William Law’s A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1729) asks one blunt question: if we already pray to God, why do we not live the rest of our hours as though God were real? Law’s answer is that true religion is not a compartment of life but the shape of the whole of it. The book is his sustained, warm, and often witty argument that ordinary Christians — not only monks or clergy — are called to give every part of daily life to God. This guide offers a plain summary of what the book says, how it is built, and how to read it well today. You can read the full text free here on Ochorus, so treat what follows as a map for the journey rather than a substitute for it.
What the book is, and why Law wrote it
Law wrote in early eighteenth-century England, a comfortable age in which respectable churchgoing had quietly detached itself from wholehearted obedience. People said their prayers and then lived exactly as their neighbours did — for money, reputation, ease, and amusement. Law found this gap intolerable, and the whole book is an attempt to close it. His opening move is a definition that governs everything after it:
Devotion signifies a life given, or devoted, to God. He, therefore, is the devout man, who lives no longer to his own will, or the way and spirit of the world, but to the sole will of God, who considers God in everything, who serves God in everything, who makes all the parts of his common life parts of piety, by doing everything in the Name of God, and under such rules as are conformable to His glory.William Law
Notice what Law has done. He has moved devotion out of the prayer closet and into the whole of common life — the way we spend our money, our time, our talents, and our appetites. If God is worth praying to, Law reasons, He is worth obeying in everything, for there is no reason to make God the measure of our prayers that does not equally make Him the measure of our conduct. This is simply the New Testament pressed to its logical edge: whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31), and whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus (Colossians 3:17). Law will not let those verses remain decorative.
The argument, step by step
The book unfolds as a patient, cumulative case rather than a set of loose meditations. Law begins by defining devotion and then asks the question that gives the book its urgency: why do the generality of Christians fall so far short of the holiness their own faith describes? His answer is disarming. It is not that they lack the ability, and not that God’s commands are unclear. It is that they never seriously intend to please God in all they do. Where there is no intention, there is no obedience; and Law spends several chapters showing that a settled intention to please God changes everything it touches — beginning with how we handle our money and our leisure.
From there he turns to his most famous device: the portrait gallery. Rather than argue in the abstract, Law draws characters we recognise. Flavia is the woman of fashion who is genuinely religious in her own eyes and yet pours her whole estate into dress, entertainment, and self-display, with nothing left over for the poor. Miranda, her sister, has the same income and turns it into a life of quiet charity, plain living, and steady prayer. Later come Paternus and Eusebia, portraits of what a genuinely Christian education might form in a son and a daughter. These characters are not caricatures to sneer at; they are mirrors. Law’s point is that we are all one of them already, and that the difference between Flavia and Miranda is not circumstance but intention.
The book’s second half narrows from the whole of life to a concrete rule of prayer. Law recommends fixed hours through the day — early morning, then the third, sixth, and ninth hours (nine o’clock, noon, and three), and finally evening — each with its own theme: praise, humility, universal love and intercession, resignation to the will of God, and honest self-examination. He is careful that this is a scaffold, not a cage. The hours exist to school the heart in particular graces, so that devotion becomes a settled temper and not an occasional mood. The book closes by commending, plainly and without exaggeration, the greatness and happiness of a life wholly governed by such a spirit.
The central themes
Several convictions run through the whole work. The first is the wholeness of the Christian life. Law refuses any line between sacred and secular hours. Our money, our time, and our ordinary work are the raw material of holiness, which is why he can spend whole chapters on how a person uses an estate. This is the same instinct as Paul’s plea: present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service (Romans 12:1).
The second is intention. Law is relentless that we become what we mean to become. Most people are not defeated by great temptations but by never having resolved, seriously, to please God in the small ordinary choices. Jesus set the daily terms plainly: If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me (Luke 9:23).
