1936
John and Donald Baillie were brothers born a year apart (1886 and 1887) in the remote Scottish Highland village of Gairloch.
{ 58 } Both studied at Edinburgh University and later at Germany's Marburg University. Both became respected theologians as well as noted authors.
Younger brother Donald, a shy man, became professor of systematic theology7 at St. Andrews, where he taught for twenty years. His major work, God Was in Christ, is regarded as one of the classics of twentieth-century theology.
Older brother John, who was professor of divinity at Edinburgh for twenty ״two years, is known in theological circles for works like Our Knowledge of God and The Idea of Revelation in Modem Thought. But his best-known work wasn't a theological tome at all. It was a simple book of prayers that ended up on the best-seller lists: A Diary of Private Prayer.
In a note preceding the thirty-one-day morning and evening devotional, he says simply, "Here are prayers for all the mornings and evenings of the month." Two additional morning and evening prayers are added to the end of the book in case you feel your Sunday prayers should be a bit different.
The language couched in King James English is formal, but nonetheless potent. On the morning of the ninth day his prayer opens with: "Here am I, O God, of little power and of mean estate, yet lifting up heart and voice to Thee before whom all created things are as dust and vapor."
On the evening of the twenty-seventh day, his prayer reads (in part):
When the way seems dark before me, give me grace to
walk trustingly;
When much is obscure to me, let me be all the more faithful to the little that I can clearly see;
When the distant scene is clouded, let me rejoice that at least the next step is plain;
When what Thou art is most hidden from my eyes, let me hold fast to what Thou dost command;
When insight falters, let obedience stand firm;
What I lack in faith, let me repay in love.
Each prayer comes through with poetic power, and the decades since its first publication have not diminished the book's usefulness. While the book became a best-seller in England, its sales in the United States have been strong too. It has also been translated into many other languages.