Prayer and the Psalter

from a letter written by C.S. Lewis on April 1, 1952 ...

The advantage of a fixed form of service is that we know what is coming.  Ex tempore [] public prayer has this difficulty; we don’t know whether we can mentally join in it until we’ve heard it—it might be phony or heretical.  We are therefore called upon to carry on a critical and a devotional activity at the same moment: two things hardly compatible.  In a fixed form we ought to have “gone through the motions” before in our private prayers; the rigid form really sets our devotions free.  Also find the more rigid it is, the easier it is to keep one’s thoughts from straying.  Also it prevents getting too completely eaten up by whatever happens to be the preoccupation of the moment (i.e. war, an election, or what not).  The permanent shape of Christianity shows through.  I don’t see how the ex tempe method can help becoming provincial, and I think it has a great tendency to direct attention to the minister rather than to God.

“The Psalter ought to be a precious and beloved book, if for no other reason than this:  it promises Christ’s death and resurrection so clearly and pictures his kingdom and the condition and nature of all Christendom—that it might well be called a little Bible” (Luther’s Works v.53, p.254)