The third is humility, which Law treats as the ground of every other virtue and the hardest thing the world will let us learn. He shows how education, fashion, and flattery train us out of it from childhood. The fourth is the reasonableness of holiness. Far from being a grim imposition, Law insists the devout life is the only sane response to reality:
A devout man makes a true use of his reason: he sees through the vanity of the world, discovers the corruption of his nature, and the blindness of his passion. He lives by a law which is not visible to vulgar eyes; he enters into the world of spirits; he compares the greatest things, sets eternity against time.William Law
The fifth theme is prayer as the rhythm of the day rather than a bolted-on duty. Law takes Paul’s pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17) seriously enough to build an actual schedule around it, and he sets it against our habit of laying up treasure where Christ told us not to (Matthew 6:19). Underneath all five sits Christ’s own priority: seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you (Matthew 6:33).
Who should read it
This is a book for the Christian who suspects there is a gap between what they believe and how they live, and who is willing to have that gap named. It has spoken with unusual force across three centuries: John Wesley, George Whitefield, William Wilberforce, and Samuel Johnson all traced part of their earnestness to it. Wesley said it convinced him of the impossibility of being half a Christian.
It is especially useful for readers who find grace-centred books leaving them unsure what to actually do on Monday morning, because Law is concrete to a fault. A fair caution belongs here too. Law writes before his own later mystical turn, and his emphasis falls heavily on effort, rule, and self-denial; a reader steeped only in this book could mistake the fruit of the Christian life for its root. Read alongside the gospel’s assurance of grace, however, its bracing seriousness is a gift. If you have ever felt that your faith had gone soft and comfortable, this is the book that will not let you stay there.
How to read it today
First, read it slowly and in order. The book is cumulative; the characters and the hours of prayer land with their full weight only after Law has built his case about intention. A chapter a day, with time to let it press on your own habits, serves better than a rushed straight-through reading.
Second, let the portraits examine you rather than your neighbour. Flavia and Miranda are only useful if you ask which of them your calendar and bank statement most resemble. Law means the mirror for you.
Third, translate his eighteenth-century particulars into your own. Few of us keep an estate or servants, but all of us make daily decisions about money, time, phones, and attention. Ask what Law’s principle — everything done to the glory of God — would mean for the actual choices in front of you today.
Fourth, try one of his hours before dismissing the whole scheme. You need not adopt all five fixed times at once. Begin with early morning prayer, or with the noon hour Law devotes to intercession and universal love, and see what a single fixed habit does to the rest of the day. Law’s own conclusion is that such a life is not narrow but wide and glad, and he asks us to test it rather than to take his word:
What is the reason that I, who have so often talked of the necessity of rules, and methods, and diligence, in worldly business, have all this while never once thought of any rules, or methods, or managements, to carry me on in a life of piety?William Law
Finally, hold Law’s rigour together with the rest of Scripture. His call to intention is meant to be answered in the strength Christ supplies, not in the grim self-reliance he can sometimes sound like. Paul learned contentment in every state (Philippians 4:11); Jesus set the standard high — Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect (Matthew 5:48) — precisely as those who are already loved. Read that way, A Serious Call becomes not a burden but a summons to freedom.
For reflection
Sit with these questions as you read. They work well in a journal or a small group.
- Law says the devout person is one who considers God in everything. Where in your ordinary day do you most easily forget to consider God at all?
- If someone charted your spending and your calendar, would they meet Flavia or Miranda? What single change would move you toward Miranda this month?
- Law argues that most of us fail not for want of ability but for want of a serious intention to please God. Is there an area where you have quietly stopped intending to obey?
- Which of Law’s hours — morning praise, humility, intercession, resignation to God’s will, or evening self-examination — does your life most need, and what would it cost to keep it for a week?
- Where might Law’s stress on effort need to be balanced by the assurance that you are already loved and accepted in Christ?
When you are ready, begin with the full text of A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, and let Law’s first chapter do its work before you rush ahead. If it stirs a hunger for the older devotional tradition Law drank from, Thomas à Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ is its natural companion, and Andrew Murray’s Humility takes up the very virtue Law places at the centre of the devout life.
