perfections, or the heart will not be led to to consider it superficially; but they do not the adoration of them. It would not be a endeavour to get their minds imbued with its reasonable service, if the mind was excluded. spirit. If they store their memory with its It must be rational worship, or the human facts, they do not impress their hearts with its worshipper would not bring to the service truths. They do not regard it as the nutrithe distinguishing faculty of his nature, ment on which their spiritual life and growth which is reason. It must be spiritual wor- depend. They do not pray over it: they do ship, or it would want the distinctive quality not consider all its doctrines as of practical to make it acceptable to Him who is a spirit, and who has declared that he will be worshipped in spirit and in truth.'

Prayer is right in itself as the most powerful means of resisting sin and advancing in holiness. It is above all right, as every thing is, which has the authority of Scripture, the command of God, and the example of Christ.

There is a perfect consistency in all the ordinations of God; a perfect congruity in the whole scheme of his dispensations. If man were not a corrupt creature, such prayer as the Gospel enjoins would not have been necessary. Had not prayer been an important means for curing those corruptions, a God of perfect wisdom would not have ordered it. He would not have prohibited every thing which tends to inflame and promote them, had they not existed; nor would he have commanded every thing that has a tendency to diminish and remove them, had not their existence been fatal. Prayer, therefore, is an indispensable part of his economy and of our obedience.

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application; they do not cultivate that spiritual discernment, which alone can enable them judiciously to appropriate its promises, and apply its denunciations to their own actual case. They do not use it as an unerring line to ascertain their own rectitude, or detect ther own obliquities.

In our retirements we too often fritter away our precious moments--moments rescued from the world-in trivial, sometimes, it is to be feared, in corrupt thoughts. But if we must give the reins to our imagination, let us send this excursive faculty to range among great and noble objects. Let it stretch forward, under the sanction of faith and the anticipation of prophecy, to the accomplishment of those glorious promises and tremendous threatenings which will soon be realised in the eternal world. These are topics which, under the safe and sober guidance of Scripture, will fix its largest speculations, and sustain its loftiest flights. The same Scripture, while it expands and elevates the mind, will keep it subject to the dominion of truth; while at the same time it will teach it, that its boldest excursions must fall infinitely short of the astonishing realities of a future state.

It is a hackneyed objection to the use of Prayer, that it is offending the omniscience of God to suppose he requires information of our wants. But no objection can be more Though we cannot pray with a too deep futile. We do not pray to inform God of sense of sin, we may make our sins too exour wants, but to express our sense of the clusively the object of our prayers. While wants which he already knows. As he has we keep, with a self-abasing eye, our own not so much made his promises to our neces- corruptions in view, let us look with equal sities as to our requests, it is reasonable that intentness on that mercy which cleanseth our requests should be made before we can from all sin. Let our prayers be all humilihope that our necessities will be relieved.-ation, but let them not be all complaint. God does not promise to those who want that When men indulge no other thought but that they shall have,' but to those who ask; they are attainted rebels, the hopelessness of nor to those who need that they shall find,' pardon hardens them into disloyalty. Let but to those who seek.' So far, therefore, them look to the mercy of the King, as well from his previous knowledge of our wants as to the rebellion of the subject. If we conbeing a ground of objection to Prayer, it is, template his grace as displayed in the Gosin fact, the true ground for our application.pel, then, though our humility will increase, Were he not Knowledge itself, our informa- our despair will vanish. Gratitude in this, tion would be of as little use, as our applica- as in human instances, will create affection. tion would be, were he not Goodness itself. We love him because he first loved us.' We cannot attain to a just notion of Pray- Let us, therefore, always keep our unworer while we remain ignorant of our own na-thiness in view, as a reason why we stand in ture, of the nature of God as revealed in need of the mercy of God in Christ; but Scripture, of our relation to him, and de- never plead it as a reason why we should not pendence on him. If, therefore, we do not draw nigh to him to implore that mercy. The live in the daily study of the Holy Scrip- best men are unworthy for their own sakes; tures, we shall want the highest motives to the worst, on repentance, will be accepted this duty, and the best helps for performing for his sake, and through his merits. it; if we do, the cogency of these motives, and the inestimable value of these helps, will render argument unnecessary, and exhortation superfluous.

