The Valley of Vision : A Collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions edited by Arthur Bennet
is a collection of Puritan prayers and meditations that demonstrate the richness of prayer during the Puritan period. It is a compilation that is well suited for personal or family devotions. The center of Puritan life was prayer and meditation and this collection displays the depth of Puritan prayer with a well assembled collection of prayers from:
| Thomas Watson | Thomas Shepard | Richard Baxter |
| John Bunyan | William Williams | Philip Dodderidge |
| Isaac Watts | William Romaine | Augustus Toplady |
| David Brainerd | Christmas Evans | William Jay |
| Charles Haddon Spurgeon | Henry Law |
What it provides
With Puritan life seeing prayer as a spiritual exercise, this devotional is not a how-to guide on prayer as Arthur Bennet says, “The book is not intended to be read as a prayer manual. The soul learns to pray by praying; for prayer is communion with a transcendent and immanent God […] The prayers should therefore be used as aspiration units, the several parts of which could become springboards for the individual’s own prayer subjects.”
Its use as a primer for prayer cannot be understated. I find it most helpful in reminding me of the breadth and depth of where my prayer life can go and how it can draw me closer to God. It is a nice lead-in to my prayer meditations that reminds me to shy away from superficial and hasty prayers but to instead consider the vastness of the Lord’s work and grace. I have used it multiple times a day to start my time alone with God.
What is in it
The Valley of Vision contains 405 pages of collected prayers that are broken into categories. While I have prayed through the book page-by-page, it has also been beneficial for the beginning of a meditation on a particular subject. The end of the book also provides a seven day morning and evening prayer.
| Father, Son, and Holy Spirit | Redemption and Reconciliation |
| Penitence and Deprecation | Needs and Devotions |
| Holy Aspirations | Approach to God |
| Gifts of Grace | Service and Ministry |
| Valediction | A Week’s Shared Prayers |
The modern question
While Bennet made minor changes to the text to make if more appropriate for individual reading by replacing “we” with “me” or “I”, the text is substantially the same as when it was first written. This can be vexing for some who are not as comfortable with, for example, King James Version language. I grew up with the KJV and do not have any issues with it and frequently fallback to quoting from the KJV because of its long history of use by me.
I personally don’t feel that this should be a limiting factor for this wonderful work that has been reprinted 18 times; however, some may find this to be an inconvenient or even distracting barrier to their prayers. While I don’t find this to be in any way to be this, I feel that it should be shared since I have received comments concerning the language when it has been used in group worship and prayer. This has never been a negative pushback but more of an opening to answer questions that the listener had from the reading.
Worth the addition to your prayer arsenal
While the language is old, the remarkable wisdom that comes out of it makes this a worthy addition to your prayer toolkit. If it does nothing more than illuminate how the Puritan fathers thought about their spiritual meditations and the great depth they reached in understanding and contemplating the grace of God, it has accomplished a great deal!
Well worth reading.