He is not only strong, but our strength, not only | the giver of life, but life itself, he not only be. stows, but is salvation, he not only teaches truth, but is truth, he not only shows the way to heaven, but is the way, not only communicates light, but is light. When we reflect that even His incommunicable attributes are employed, in never-ceasing exercise for the common benefit and happiness of mankind, adoration is melted into gratitude. When we consider, that even His justice, that flaming sword which threatened our eternal exclusion from Paradise, the attribute at which the best may tremble, for who is he that lives and sins not, is turned in our favour by the great propitiation made for sin; that heart must be hard, indeed, which is not softened into love. It is because we are so little accustomed to indulge these reflections, that our natural hardness ac. quires additional obduracy. Whatever good there is even in the renewed man, is but a faint adumbration of the perfections of God. The best created things, light itself, lose all their brightness when compared with the uncreated glory from which all they have is borrowed. The heavens are not pure in His sight, behold the moon and it shineth not. He chargeth His angels with folly. The sublimest intellectual intelligences, and the brightest visible operations of His power, are swal. lowed up in the contemplation of His underived original perfection. The foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of man, and the weakness of God is stronger than the strength of man. Yet though the highest conceivable created excellence is thrown into utter darkness, in the comparison with this surpassing splendour, yet these remote resemblances serve to convey some idea, but Oh how weak! some reminding, but Oh how inadequate! some conception, but Oh how faint! of the Divine perfections. Hence in the highest qualities of the best Christian we have a hint, a rudiment which serves to recal to our mind the Divine excellence, of which they are an emanation.-We use it, not as a means of overvaluing the creature, but of raising our adoration of the infinite, inexhaustible, overflowing fountain of natural, intellectual, and spiritual good. Thus, though we cannot search out the Almighty to perfection; yet these faint traces, are constant intimations to us to imitate, in our low measure and degree, all the imitable attributes of Almighty goodness.-He would never have said, be ye holy as I am holy,' if holiness had been absolutely unattainable. There must be an aim, however low, at this conformity to our divine pattern. The life which the Lord of glory condescended to lead on earth, has introduced us to the nearest possible view of the Divine perfections, and exhibited a clearer prospect of the possibility of a closer imitation of them, than could have been conveyed to us by any other means. His actions are not merely objects of human admiration. They all, with the exception of his miracles, imperatively demand to be imitat. ed, as well as admired. His meekness under reproaches the most contumelious; His patience under sufferings the most exquisite; His combination of active beneficence with unremitting devotion,-for, after days spent in successive acts of charity, He continued all night in prayer to God; His union of constant self-denial, with unwearied bounty; His enduring hunger, who could have relieved it by one of those miracles, so often performed for the relief of others; his compassion for sinners joined with His hatred of sin; His supplication for His enemies, extenuating their guilt by pleading their ignorance. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!' 4 If this religion be not practical, if this prac tice be not a pattern for our's, we know not what is. While we obey him then in praying for our fellow-creatures, let us remember that we must imitate his Divine philanthropy in assisting them; while we rank ourselves among his admirers by praising his excellences, let us remember we shall only be known to be his disciples when we love one another. If good works then be indispensable, and Faith be their great influencing principle, both must be kept alive, and kept in exercise by the aliment of prayer. Prayer is the chain of communication with God himself. The readiest way to be assimilated to his likeness, the best means of promoting our conformity to His will, of advancing our love to Him and to each other. If we neglect prayer, we rob our souls of the prescribed means of our serving him here, and of the fairest foretaste of that communion with Him, which will be our highest happiness hereafter. The obedience of the heart which grows out of a sound faith, rooted good desires, wellweighed resolutions of fidelity, formed in a higher strength than our own; a belief in the sacred Scriptures so confirmed as not to be shaken by any objections brought against them, by any difficulties to be found in them; the comparing faithfully all we have heard urged against Reli. gion, with all we have seen of its effects, and experienced of its benefits, all this is the solid ground on which future attainments must here. after be built, a ground to be tried by prayer in the enquiring mind and the seeking heart. And when our reason is become as strong on the side of Christianity as our belief-when our faith is as enlightened as it is implicit-when the growth of the one only confirms the domi. nion of the other, this is such an obedience of the heart as will infallibly produce obedience in the life; an obedience which will be both the cause and the consequence of effectual prayer. The renewing of the soul after the image of God is not otherwise to be obtained than by true spiritual heart-searching prayer. There may be a form of unfelt petitions, a ceremonious avowal of faith, a customary profession of repentance, a general acknowledgment of sin, uttered from the lips