In prayer, then, the perfections of God, and especially, his mercies in our redemption, should occupy our thoughts, as much as our sins; our obligations to him, as much One cause, therefore, of the dulness of as our departures from him. We should many Christians in Prayer, is their slight ac- keep up in our hearts a constant sense of our quaintance with the sacred volume. They own weakness, not with a design to discour hear it periodically, they read it occasional-age the mind and depress the spirits, but ly, they are contented to know it historically, with a view to drive us out of ourselves, in VOL. II.

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search of the Divine assistance. We should contemplate our infirmity, in order to draw us to look for his strength, and to seek that power from God which we vainly look for in ourselves: we do not tell a sick friend of his danger in order to grieve or terrify him, but to induce him to apply to his physician, and to have recourse to his remedy.

and this most harmoniously combines 'the glory of God in the highest, with peace on earth, and good will to men.'

The beauty of Scripture,' says the great Saxon reformer, consists in pronouns.' This God is our God; God, even our own God shall bless us. How delightful the appropriation! to glorify him as being in himAmong the charges which have been self consummate excellence, and to love him brought against serious piety, one is, that it from the feeling that his excellence is diteaches men to despair. The charge is just, rected to our felicity! Here modesty would in one sense, as to the fact; but false in the be ingratitude, disinterestedness, rebellion. sense intended. It teaches us to despair, in- It would be severing ourselves from him, in deed, of ourselves, while it inculcates that whom we live, and move, and are; it would faith in a Redeemer, which is the true anti-be dissolving the astonishing connection dote to despair. Faith quickens the doubt- which he had condescended to establish being, while it humbles the presumptuous spi-tween himself and his rational creatures. rit. The lowly Christian takes comfort in the blessed promise, that God will never forsake them that are his. The presumptuous man is equally right in the doctrine; but wrong in applying it. He takes that comfort to himself which was meant for another class of characters. The mal-appropriation of Scripture promises and threatenings is the cause of much error and delusion.

The Scripture saints make this union the chief ground of their grateful exultation: My strength,'' 6 my rock.' my fortress,' my deliverer!' Again, let the God of my salvation be exalted! Now take away the pronoun, and substitute the article the how comparatively cold is the impression! The consummation of the joy arises from the peculiarity, the intimacy, the endearment of the relation.

Some devout enthusiasts have fallen into error by an unnatural and impracticable dis⚫ Nor to the liberal Christian is the grateful interestedness, asserting that God is to be joy diminished, when he blesses his God as loved exclusively for himself, with an abso- the God of them that trust in him.' All lute renunciation of any view of advantage general blessings, will he say, all providento ourselves; yet that prayer cannot be tial mercies, are mine individually, are mine mercenary, which involves God's glory with as completely as if no other shared in the our own happiness, and makes his will the enjoyment-life, light, the earth and heav law of our requests. Though we are to de- ens, the sun and stars, whatsoever sustains sire the glory of God supremely; though this the body, and recreates the spirits? My obought to be our grand actuating principle; ligation is as great as if the mercy had been yet he has graciously permitted, commanded, made purely for me; as great? nay, it is invited us, to attach our own happiness to greater; it is augmented by a sense of the this primary object. The Bible exhibits not millions who participate in the blessing. The only a beautiful, but an inseparable combi- same enlargement of personal obligation nation of both, which delivers us from the holds good, nay, rises higher, in the mercies danger of preposterously imagining, that an of Redemption. The Lord is my Saviour, absolute renunciation of all benefit to our-as completely as if he had redeemed only selves is necessary for the promotion of God's me. That he has redeemed a great multiglory on the one hand; and on the other, tude, which no man can number, of all nafrom seeking any happiness independent of tions, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, him, and underived from him. In enjoin-is diffusion without abatement; it is general ing us to love him supremely, he has con- participation without individual diminution. nected an unspeakable blessing with a para- Each has all. mount duty, the highest privilege with the most positive command.

