Bill Wilson was ruining a promising career on Wall Street with his problem drinking. He became a Christian through the influence of the Oxford Group and resolved with Christ’s help to abstain from alcohol. During a business trip to Ohio, he became tempted to drink and realized he must talk to another alcoholic to stay sober. He met Robert Smith, a physician whose thriving medical practice was being undermined by alcoholism. Bill W and Dr. Bob, as they came to be known in AA, resolved to maintain sobriety and practice the four moral principles of the Oxford Group: absolute honesty, absolute unselfishness, absolute love, and absolute purity and derived accountability questions to ask each other: Is it true or false? How does it affect someone else? Is it ugly or beautiful? Is it right or wrong? The four absolutes were taken from a book by Robert Speer (1897-1947), The Principles of Jesus. He identified fifty-two principles Jesus taught, including the four adopted by the Oxford Group that evolved into the four absolutes of AA. Robert worked as a chief strategist and administrator for The Presbyterian Board of Foreign Mission, the largest US mission agency in those days. As a mission advocate and someone committed to prayer, Robert singled out the early church for its deep reliance on prayer and a corresponding resolve to be faithful to Jesus’ commission to share the gospel with all nations. His 1936 diary contains daily handwritten prayers, but I couldn’t read his writing. My script is bad enough; his is worse. Included in his diary is a typewritten prayer “from Miss Cratty’s notebook.” It may be a reference to Mabel Cratty, a YWCA worker with whom he shared a mutual interest in mission.
Robert Speer
Our Father, may each of us bring to this hour…not only our minds but our hearts. As on the way to Emmaus, the hearts of the disciples burned within them as they talked because Jesus was with them, so may we have such a feeling of Thy Presence here with us. Deliver us from fretful complaining about the way things are, from readiness to lay blame, from quick acceptance of solutions without considering the trouble this may bring to others, from being respecters of persons so that we are indifferent to what comes to some, and deeply concerned if the same thing comes to others; from undue regard to our own interests. Help us to be like Thee, this morning, today; touched with the infirmities of one another, very patient. Thou knowest what is the strain of our work and the weariness of our bodies. Thou knowest how dependent we are upon Thee for wisdom. We turn to Thee, O Giver of life, for release of strain, for new vigor, for Thy counsel. We yield all our desires to Thy will and offer our prayers in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Robert Elliott Speer Manuscript Collection. Series VI: Notebooks, Box 95, File 95.5.
Rev. Dr. Peter James served 42 years as the senior of Vienna Presbyterian Church in Vienna, VA — 21 years in the 20th century and 21 years in the 21st century. He retired in 2021 and now serves as Pastor-in-Residence at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.
Even as a pastor, prayer came slowly to Pete. Read Pete’s story.