VII. Barrenness in Prayer. "Go with pure heart and feeling, Fling earthly thoughts away; ALMIGHTY God, the fountain of all wisdom, who knowest our necessities before we ask, and our ignorance in asking; We beseech Thee to have compassion upon our infirmities; and those things, which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our blindness we cannot ask, vouchsafe to give us, for the worthiness of Thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. ARRENNESS IN PRAYER. BARRENN T HERE are, no doubt, many who have experienced at times an intense dissatisfaction with their prayers. They seem so lame, so cold, so profitless, till you are inclined to exclaim, "What a weariness, what a mockery it is!" You are constantly disappointed with yourselves. The heart that seemed so full has run empty ere you reached your knees. You have nothing to say; all your thoughts have fled from you; and the intense longing comes across your heart that some one would teach you how to pray. I think the apostles experienced a measure of the feeling, or rather want of feeling, which has troubled you. I think it was some such sense of dissatisfaction which stole into their hearts at that moment, and prompted the petition,-"Lord, teach us to pray." The sight of their praying Master doubtless aroused the feeling. As they saw His earnestness, His faith, and how many things He had to lay before His Father, they craved to know the secret of that spirit of prayer. They contrasted it, in their own minds, with their own faint, dead, spiritless, and meagre petitions'; and realized, with a vividness they never felt before, how grievously defective in all the features of true prayer were their own lifeless supplications. And we have felt the same. Even without the opportunity the disciples had of hearing Christ pray, we have experienced this deep heart dissatisfaction, I trust, and have found ourselves longing that some one would teach us "how to pray." I do not pretend to supply the want here indicated; but I feel that it would be wrong not to touch upon what appear to me to be some of the causes of this trying sense of barrenness in prayer. I shall venture to touch upon three of these -though doubtless there are many more— viz. Self-conceit, Self-ignorance, and Selfish ness. I. Self-conceit.-We are very slow to learn. the lesson of our own utter inability. Pride is a very dull scholar in the school of experience; and often and often she will beat about, seeking for every possible excuse for the failure of which she herself is the sole cause. We feel at some time, perhaps, that our hearts are prompted by an earnest desire to pray. We grow keenly alive for the moment to our own wants; but when we attempt to pray, we find the edge of that sense of need is gone. The heart appeared full, but when we knelt we found it empty. Like Tantalus of old, we anticipated a rich draught of the brimming flood; but as we stooped to drink it, it was gone. Vexed and disappointed we murmur at our privation, but are too blind to see its cause. We cannot see that our own self-conceit lies at the root |