I do not recommend an unpractical physical mortification as the rule for such early hours with God. Fully believing that there is a place for definite "abstinence" in the Christian (and certainly in the ministerial) life, I do not think that that place is, as a rule, the early morning hour. Very many men only procure a bad headache for the day by beginning any sort of earnest mental effort without food. Such men should take care accordingly to eat a _chotee h·zaree_ (as old Indians say), "a little breakfast," however little, before they pray and read. There are appliances, simple and inexpensive, by which the man in lodgings can, without giving any one trouble, provide himself with his cup of cocoa or coffee as soon as he is up; and he will be wise to do something of this sort, if he is a man whose work by day is heavy for both body and spirit, and who is thus specially apt to find the truth of what doctors tell us, that "sleep is, in itself, an exhausting process."
But at any cost, my dear friend and Brother in the Ministry, we must have our Morning Watch with God, in prayer and in His Word, before all the day's action. Not even the earliest possible Church service can rightly take the place of that.
It is obvious to add that punctuality and early hours in the morning will bring into your life another rule; that of punctuality and reasonably good hours at night. No temptation is greater, sometimes, for the man alone than to ignore or break such a rule. And no doubt the exigencies of pastoral life, sometimes, but surely not often, make it hard to keep it. But it is extremely important, for the man who would walk closely and humbly with his God, to end the day deliberately at His feet. And here accordingly is another occasion for watchfulness, and for method, and for will. Do not _drift into the night_. Have a settled hour when, as a habit, you lay interests and intercourse of other sorts down, and turn unhurried to the holy interview, spreading open your Bible by the lamp, the Bible marked and scored with signs of past research, and then kneeling, or standing, or _pacing_, for your prayer--your prayer which is to be the very simplest (while most reverent) speech with the Lord.