ask, without reference to its real adaptation to our several wants. He knows, better than we can inform him, what are our real necessities ; and it would be consistent with any thing, rather than with the character of his mercy, to suffer those necessities to remain without relief, and grant us those things which are unprofitable for us. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ does not thus watch over the welfare of those, who have become the servants of his Son. When, in our supplications at his throne, we ask either for ourselves or for our brethren, the things that are truly good; when we frame our petitions with regard to the honour of his name and the promotion of his glory, we need set no limit to the bounty of our God; for he is able and willing to do for us exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think. Every Christian will acknowledge, that however great and lamentable have been the deficiencies of his prayers, however ignorantly or feebly he may have laid his necessities before his God, those prayers have not been inefficacious, when they have been sincere. He has acknowledged his dependence; he has expressed his deep sense of his wants and his inability to supply them; he has confessed his ignorance and his reliance on divine wisdom and mercy in humility he has asked a gift suited to his necessities; and he has received the very blessing which he asked; not

indeed according to the measure of his own knowledge, or the expression of his own wish, but in the way that God has seen to be best adapted to the exigencies of his real condition. The child that asks for bread receives not a stone, even though his petition might include such food as were unwholesome: the son that asks a fish receives not a serpent, though in ignorance he might have erred in the description of his wants. The apostle may pray for the removal of the "thorn in the flesh;" but he receives the reply, "My grace is sufficient for thee;" and he will acknowledge that it is better for him to bear the burden in reliance upon that grace. The Christian may supplicate for the removal of evils which he feels severely, and which depress his soul under the sense of God's afflictive dispensation; he will find that these chastisements are given for purposes of the purest mercy, and that even the things which appear for his hurt, are indeed advancing his highest and eternal interest. Or if prayer has been refused, there is the conviction that this is the fault, not of divine compassion, but of human ignorance; and the Christian learns, in the feeling of deep resignation, and of pious submission to the will of God, to wait the Lord's leisure for the blessings which he has perhaps impatiently desired. The conduct of the Saviour in this, as in all other points, is set before us for our encouragement and our ex

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ample. It was not without reference to the promotion of our spiritual improvement, that Christ prayed, in his bitter agony, that the cup might pass from him it was, that he might exhibit in his prayers the spirit of our own: "Not my will, but thine, O God, be done."

Time would fail us to dwell more fully on the duty and the benefit of prayer. Let it suffice to exhort you earnestly, to learn for yourselves the great blessings which result from earnest and fervent prayer, by your own experience, the best and the most effectual method of acquiring this divine knowledge. The efficacy of prayer will never long be doubted by him, who begins to pray in patient resignation to the will of God, and in humble trust in the merits of the great Mediator between God and man. Prayer has, not unaptly, been called the pulse of the soul: it is the best criterion of the health or sickness, the vigour or debility, of our souls; and as the faintest beat of the heart gives hope of returning animation, so also the feeblest aspiration of the soul towards God, gives the prospect of a revival to spiritual life for there is hope even of Saul the persecutor, when it can be said, Behold he pray

eth.

:

Copy, then, the spirit and the language of those holy men, who have left us the example of their fervency and frequency of prayer, and of the blessings vouchsafed to their exercise of this

grace

blessed privilege. Entreat of the Spirit of to teach you how to pray, that you may not ask amiss, and thus lose your requests, not through any defect or fallacy in the promises of God, but through the ignorance or sinfulness of your own petitions. Engage in the habitual performance of this duty as the guide of your self-examination. Nothing so much shows the gradual progress of the Christian in the conformity of his spirit to the Spirit of Christ, as the comfort, the enjoyment experienced in secret intercourse with our heavenly Father. It is the communication of light and peace, from his merciful bounty; it is the acknowledgment of our filial love and grateful dependence upon him; and we shall find in it the conviction of his parental tenderness, that deep affection towards him, wrought in us by the Holy Spirit, "whereby we cry, Abba, Father."

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SERMON XXV.

THE APOSTLES COMMISSIONED.

1 COR. i. 26-29.

For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called. But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are; that no flesh should glory in his presence.

THAT the ways of God are not as our ways, nor his thoughts as our thoughts, is a truth which even the most cursory observer of his dealings must at once acknowledge. The might and majesty of his transactions, in the creation and preservation of the world, will ensure this con