, and God accepts the will for the deed.
05
Causes and remedies. The longest chapter works through the roots of the trouble, among them secret atheism, unpreparedness, lukewarmness, worldly-mindedness, a beloved sin, and Satan, attaching a specific remedy to every one.
06
What they cost. Wandering thoughts break the whole first table of the law at a blow, are committed in God's special presence, and drive off the comfort worship exists to give.
07
The cure and the comfort. The remedy works outward from the causes to the senses, and a closing chapter is written for readers whom all this has left ready to give up.
Key themes
Attention as a duty. Steele's case rests on the claim that undistracted worship is commanded rather than merely admired: "It must be done, not merely may be done."
Watchfulness. The habit that governs the rest, kept before a duty, inside it, and after it: "Watch and pray, pray and watch."
The sinfulness of thought. He refuses the plea that thoughts are free, since they escape human punishment but not God's notice: "thoughts are words before God."
Comfort for the discouraged. The closing chapters work against despair: the fault can live alongside real grace, and Christ's intercession is never itself interrupted. "A broken prayer needs a whole mediator."
What a Distraction Is
The text before us is, "That ye may attend upon the Lord without distraction" (1 Cor 7:35).
These words describe a goal believers aim at as often as any in the world, and miss just as often. It is such a rare and excellent attainment that the Holy Spirit coined two words in the original to express it, words found nowhere else in the New Testament: "to attend on the Lord without distraction."
First. The matter, what: "attend upon the Lord."
Second. The manner, how: "without distraction."
First. The matter, what: "attend upon the Lord." The Greek word for "attend" carries a striking elegance. It means, first, that you may be fit and ready for God's service, that religion and religious duties may sit naturally on you, and that you may be ready to serve the Lord in either duty or suffering. This is a sweet frame of soul, always bent and strung for God's service. The man fit for the Master's use is the one prepared for every good work (2 Tim 2:21). How many choice opportunities for instruction, reproof, charity, and prayer do we risk, and even lose, for lack of a soul quick and ready to do its duty?
It also means, second, that you may be fixed and settled in his service. The word suggests such an inseparable cleaving, such a marriage of the mind to the work at hand, that no divorce could follow. Breaking the heart away from God in his service, once it is married to him and settled in holy duties, should be as hard as prying the miser's soul away from the world it is glued to.
Second. The manner, how: "without distraction." This sense is nearly overshadowed by the force of the first word, yet it carries real weight of its own. It describes a quiet, unshaken, and immovable frame of soul, one that cannot be whirled about by vain trifles. The soul is never so peacefully at rest as when directly ascending to and communing with the Lord. That is exactly why Satan so envies this heavenly happiness of the saints: if he cannot distract them from duty, he will certainly try to distract them within it, often through the world and its business. So the apostle says, in effect: order your circumstances in this season of suffering so that they do not misguide your hearts as you attend on the Lord, so that you attend neither on yourselves nor on others, but on him who is the center of every ordinance and your all in all.
The sum of all this is the main doctrine of the text: It is a Christian's duty to attend on the Lord without distractions.
The first task is to describe a distraction. A distraction is a secret wandering of the heart from God during some duty in hand.
1. It is a wandering. Just as half-hearted devotion falls short, distraction goes astray. As it is said, "As a bird that wandereth from her nest, so is a man that wandereth from his place" (Prov 27:8). Everyone knows that the surest way to kill an egg in the shell is to let the heat lapse; and wandering from our heavenly work likewise produces the dead offspring of unprofitable duties. Tracking a wandering bird's flight would almost be easier than tracing the restless and tangled imaginations of the heart. It is a digression. You who are quick to notice the minister wandering in his own sermon, how much more should you watch for wandering in yourself?
2. It is secret, hidden in the heart. This is what gives a distraction the guilt and character of hypocrisy, for hypocrisy is described in words that fit distraction all too well: "This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me" (Matt 15:7–8). A bent knee and a lifted eye are fitting expressions of devotion, but without the heart's true attention and presence, they amount to double iniquity and plain hypocrisy. How empty would our congregations sometimes be if only as many bodies were present as there were souls truly there? And how much poor, careless service does our God receive that no one else ever sees.