In adoring the providence of God, we are apt to be struck with what is new and out of What a triumph for the humble Christian course, while we too much overlook long ha to be assured, that the everlasting God, the bitual, and uninterrupted mercies. But Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth,' common mercies, if less striking, are more is the God of his life, to know that he is even valuable, both because we have them alinvited to take the Lord for his God. To ways, and for the reason above assigned, beclose with God's offers, to accept his invita- cause others share them. The ordinary tions, to receive God as our portion, must blessings of life are overlooked for the very surely be more pleasing to our heavenly reason that they ought to be most prized, be Father, than separating our happiness from cause they are most uniformly bestowed. his glory. To disconnect our interests from They are most essential to our support, and his goodness, is at once to detract from his when once they are withdrawn, we begin to perfections, and to obscure the brightness of find that they are also most essential to our our own hopes. The declarations of the in- comfort. Nothing raises the pride of a blesspired writers are confirmed by the authority sing like its removal, whereas it was its conof the heavenly hosts. They proclaim that tinuance which should have taught us its the glory of God and the happiness of his worth. We require novelties to awaken creatures, so far from interfering, are con- our gratitude, not considering that it is the nected with each other. We know but of duration of mercies which enhances their one anthem composed and sung by angels, value. We want fresh excitements. We

consider mercies long enjoyed as things of course, as things to which we have a sort of claim by prescription; as if God had no right to withdraw what he has once bestowed, as if he were obliged to continue what he has once been pleased to confer.

own dull affections. And as the recapitulation of our wants tends to keep up a sense of our dependence, the enlarging on our especial mercies will tend to keep alive a sense of gratitude; while indiscriminate petitions, confessions, and thanksgiving, leave the mind to wander in indefinite devotion, and unaffecting generalities, without personality, and without appropriation. It must be obvious, that we except those grand universal points in which all have an equal interest, and which must always form the essence of family, and, especially, of public prayer.

But that the sun has shone unremittingly from the day that God created him, is not a less stupendous exertion of power, than that the hand which fixed him in the heavens, and marked out his progress through them, once said by his servant, Sun, stand thou still upon Gideon.' That he has gone on in his strength, driving his uninterrupted career, As we ought to live in a spirit of obediand rejoicing as a giant to run his course,' ence to his commands, so we should live in a for six thousand years, is a more astonishing frame of waiting for his blessings on our exhibition of Omnipotence than that he prayers, and in a spirit of gratitude when we should have been once suspended by the hand have obtained it. This is that preparation which set him in motion. That the ordinan-of the heart' which would always keep us in ces of Heaven, that the established laws of a posture for duty. If we desert the duty nature, should have been for one day inter- because an immediate blessing does not visirupted to serve a particular occasion, is a bly attend it, it shows that we do not serve less real wonder, and certainly a less sub- God out of conscience, but selfishness; that stantial blessing, than that in such a multi-we grudge expending on him that service tude of ages they should have pursued their which brings us in no immediate interest. appointed course, for the comfort of the Though he grants not our petition, let us newhole system. ver be tempted to withdraw our application.