to God; but where is His image and superscription written upon the heart? Where is the transforming power of Religion in the life? Where is the living transcript of the Divine original? Where is that holiness to which the vision of the Lord is specifically promised? Where is the light, and life, and grace of the Redeemer exhibited in the temper and conduct? Yet we are assured, that if we are, Christians, there must be an aim at this conformity. As for the genuine Christian, however weak in faith and defective in obedience, yet he is still seeking, though with slow and faultering steps, the things which are above; he is still striving, though with unequal progress, for the prize of his high calling; he is still looking, though with a dim and feeble eye, for glory, honour, and immortality; He is still waiting, though not with a trust so lively as to annihilate the distance,to see his eternal redemption drawing nigh.Though his aims will always be far greater than his attainments, yet he is not discouraged; his hope is above, his heart is above, his treasure is above; no wonder then that his prayers are directed, and a large portion of his wealth sent forward thither, where he himself hopes soon to be. It is but transmitting his riches of both kinds, not only to his future, but his eternal home. Even if prayer were as worthless, with respect to present advantages, and religion as burthensome as some suppose, it would be a sufficient vindication of both that they lead to eternal bliss. When by a distant journey, we have been long separated from our own beloved habitation, we do not call that the most desirable road back to it which abounds with the gayest objects, but that which will bring us the most safely home. If, indeed, we can amuse ourselves with the scenery, without slackening our pace, or diverging from our path, it is well. It is no of. fence against the law of love, if we catch in passing, such innocent and safe delights as his bounty has scattered in our path. And if our journey have so many refreshments showered down by the hand of Divine beneficence, what shall be the delights of our home? accidental disappointment, may be brought to say, When I am in heaviness, I will think upon God.'-Oh, think upon Him now, now, when you are in prosperity, now, when your fortunes are flourishing, now when your hill is so strong that you think it shall never be moved-think upon Him when the scene is the brightest, when the world courts, flatteries mislead, and pleasures betray you; think on Him while you are able to think at all, while you possess the capacity of thinking. The time may come, when, He may turn his face from you, and you will be troubled.' Think of God when the alluring images of pleasure and of profit would seduce you from him. Prosperity is the season of peculiar peril. It is the bright day that bringeth forth the adder.' Think of God when the tempting world says, All this will I give thee. Trust not the insolvent world, it has cheated every creditor that ever trusted. It will cheat you. To those who are yet halting between two opinions, or rather between an opinion and an inclination, to those who approve the right, but pursue the wrong, those who are not without convictions, but which convictions pleasure stifles, or business overrules, those who are balancing between the world and Him who made it, who resolve to reform, but make the resolution a substitute for the performance; and oh how large, and in many points how respectable a class this is!-to these, to the doubting, and the dilatory, we would take the liberty to speak plainly. It is much to be feared, that secret, unconscious infidelity lies at the bottom of the little progress you make in your spiritual attainments. If the truth, certainty, and inconceivable importance of eternal things were once rooted and grounded in the heart, it would infallibly quicken both devotion and practice. We know, but If the heavens grow black with clouds, and we do not act upon the knowledge, that our storms arise, these only serve to quicken our great business in this world is to determine our pace, and make us avoid digression. If sick-choice for eternity. This is not a bye work, ness or accident befal us, our heart is still cheer- which may be deferred to any time at the haed with the thought that we are nearer home-zard of its not being done at all; it is the impethe future supports us under the present; arious business of the present hour, the next may little further say we-a little more fatigue, and we shall see the desire of our heart. If we are bent on security rather than amusement, the straightest and the safest way will determine our choice. Heaven is worth more sacrifices of pleasure and of profit than those to which a religious life may subject us; though, after all, it often calls for fewer and lighter than a worldly one imposes. But if it were as rough and thorny as those who have never tried it believe, it would be a sufficient apology for voluntarily encountering its hardships, that it is the only road to heaven. When the prosperous fool says, 'soul take thine ease, thou hast much goods laid up for thee,'-the prosperous Christian says, soul tremble at thine ease-be on thy guard.-Thou hast, indeed, much goods laid up for thee, but it is in a future world. Lose not a large inheritance for a paltry possession; forfeit not an unalienable reversion for a life interest,-a life which this very night may be required of thee.' Perhaps even the worldly and thoughtless man, under an occasional fit of dejection, or an not be granted us. It is not an affair to be kept in reserve, an affair to be postponed till other affairs are settled, for how many souls has this dilatory delusion ruined! The resolution you may make at this moment, and the practical effect of this resolution may determine your fate for ever. The decision, if delayed, may never be made; the call, now given, may never be repeated. Think what you put to hazard by delay.