However unnoticed these driftings of the mind may be to others, or even to ourselves, they are entirely visible to the Lord, who sets our most "secret sins in the light of his countenance" (Ps 90:8). Small as they may seem, they still fall under the rebuke of true religion, and are just as sinful as they are secret. Good done in secret is the highest kind of goodness; sin committed in secret is the worst kind of sin.
3. This wandering of the heart is from God, since God is the object of worship. To pray rightly is to pray "before the Lord" (Zech 7:21). To give thanks rightly is to give thanks "before God" (Dan 6:10), not merely in his sight, since you are always in his sight even at your worst. Godly people speak to God as we speak to one another, looking on him as present. Melancthon said he once heard Luther praying in secret with such intensity that anyone listening would surely believe someone else was in the room with him.
4. This wandering happens while some duty is in hand. Nehemiah gave a fitting answer to his false friends: "I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down. Why should the work cease while I leave it and come down to you?" (Neh 6:3). Anyone engaged in a duty to God is engaged in a very great work, and that work stalls, or even falls backward, every moment the heart is elsewhere. Why should some passing vanity be allowed to set back, or even unravel, your eternal concerns? How that young Spartan will rise up in judgment against us. Holding the censer during Alexander's heathen sacrifice, he refused to move his hand from its duty even as the burning coals fell on it, searing and scorching his flesh before all who watched.
The Cure: Believe in the Presence of God
Believe in the presence of God. The eye of the master keeps the scholar busy; if his eye is off the scholar, the scholar's eye drifts from the book. "I have set the Lord always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved" (Ps 16:8), otherwise your heart will be moved, and removed too, by every passing impulse. Faith, which makes invisible things real to us, is therefore of great use in holy duty.
"He that cometh to God must believe that he is" (Heb 11:6). You must believe as fully that God is present as if he were visible, that you are surrounded and enveloped in the presence of God. If you go forward, he is there; if backward, you may perceive him; on the left hand, he is at work there, though you cannot see him; he hides himself on the right hand so that you cannot see him, yet he knows the way that you take (Job 23:9–10). That is his common presence.
But in an act of worship he is in the midst of his people. There he looks on heaven and earth as nothing, and looks instead to the one who is poor and contrite and trembles at his word. So when you pray, you must not merely speak of God, but speak to God. It slights a prince when we hand him a petition while looking the other way. We tell our children to look at us when they speak to us, and so we should look to God, who is not far from any of us in his ordinances. There he is, with his host about him, and though we cannot be sure whether his angels are sent to carry his word to us or our prayers to him, it is certain that they attend the great Jehovah, never more willingly than in his worship, being filled with joy at a sinner's conversion and delighting greatly in our penitent tears.
It is true that God is always and everywhere with you, in the more general sense of his immensity, power, and providence. But in worship, he is present also by his grace, mercy, holiness, and effectual working. His common presence may be compared to the sun on a cloudy day: it is in the sky, we benefit greatly from it, we could not live without it. But his special presence in worship is like the sun breaking out from a cloud on a summer morning, revealing the dust in the air, warming our bodies, and refreshing our spirits.
In the same way, God's common presence upholds the world. In him we live, move, and have our being, and the belief that God is everywhere should persuade us to sin nowhere. But the special presence of God in worship, like the sun breaking out, enlightens the mind, warms the heart, and melts even the hardest soul. By it, God shines directly upon us, so that to trifle or sin in his presence is an unbearable offense.
Wherever God is rightly worshipped, that place may rightly be called Jehovah Shammah, the Lord is there.
Your closet, the Lord is there, standing between your chair and you. Can you turn away from him? Your bedroom, the Lord is there, standing between your bedside and you. Can you turn away from him? By the fireside with your family, the same is true. Jehovah Shammah, and will you fall asleep? In the assembled congregation, the Lord is there, and what are the people gathered there compared to him?
So hear and look to God; pray and look to God; meditate and still look to God; sing psalms and still look to God. It was Hagar who said, "have I also here looked after him that seeth me? And she called the name of the Lord that spake unto her, Thou God seest me" (Gen 16:13). So call on the name of the Lord who speaks to you, and say to the Lord to whom you speak, "thou God seest me." Keep your eye on him as he keeps his eye on you. Find a fairer object if you can, and look there instead.
