A Guide to Prayer by Isaac Watts

Look Inside A Guide to Prayer (Table of Contents and first pages)

This guide to prayer covers the types of prayer, length of prayer, the voice in public prayer, body posture, how to improve praying, the Holy Spirit in prayer and exhortations to pray. Isaac Watts is quite honest in his calling out wrong activities that might be involved in prayer. As he says, “The form, method, and expression, together with other attendants of it, such as voice and gesture, have been so little treated of, that few Christians have any clear or distinct knowledge of them: and yet all these have too powerful an influence upon the soul in its most spiritual exercises.”

Paperback 6X9; 154 pages; ISBN 9781946145321

ISAAC WATTS (1674–1748) was born in Southampton, England. His father, a schoolmaster, was jailed twice for his non-conformist faith. Isaac loved to read and attended the free school in Southampton. He started learning Latin at the age of four. He attended Rev. Mr. Thomas Rowe’s Nonconformist Academy at Stoke Newington in London. He started writing poetry at fifteen. He became a preacher at 24, and remained in partnership with Samuel Price, an assistant and later joint pastor. He lived at Abney House with Sir Thomas and Lady Mary. He gave himself to preaching and writing his entire life. He was an industrious hymn writer who wrote over 600 hymns, among many other works.