-There is not an hour in our lives on which eternal life, or eternal death may not depend. Shall we then, for a single moment, make it a matter of debate what our everlasting condition shall be? If it were a decision between two temporal concerns which you wese called upon to make, deliberation might be wisdom, because there might be degrees of comparison between their value, and consequently a doubt as to the predominance of the object, and the prudence of your choice. But the inequalities of created things are levelled when brought into comparison with the things of eternity-the difference of more or less, richer or poorer, prosperity or privation, no longer exists; the distinction is swallowed | sured will be without measure and without end; up when contemplated in the view of endless whilst the Elysian groves of the Pagan, and the happiness or endless misery. Here then, if paradise of the Mahometan have been graphicalyou hesitate, you have already taken your part; ly represented, the former by their poets, the irresolution is decision; deliberation is destruc- latter in their religious code. The one describes tion; you have already resolved. the inhabitants reposing in gloomy bowers in cheerless indolence, with the alternative of a restless activity exercised in contemptible pursuits, and renewing on inferior objects the busy feats in which they had delighted here below! The heroes who during life had slaughtered men, make war on beasts! The mighty warriors, who had made the earth to tremble, condescend in heaven to tame horses! The depart The hand which now holds the pen dares not denounce anathemas, but trembles as it transcribes the divinely inspired denunciation of the prophet Zephaniah. The great day of the Lord is near, it is near, it hasteth greatly; it is the voice of the day of the Lord, when the mighty man shall cry bitterly. That day is a day of wrath; a day of trouble and distress; a day of wasteness and desolation; a day of dark-ed Mussulman receives his celestial rewards in ness and gloominess; a day of clouds and thick darkness; a day of the trumpet and aların!' scenes of revelry and banquets of voluptuousness! What gratifications for an immaterial, immortal spirit! The whole scheme of future happiness exhi provision for the perishable part of man, to the entire exclusion of the immortal principle; both schemes stand in direct opposition to the laws of infinite wisdom, and the express word of Scripture. Both intimate as if the body were the part of our nature which is to exist after death, while the soul is the portion which is to be extinguished. Of a spiritual heaven, neither the obsolete mythology, nor the existing Koran, affords the slightest information. The Scripture views of heaven are given rather to quicken faith than to gratify curiosity. There the appropriate promises to spiritual be ings are purely spiritual. It is enough for believers to know that they shall be for ever with the Lord; and though it doth not yet appear what we shall be, yet we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like Him. In the vi sion of the Supreme Good, there must be supreme felicity. Our capacities of knowledge and happiness shall be commensurate with our duration. On earth, part of our enjoyment-a most fallacious part-consists in framing new objects for our wishes; in heaven there shall remain in us no such disquieting desires, for all which can be found we shall find in God. We shall not know our Redeemer by the hearing of the ear, but we shall see Him as he is; our knowledge, therefore, will be clear, because it will be intuitive. The awful ruins of imperial Rome, the still more defaced vestiges of learned Athens, present a deeply touching spectacle of departed glory.bited in these two systems, is a preposterous Still more affecting is it to contemplate in the study of history on the destruction of Carthage, of Babylon, of Memphis, whose very ruins are no longer to be found! How affecting to meditate on ancient Troy, whose very scite can no longer be determined! Yet here no wonder mixes with our solemn feeling. All these noble monuments of human grandeur were made of destructible materials, they could not, from their very nature, last for ever.-But, to a deeply reflecting mind, what is the ruin of temples, towers, palaces, and cities, what is the ruin of 'the great globe itself' compared with the destruction of one soul meant for immortality-a soul furnished by its bountiful Creator with all the means for its instruction, sanctification, redemption, and eternal bliss? And what presents the most mournful picture to us, and is in itself the most dreadful aggravation, is that its consciousness cannot be extinguished; the thought of what he might have been will magnify the misery of what he is a reflection which will accompany and torment the inextinguishable memory through a miserable eternity. Whether in the instance of the rich man, who 'in hell lifted up his eyes, being in torment,' we might dare believe that some remains of human tenderness for his relatives might survive in a ruined soul; or, whether his anguish was made more bitter, from the reflection, that he had been their corrupter, and therefore dreaded that their punishment might hereafter aggravate his own, we pretend not to say. In any event, it offers a lesson pregnant with instruction. It admonishes every impenitent offender, of the dreadful addition that may be made to his own misery, by that corrupt example which has ruined others. And it will be the consummation of his calamity that he can see nothing but justice in his condemnation. For it is worth observing, that the man in the parable brings no accusation against the equity of his sentence. Thus shall every condemned sinner 'justify God in his saying, and clear him when he is judged.' But