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As the affections of the Christian ought to Our reluctant devotions may remind us of be set on things above, so it is for them that the remark of a certain great political wit,* his prayers will be chiefly addressed. God, who apologised for his late attendance iu parin promising to give those who delight in liament, by his being detained while a party him the desire of their heart,' could never of soldiers were dragging a volunteer to his mean temporal things; for these they might duty. How many excuses do we find for desire improperly as to the object, and inor- not being in time! How many apologies dinately as to the degree. The promise re- for brevity! How many evasions for neglates principally to spiritual blessings. He lect! How unwilling too often, are we to not only gives us these mercies, but the very come into the Divine presence, how reluctant desire to obtain them is also his gift. Here to remain in it! Those hours which are our prayer requires no qualifying, no condi- least valuable for business, which are least tioning, no limitation. We cannot err in seasonable for pleasure, we commonly give our choice, for God himself is the object of to religion. Our energies, which were so it: we cannot exceed in the degree, unless readily exerted in the society we have just it were possible to love him too well, or to quitted, are sunk as we approach the Divine please him too much. presence. Our hearts, which were all alacrity in some frivolous conversation, become cold and inanimate, as if it were the natural property of devotion to freeze the affections. Our animal spirits, which so readily performed their functions before, now slacken their vigour, and lose their vivacity. The sluggish body sympathises with the unwilling mind, and each promotes the deadness of the other; both are slow in listening to the call of duty; both are soon weary in performing it. How do our fancies rove back to the pleasures we have been enjoying! How apt are the diversified images of those pleasures to mix themselves with our better thoughts, to pull down our higher aspirations! As prayer requires all the energies of the compound being of man, so we too often feel as if there were a confederacy of body, soul, and spirit, to disincline and disqualify us for it.

God shows his munificence in encouraging us to ask most earnestly for the greatest things, by promising that the smaller shall be added unto us.' We therefore acknowledge his liberality most, when we request the highest favors. He manifests his infinite superiority to earthly fathers, by chiefly delighting to confer those spiritual gifts which they less solicitously desire for their children, than those worldly advantages on which God sets so little value.

We should endeavour to render our private devotions effectual remedies for our own particular sins. Prayer against sin, in general, is too indefinite to reach the individual case. We must bring it home to our own hearts, else we may be confessing another man's sins, and overlooking our own. If we have any predominant fault, we sould pray more especially against the fault. If we pray When the heart is once sincerely turned to for any virtue of which we particularly stand religion, we need not, every time we pray, in need, we should dwell on our own deficien- examine into every truth, and seek for concies in that virtue, till our souls become viction over and over again; but assume deeply affected with our want of it. Our that those doctrines are true, the truth of prayers should be circumstantial, not as was which we have already proved. From a before observed, for the information of Infi- general and fixed impression of these princi nite Wisdom, but for the stirring up of our

Mr. Sheridan.

ples, will result a taste, a disposedness, a love, florid talk with which we were so well satis so intimate, that the convictions of the un-fied: the latter consisted, it may be, of shinderstanding will become the affections of ing thoughts, floating on the fancy, eloquent the heart. be the sighing of a contrite spirit, abased by words dwelling on the lips; the former might the feeling of its own unworthiness, and aw ed by the perfections of a holy and heartsearching God. The heart is dissatisfied with its own dull and tasteless repetitions, which, with all their imperfections, Infinite Goodness may, perhaps, hear with favour.*We may not only be elated with the fluency but even with the fervency of our prayers Vanity may grow out of the very act of renouncing it, and we may begin to feel proud at having humbled ourselves so eloquently.

