spirit of activity would tend to stifle the spirit of prayer, and the sound of conflict and the alarms of coming danger impede its progress and stagger its perseverance. Our Master, foreseeing these times and these dangers, warns His disciples of the tendency and temptation to relax their continuousness in prayer, and speaks to them the parable to this end, that "men ought always to pray, and not to faint."

II.

Times Adverse to Prayer.

"AND if by prayer

Incessant, I could hope to change the will
Of Him who all things can, I would not cease
To weary Him with my assiduous cries."

LET Thy merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of Thy humble servants; and that they may obtain their petitions make them to ask such things as shall please Thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

TIMES ADVERSE TO PRAYER.

HE parable in which our Lord seeks to stimulate His followers in the duty of prayer, may at first sight seem so conceived as rather to deter than to encourage. He sketches a woman in circumstances in which it seemed more than hopeless to expect success. She is a widow who is bereft alike of the power to enforce her claims, or of the means to win her cause with a bribe. The man she has to deal with is drawn as unmoved by any of the motives which touch even the worst of our race.

There is a rude sense of right in most men's breasts; and the appeal of outraged helplessness is not often made in vain. But this judge was in his very nature incapable of understanding or feeling the force of such

an appeal: he was an unjust judge. Again, even in cases where men have no natural and conscientious sympathy with righteousness, the instinct of retribution frequently arouses a fear of God, which impels them to acts of justice; but in the case of the unjust judge there seemed no avenue for the approach of such a feeling: he feared not God. Nor was he moved by that which, as a last motive, is powerful in the most debased natures, the regard for the opinion of other men. He was of that cold, hardened, and unaccommodating character that he neither feared God nor regarded man. There was not a glimpse of light or softness in such a character as this; where there was neither sympathy, nor the sense of right, nor the apprehensions of just judgment, nor the meaner motive of a desire to stand well with the world; and as these several hard features of this hard character became manifest, all hope for the success of her plea would die out of the widow's heart.