though the anguish of an undone futurity, and the specific nature of the punishment, are exhibited with awful clearness and explicit exactness, in the gospel; how wisely has the Holy Spirit who dictated it, avoided all particulars of that heavenly happiness which we are yet as It is a glorious part of the promised bliss, that the book of prophecy shall be realized; the book of providence displayed, every mysterious dispensation unfolded, not by conjecture, but by vision. In the grand general view of Revelation, minute description would be below our ideas; circumstantial details would be disparaging; they would debase what they pretend to exalt. We cannot conceive the blessings prepared for us, until he who has prepared reveal them. If, indeed, the blessedness of the eternal world could be described, new faculties must be given us to comprehend it. If it could be conceived, its glories would be lowered, and our admiring wonder diminished. The wealth that can be counted has bounds; the blessings that can be calculated have limits. We now rejoice in the expectation of happiness inconceivable. To have conveyed it to our full apprehension, our con 512 THE WORKS OF HANNAH MORE. What ceptions of it must then be taken from some. | ferior to the glorious but indistinct glimpses thing with which we are already acquainted, which we now catch from the oracles of God, and we should be sure to depreciate the value of joy unspeakable, and full of glory. of things unseen, by a comparison with even Christian does not exult in that grand outline In short, of unknown, unimagined, yet consummate bliss the best of the things which are seen. if the state of heaven were attempted to be let-In THY presence is the fulness of joy, and at down to human intelligence, it would be far in- Thy right hand are pleasures for evermore? THE SPIRIT OF PRAYER. SELECTED AND COMPILED BY THE AUTHOR, FROM VARIOUS PORTIONS OF HER WORKS EXCLUSIVELY ON THAT SUBJECT. 66 Knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle." "I will endeavour that you may be able after my decease to have these things always in remembrance." 2 Peter, c. i. PREFACE. FROM a sick, and, in all human probability, a dying bed, the writer of these pages feels an earnest desire to be enabled, with the blessing of God, to execute a little plan which has at different times crossed her mind, but which she never found leisure to accomplish, till the present season of incapacity. "The importunity of friends," that hackneyed apology for works of inferior merit, is not, in the present instance, the less true for being worn threadbare. By many partial friends she has frequently been desired to write a volume exclusively on Prayer. With this request she has always declined complying; because, among other reasons, she was aware that she had previ ously exhausted-not the subject itself, which is indeed inexhaustible, but the slender resources of her own mind. In her, perhaps too numerous, printed works, written on different subjects, and at distant periods, there are very many volumes, in which not only some reference has been made, but some distinct portions assigned, to the all-important subject of Prayer. It is now her latest and warmest wish to be permitted to collect and examine some of those portions which treat more directly of this great duty; to unite the scattered members into one compact body, and to bring each under its proper head, into one point of view. All she is herself able to do, is to hear these extracts read by kind friends, and to adopt such passages as she may think proper for selection. Perhaps the silence and solitude of her present nightly watchings may, through Divine grace, impress her own heart with a still deeper sense of the unspeakable importance and value of Prayer, and of the support and consolation which may be granted in answer to this exercise, when every other support and consolation must inevitably fail. However small may be the use of this compilation to the reader, the writer at least is already reaping one benefit herself from what she has presumed to suggest to others,-the benefit of feeling, as she reviews these pages, how sadly she herself has fallen short in the duties she has In this re-examination she has sensibly felt how easy so repeatedly recommended. good upon paper, and how difficult in practice. is to be At the same time she humbly trusts that her very failures may have enabled her to touch these subjects more experimentally than she might have done had her own deficiencies been less powerfully recollected, and less acutely felt. The Author ventures to hope that her valued friends, to whom this selection is more especially dedicated, will consider it as the last bequest of one, who, about to quit this transitory scene, and feeling the deepest interest in their spiritual prosperity, as also for that of all her fellow Christians, is desirous, by this her final act, to testify at least her affectionate anxiety for their eternal happiness. The present weak state of the Author must apologize for inaccuracies and repetitions. CHAP. I. THE SPIRIT OF PRAYER. The necessity of Prayer founded on the connected with the subject of Prayer, being indeed that which constitutes the necessity of this corrup-duty, that some mention of the one ought to precede any discussion of the other. Let, then, the conviction that we have fallen from our original THE subject of man's apostacy is so nearly state, and that this lapse presents the most powerful incentive to prayer, furnish an apology for making a few preliminary remarks on this great article of our faith. The doctrine is not the less a fundamental doctrine, because it has been abused to the worst purposes; some having erroneously considered it as leaving us without hope, and others as lending an excuse to unresisted sin.