To be deeply impressed with a few fundamental truths, to digest them thoroughly, to meditate on them seriously, to pray over them fervently, to get them deeply rooted in the heart, will be more productive of faith and holiness, than to labour after variety, ingenuity, or elegance. The indulgence of imagination will rather distract than edify. Searching after ingenious thoughts will rather divert the attention from God to ourselves, than promote fixedness of thought, singleness of intention, and devotedness of spirit. Whatever is subtle and refined, is in danger of being unscriptural. If we do not guard prayer equally distinct from that facility and There is, however, a strain and spirit of the mind, it will learn to set more value on copiousness for which we certainly are never original thoughts than devout affections. It the better in the sight of God, and from that is the business of prayer to cast down ima- constraint and dryness for which we may be ginations which gratify the natural activity never the worse. of the mind, while they leave the heart un- pious strain of prayer, in which the supplicant There is a simple, solid, humbled. We should confine ourselves to the pre-own dependence, and of the importance of is so filled and occupied with a sense of his sent business of the present moment; we the things for which he asks, and so persuashould keep the mind in a state of perpetual ded of the power and grace of God through dependence; we should entertain no long Christ to give him those things, that while views. Now is the accepted time.' To- he is engaged in it, he does not merely imaday we must hear his voice.' 'Give us this gine, but feels assured that God is nigh to day our daily bread.' The manna will not him as a reconciled Father, so that every keep till to-morrow: to-morrow will have burden and doubt are taken off from his its own wants, and must have its own peti- mind. He knows,' as St. John expresses tions. To-morrow we must seek anew the it, that he has the petitions he desired of bread of heaven. while they are yet speaking I will hear.' God,' and feels the truth of that promise, This is the perfection of Prayer.

We should, however, avoid coming to our devotions with unfurnished minds. should be always laying in materials for prayWe er, by a diligent course of serious reading, by treasuring up in our minds the most important truths. If we rush into the Divine pre. sence with a vacant, or ignorant, or unprepared mind, with a heart full of the world; as we shall feel no disposition or qualification for the work we are about to engage in, so we cannot expect that our petitions will be heard or granted.' There must be some congruity between the heart and the object, some affinity between the state of our minds and the business in which they are employed, if we would expect success in the work.

We are often deceived both as to the principle and the effect of our prayers. When, from some external cause, the heart is glad, the spirits light, the thoughts ready, the tongue voluble, a kind of spontaneous eloquence is the result; with this we are pleased, and this ready flow we are willing to impose on ourselves for piety.

CHAP. IV.

On the Efficacy of Prayer.

the specious ground of humility too, though It is objected by a certain class, and on we do not always find the objector himself quite as humble as his plea would be thought, that it is arrogant in such insignificant beings as we are to presume to lay our petty necessities before the Great and Glorious to the multitude of trifling and even interGod, who cannot be expected to condescend fering requests which are brought before him by his creatures. These and such like objections arise from mean and unworthy thoughts of the Great Governor of the Uniconsided the Most High as such a one as verse. It seems as if those who make them certain given quantity of business but who themselves;' a Being, who can perform a

On the other hand, when the mind is dejected, the animal spirits low, the thoughts. confused; when apposite words do not rea- *Of these sort of repititions, our admirable dily present themselves, we are apt to accuse Church Liturgy has been accused as a fault; but our hearts of want of fervour, to lament our this defcct, if it be one, happily accommodates itweakness, and to mourn that, because we self to our infirmities. Where is the favoured behave had no pleasure in praying, our prayers ing whose attention never wanders, whose heart have, therefore, not ascended to the throne of accompanies his lips in every sentence? Is there mercy. In both cases we, perhaps, judge of the thoughts, no inconstancy of the heart, which no absence of mind in the petitioner, no wandering ourselves unfairly. These unready accents, these repetitions are wisely calculated to correct, these faltering praises, these ill-expressed to rouse the dead attention, to bring back the petitions, may find more acceptance than the strayed affections?

would be overpowored with an additional | of casuistry, which have puzzled the world quantity. Or, at best, is it not considering ever since the question was first set afloat by the Almighty in the light, not of an Infinite its original propounders. God, but of a great man, of a minister, or a king, who, while he superintends public and national concerns, is obliged to neglect small and individual petitions, because his hands being full, he cannot spare that leisure and attention which suffice for every thing? They do not consider him as that infinitely gracious Being, who, while he beholds at once all that is doing in heaven and in earth, is at the same time as attentive to the prayer of the poor destitute, as present to the sorrowful sighing of the prisoner, as if each of these forlorn creatures were individually the object of his undivided attention.

