conception of the mind, not an effort of the intellect, not an act of the memory, but an elevation of the soul towards its Maker; a pressing sense of our own ignorance and infirmity, a consciousness of the perfections of God, of his readiness to hear, of his power to help, of his willingness to save. It is not an emotion produced in the senses, nor an effect wrought by the imagination; but a determination of the will, an effusion of the heart.

Prayer is an act both of the understanding and of the heart. The understanding must apply itself to the knowledge of the Divine perfections, or the heart will not be led to the adoration of them. It would not be a reasonable service if the mind were excluded. It must be rational worship, or the human worshipper will not bring to the service the distinguishing faculty of his nature, which is reason.

It

must be spiritual worship, or it will want the distinctive quality to make it acceptable to Him who is a Spirit, and who has declared that he will be worshipped "in spirit and in truth."

Man is not only a sinful, but also a helpless, and therefore a dependent, being. This offers new and powerful motives to prayer, and shews the necessity of looking continually to a higher power, to a better strength than our own. If that Power sustain us not, we fall; if he direct us not, we wander. His guidance is not only perfect freedom, but perfect safety. Our greatest danger begins from the moment we imagine we are able to go alone.

He who does not believe this fundamental truth, the helplessness of man-on which the other doctrines of the Bible are built-even he who does nominally profess to assent to it as a doctrine of Scripture, but does not experimentally acknowledge it who does not feel it in the convictions of his own awakened conscience, in his discovery of the evil workings of his own heart, and the wrong propensities of his own nature, all bearing their testimony to its truth,-such an one will not pray earnestly for its cure-will not pray with that feeling of his own helplessness, with that sense of dependence on Divine

assistance, which alone makes prayer efficacious.

Nothing will make us truly humble, nothing will make us constantly vigilant, nothing will entirely lead us to have recourse to prayer, so fervently or so frequently, as this ever-abiding sense of our corrupt and helpless nature, as our not being able to ascribe to any disposition in ourselves anything that is good, or any power to avoid, by our own strength, anything that is evil.

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

There is perfect consistency in all the ordinances 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 our corruptions, a God of perfect wisdom would

not have ordered it. He would not have prohibited everything 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.

We cannot attain to a just notion of prayer while we remain ignorant of our own nature, or of the nature of God as revealed in Scripture, of our relation to him, and of our dependence on him. If, therefore, we do not live in the daily study of the holy Scriptures, we shall want the highest motives to this duty, and the best helps for performing it; if we do, the cogency of these motives, and the inestimable value of these helps, will render argument unnecessary, and exhortation superfluous.

One cause, therefore, of the dulness of many Christians in prayer is their slight acquaintance with the sacred volume. They hear it periodically, they read it occasionally, they are contented to know it historically, to consider it superficially; but they

do not endeavour to get their minds imbued with its spirit. If they store their memory with its facts, they do not impress their hearts with its truth. They do not regard it as the nutriment on which their spiritual life and growth depend. They do not pray over it; they do not consider all its doctrines as of practical 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 their own obliquity.

Though we cannot pray with a too deep sense of sin, we may make our sins too exclusively the object of our prayers. While we keep, with a self-abasing eye, our own corruptions in view, let us look with equal intentness on that mercy which cleanseth from all sin. Let our prayers be all humiliation, but let them not be all complaint. When men indulge no other thought but that they are rebels, the hopelessness of pardon hardens them into disloyalty. Let