-It is a doctrine which meets us in one unbroken series throughout the whole sacred volume; we find it from the third of Genesis, which records the event of man's apostacy, carried on through the history of its fatal consequences in all the subsequent instances of sin, individual and national, and running in one continued stream from the first sad tale of woe, to the close of the sacred canon in the Apocalyptic Vision. And, to remove the groundless hope, that this quality of inherent corruption belonged only to the profligate and abandoned, the Divine Inspirer of the sacred writers took especial care, that they should not confine themselves to relate the sins of these alone. Why are the errors, the weaknesses, and even the crimes of the best of men recorded with equal fidelity? Why are we told of the twice repeated deceit of the father of the faithful? Why of the single instance of vanity in Hezekiah? Why of the too impetuous zeal of Elijah? Why of the error of the almost perfect Moses? Why of the insincerity of Jacob? Why of the far darker crimes of the otherwise holy David? Why of the departure of the wisest of men from that piety displayed with sublimity unparalleled in the dedication of the Temple? Why seems it to have been invariably studied, to record with more minute detail the vices and errors of these eminent men, than even those of the successive impious kings of Israel, and of Judah; while these last are generally dismissed with the brief, but melancholy sentence, that they did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord; followed only by too frequent an intimation that they made way for a successor worse than themselves? The answer is, that the truth of our universal lapse could only be proved by transmitting the record of those vices, from which even the holiest men were not exempt. Had the Holy Scriptures kept back from man the faithful delineations of the illustrious characters to which we have referred, the truth of the doctrine in question, though occasionally felt, and in spite of his resistance, forced upon him, would not have been believed; or, if believed, would not have been acknowledged. Christianity hangs on a few plain truths; that God is, and that he is the rewarder of all that seek him; that man has apostatised from his original character, and by it has forfeited his original destination: that Christ came into this world and died upon the cross to expiate sin, and to save sinners; that after his ascension into Heaven, he did not leave his work imperfect. He sent his Holy Spirit, who performed his first office by giving to the Apostles miraculous powers. His offices did not cease there; he has indeed withdrawn his miraculous gifts, but he still continues his silent but powerful operations, and that in their due order;VOL. II. first, that of convincing of sin, and of changing the heart of the sinner, before he assumes the gracious character of the Comforter. What need, then, of heresies to perplex doctrines, or of philosophy to entangle, or of will-worshippers to multiply them? We do not deny that there are, in Christianity, high and holy mysteries; but these secret things,' though they belong to God,' have their practical uses for us; they teach us humility, the prime Christian grace; thy send us to prayer, and they exercise faith, the parent attribute of all other graces, This religion of facts, then, the poorest listeners in the aisles of our churches understand sufficiently, to be made by it wise unto salvation. They are saved by a practical belief of a few simple but inestimable truths. By these same simple truths, martyrs and confessors, our persecuted saints, and our blessed reformers were saved. By these few simple truths, Locke, and Boyle, and Newton, were saved; not because they saw their religion through the glass of their philosophy, but because theirs was not a 'philosophy, falsely so called;' nor their science, a science of opposition;' but a science and a philosophy which were made subservient to Christianity, and because their deep humility sanctified their astonishing powers of mind. These wonderful men, at whose feet the learned world is still satisfied to sit, sat themselves at the feet of Jesus. Had there been any other way but the cross by which sinners could be saved, they, perhaps of all men were best qualified to have found it. To return, then, to the particular doctrine under consideration:-Let us believe man is corrupt, because the Bible tells us he is so. Let us believe that all were so by nature, even the best, since we learn it from Divine authority. Let us, from the same authority, trace the disorder to its source from a fallen parent, its seat in a corrupt heart, its extent through the whole man, its universality over the entire race. All are willing to allow that we are subject to frailties, to imperfections, to imfirmities; facts compel us to confess a propensity to crimes, but worldly men confine the commission of them to the vulgar. But to rest here would lead us to a very false estimate of the doctrine in question, contrary to the decisive language of Scripture ; it would establish corruption to be an accident, and not a root. It would by a division of offenders into two classes, deny that all offences are derived from one common principle. If, then, men would examine their own bosoms as closely as they censure the faults of others loudly, we should all find there the incipient stirrings of many a sin, which, when brought into action by circumstances, produce consequences the most appalling. Let us then bless God, not that we are better than other men, but that we are placed by Providence out of the reach of being goaded by that temptation, stimulated by that poverty, which, had they been our lot, might have led to the same termination. Let, then, the fear of God, the knowledge of His Word, and the knowledge of ourselves, teach us, that there is not, by nature, so wide a difference between ourselves and others as we 3 T |