These critics, who are for sparing the Supreme Being the trouble of our prayers, and who, if I may so speak without profaneness, would relieve Omnipotence of part of his burden, by assigning to his care only such a portion as may be more easily managed, seem to have no adequate conception of his attributes.

They forget that infinite wisdom puts him as easily within reach of all knowledge, as infinite power does of all performance; that he is a Being in whose plans complexity makes no difficulty, variety no obstruction, and multiplicity no confusion; that to ubiquity distance does not exist; that to infinity space is annihilated; that past, present, and future, are discerned more accurately at one glance of His eye, to whom a thousand years are as one day, than a single moment of time or a single point of space can be by ours.

Another class continue to bring forward, as pertinaciously as if it had never been answered, the exhausted argument, that seeing God is immutable, no petitions of ours can ever change Him: that events themselves being settled in a fixed and unalterable course, and bound in a fatal necessity, it is folly to think that we can disturb the established laws of the universe, or interrupt the course of Providence by our prayers; and that it is absurd to suppose these firm decrees can be reversed by any requests of

ours.

And as the plain man only got up and walked, to prove there was such a thing as motion, in answer to the philosopher who, in an elaborate theory, denied it; so the plain Christian, when he is borne down with the assurance that there is no efficacy in prayer, requires no better argument to repel the assertion than the good he finds in prayer itself. A Christian knows, because he feels, that prayer is, though in a way to him inscrutable, the medium of connexion between God and his rational creatures, the method appointed by Him to draw down his blessings upon us. The Christian knows that prayer is the appointed means of uniting two ideas, one of the highest manificence, the other of the most profound lowliness, within the compass of the imagination; namely, that it is the link of communication between the High and Lofty One who inhabiteth eternity, and that heart of the contrite in which be delights to dwell.' He knows that this inexplicable union between beings so unspeakably, so essentially different, can only be maintained by prayer; that this is the strong but secret chain which unites time with eternity, earth with heaven, man with God.

The plain Christian, as was before observ. ed, cannot explain why it is so; but while he feels the efficacy, he is contented to let the learned define it; and he will no more postpone prayer till he can produce a chain of reasoning on the manner in which he derives benefit from it, than he will postpone eating till he can give a scientific lecture on the nature of digestion: he is contented with knowing that his meat has nourished him : and he leaves to the philosopher, who may choose to defer his meal till he has elaborated his treatise, to starve in the interim.The Christian feels better than he is able to explain, that the functions of his spiritual life can no more be carried on without habitual prayer, than those of his natural life without frequent bodily nourishment. He feels renovation and strength grow out of the use of the appointed means, as necessarily in the one case as in the other. He feels that the health of his soul can no more be sustained, and its powers kept in continual vigour by the prayers of a distant day, than his body by the aliment of a distant day.

Without entering into the wide and trackless field of fate and free will, we would only observe, that these objections apply equally to all human actions as well as to prayer. It may therefore with the same propriety be urged, that seeing God is immutable and his decrees unalterable, therefore our actions can produce no change in Him or in our own state. Weak as well as impious reasoning It may be questioned whether even the mo-more imperative than any argument on its dern French and German philosophers might not be prevailed upon to acknowledge the existence of God, if they might make such a use of his attributes.

How much more wisdom as well as happiness results from a humble Christian spirit! Such a plain practical text as Draw near unto God, and he will draw near unto you,' carries more consolation, more true knowledge of his wants and their remedy to the heart of a penitent sinner, than all the tomes

But there is one motive to the duty in question, far more constraining to the true believer than all others that can be named;

utility, than any conviction of its efficacy, even than any experience of its consolations. Prayer is the command of God; the plain, positive, repeated injunction of the Most High, who declares, 'He will be inquired of.' This is enough to secure the obedience of the Christian, even though a promise were not, as it always is, attached to the command. But in this case, to our unspeakable comfort, the promise is as clear as the precept: Ask, and ye shall receive.' This is encour