But since nothing in heaven or earth is as desirable as he is, let nothing in heaven or earth distract you from him. A vivid sense of this will powerfully move the heart, and it is because we see no one there that we so often steal away from duty. It is said, "a king that sitteth in the throne of judgment scattereth away all evil with his eyes" (Prov 20:8). That is, his very countenance should teach such a lesson of justice, temperance, chastity, and piety that every onlooker would fear to act otherwise. How much more, then, should the presence of God so fill the soul with holiness, goodness, and sweetness that it could spare no thought for anything else!
The full and clear vision and enjoyment of God's presence so eternally delights and satisfies souls in heaven that they would not look away from his face for a thousand worlds. Even if all the kings of the earth passed by the heavenly gates in their greatest triumph, with all the earth's glory displayed before them, a glorified soul is so filled with the presence of God that it would not spare one minute's glance to see it.
It is said of one Theodorus, a martyr, that he smiled through all his tortures. Asked why, he answered that he saw a glorious youth wiping the sweat from his face, and this refreshed him greatly. If you could see, by the eye of faith, the blessed face of God smiling on you, wiping away your sweat and tears with the handkerchief of his love, your heart would rejoice, your glory would exult, and you would say, Lord, it is good, indeed it is best for me to be here. Do not willingly leave his presence without seeing him.
Moses had few distractions when he saw God face to face; a believer's active faith brings God's active presence.
Drexelius tells of a vision granted to a holy man: in the temple, he saw an angel standing at the elbow of every person at prayer. The angel of one who prayed with malice in his heart wrote his petitions in gall. The angel of one who prayed coldly wrote his prayers in water. The angel of one who prayed with distractions wrote his requests in sand. But the angel of one who prayed in faith wrote his petitions in letters of gold. The moral, at least, is sound. If you believed that every word spoken by you or to you was being written down, with what care and conscience would you pray and listen? Be assured that one among you takes note of everything and will repay every person according to their works. To see and feel him present in worship will free you from distractions.
Questions
Why do my thoughts wander when I pray?+
Steele traces wandering thoughts in prayer to four immediate sources: Satan, the understanding, the imagination, and the outward senses, chiefly the eye. Beneath those he names deeper causes, including coming to prayer unprepared, lukewarmness, a mind already full of the world, and a cherished sin the heart keeps returning to.
Is it a sin to be distracted in prayer?+
Steele treats distraction in prayer as a real sin, though not an equally serious one in every case. A thought merely thrown at the mind, grieved over and quickly dismissed, carries far less guilt than one deliberately entertained, but he rejects the plea that involuntary thoughts are blameless: "It is true that involuntariness lessens a fault, but it does not erase it."
What are Steele's remedies for wandering thoughts?+
Steele gives seven cures for wandering thoughts: remove the underlying causes, grieve over past failures, ask the Holy Spirit's help at the start of each duty, believe firmly that God is present, discipline the eyes and ears, meet every intruding thought with a short prayer darted up to God, and grow in grace. "When Satan darts in his suggestions, dart back your ejaculations."
Should I stop praying if I cannot concentrate?+
Steele argues directly against dropping a duty because you cannot concentrate, calling the impulse to quit the devil's "false divinity." Skipping it never leaves anyone better fitted for the next one, he says, and quotes Luther: "The more I neglect, the more unfit I am."
Who was Richard Steele?+
Richard Steele (1629 to 1692) was an English Puritan minister who lost his living under the Act of Uniformity in 1662 and afterward preached privately before settling in London among the nonconformists. He is best known for The Tradesman's Calling, and is a different man from the later essayist and Spectator co-founder of the same name.
Richard Steele (1629 to 1692) was an English Puritan minister, born at Barthomley in Cheshire and educated at St John's College, Cambridge. He lost his living in the Great Ejection of 1662, preached privately afterward, and eventually settled in London among the nonconformists. He is best known for The Tradesman's Calling, which treated trade as a Christian vocation, and is not the later essayist and Spectator co-founder of the same name.
I first read this in Richard Steele's original English - Old English (KJV style). I am so delighted to see this now available in modern English. This book is exceptional in its current value in an age of information overload and at a time of endless distraction. How can anyone expect the benefits of sitting under the preaching and teaching of the Word, when attention drifts constantly. It takes a great deal of self-discipline to receive the discipline of the Word as a means of grace.
