"Greater are they that are against us than He that is for us?"

But we are traitors to our own cause; we are conquered by our own consent; we surrender, not so much because the conqueror is powerful, as because the conquered is willing.

Without diminishing any thing of His grace and glory, to whom every good thought we think, every victory over sin we obtain, is owing; may it not add to our happiness, even in heaven, to look back on every conflict we maintained with our grand spiritual enemy, every triumph over the world, every victory over ourselves? Will not the remembrance of one act of resistance then far surpass every gratification now, which the three confederated enemies of our souls may present to us?

It is not merely by our prayers that we must give glory to God. Our Divine Master has expressly told us wherein His Father is glorified; it is "when we bring forth much fruit." It is by our works we shall be judged, and not by our prayers. And what a final consummation is it that obedience to the will of God, which is our duty here, shall be our nature hereafter! What is now our prayer shall then be our possesion ; there the obligation to obey shall become a necessity, and that necessity shall be happiness ineffable.

The various evils here enumerated, with many others not touched upon, are so many dead weights on the wings of prayer; they cause it to gravitate to earth, obstruct its ascent, and hinder it from piercing to the throne of God.

403

GOD OUR FATHER.

- OUR UNWILLINGNESS TO PLEASE HIM. - FORMS OF PRAYER. GREAT AND LITTLE SINS. ALL SIN AN OFFENCE AGAINST GOD. BENEFIT OF HABITUAL PRAYER.

I

THE distinction between the personal nature of Faith, and the universal character of Charity, as it is exercised in prayer, is specifically exhibited in the two pronouns which stand at the head of the Creed and of the Lord's Prayer. We cannot exercise faith for another, and therefore can only say believe. But when we offer up our petitions, we address them to our Father, implying that He is the author, governor, and supporter not of ourselves only, but of his whole rational creation. It conveys also a beautiful idea of that boundless charity which links all mankind in one comprehensive brotherhood. The plural us, continued through the whole prayer, keeps up the sentiment with which it sets out, tends to exclude selfishness, and to excite philanthropy, by recommending to God the temporal as well as spiritual wants of the whole family of mankind.

The nomenclature of the Divinity is expressed in Scripture by every term which can convey ideas of grandeur or of grace, of power or of affection, of sublimity or tenderness, of majesty or benignity; by every name which can excite terror or trust, which can inspire awe or consolation.

But of all compellations by which the Supreme Being is designated in his holy word, there is not one more soothing, more attractive, more endearing than that of FATHER; it includes the idea of reconcilement, pardon, acceptance, love. It swallows up His grandeur in His beneficence. It involves also the inheritance belonging to our filial relation. It fills the mind with every image that is touching, and the heart with every feeling that is affectionate. It inspires fear softened by love, and exhibits authority mitigated by gratitude. The tenderest image the Psalmist could select from the abundant storehouse of his rich conceptions, to convey the kindest sentiment of God's pity towards them that fear Him, was that it resembles the pity of a "father for his own children." In directing us to pray to our Father, our Divine Master does not give the command without the example. He every where uses the term He recommends. "I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth!" And in the 17th of St. John he uses this endearing name no less than seven times.

"Lord, show us the Father and it sufficeth," was the ill-understood prayer of the enquiring disciples. To us this petition is granted before it is made. Does He not show himself to all as a Father in the wonders of his creation, in the wonders of our being, preservation, and support? Has He not, in a more especial manner, revealed Himself to us as a Father in the sublime wonders of his word, in the unsearchable riches of Christ,

and the perpetuated gift of the Holy Spirit? Does he not show Himself our Father, if, when we have done evil, He withholds his chastening hand; if, when we have sinned, He still bears with us; if, when we are deaf to his call, He repeats it; if, when we delay, He waits for us; if when we repent, He pardons us; if, when we return, He receives us; if, when in danger, He preserves us from falling; and if, when we fall, He raises us?

We have a beautiful illustration of the goodness of God as a merciful and tender Father in the deeply-affecting parable of the Prodigal Son. Though the undone spendthrift knew that he had no possible claim on the goodness he had so notoriously offended, yet he felt that the endearing name of Father had an eloquence that might plead for forgiveness of his offence, though he feared not for restoration to affection and favour. But while he only meekly aspired to a place among the servants, while he only humbly pleaded for a little of their redundant bread, he was received as a pardoned, reconciled, beloved child.

Yet the human heart is not easily warmed into gratitude, nor softened into love, nor allured to imitation, because it takes only slight and transient views of the Divine benignity. What God has done for us, and what we have really done against ourselves, will, in the great day of decision, crown Him with glory, and ourselves with shame What we think we do for our own benefit in temporal concerns is so animated, so earnest, so unremitted;

what we are called to do for God-which ultimately, indeed, would be done for ourselves is so little, so reluctant, so heartless, as to bear no sort of comparison. In the former case, every thing is a gratification; in the latter, every thing is a sacrifice.

We think much of the smallest instance of selfdenial, if it be for God; if it be an act of acknowledgment to the most gracious of all Fathers; if it be a tribute of homage to the King of kings, however large or lasting the promised recompense. But we think little of any present privation of our own, if it insure to us a longer subsequent enjoyment, though but for a short season. "God," says a pious writer, "is more easily imitated by his children, in the perfections in which he appears to us as a Father, than in those in which he appears a God." And yet it is in his inimitable perfections that we seek most to imitate him. We had rather resemble him in his independence and his power than in his beneficence and his love and his forgiveness, yet it is in these last that we are commanded to copy him.

In speaking of the manner in which we should address our heavenly Father, it is to be observed, there may be evident differences in the state, both of the mind and circumstances, for which the best written forms of prayer can make no provision. We ourselves can alone know those varieties, and the petitions which expressly belong to them. We are sometimes under the influence of particular tempers which we wish to cultivate and improve;