apostles. One prays that his converts may "stand perfect and complete in the whole will of God:" another enjoins that they be "perfect and entire, wanting nothing."

Now we are not to suppose that they expected any convert to be without faults; they knew too well the constitution of the human heart to form so unfounded an expectation. But Christians must have no fault in their principle; their views must bedirect, their proposed scheme must be faultless; their intention must be single; their standard must be lofty; their object must be right; their "mark must be the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."-There must be no allowed evil, no warranted defection, no tolerated impurity, no habitual irregularity. Though they do not rise as high as they ought, nor as they wish, in the scale of perfection, yet the scale itself must be correct, and the desire of ascending perpetual: counting nothing done while anything remains undone. Every grace must be kept in exercise; conquests once made over an evil propensity, must not only be maintained but extended. And in truth, Christianity so comprises contrary, and as it may be thought irreconcileable excellences, that those which seem so incompatible as to be incapable by nature of being inmates of the same breast, are almost necessarily involved in the Christian character.

For instance: Christianity requires that our faith be at once fervent and sober; that our love be both ardent and lasting; that our patience be not only heroic but gentle; she demands dauntless zeal and genuine humility; active services and complete self-renunciation; high attainments in goodness, with deep consciousness of defect; courage in reproving, and meekness in bearing reproof; a quick perception of what is sinful, with a willingness to forgive the offender; active virtue ready to do all, and passive virtue ready to bear all.-We must stretch every faculty in the service of our Lord, and yet bring every thought into obedience to Him: while we aim to live in the exercise of every Christian grace, we must account ourselves unprofitable servants: we must strive for the crown, yet receive it as a gift, and then lay it at our master's feet: while we are busily trading in the world with our Lord's talents, we must commune with our heart, and be still :" while we strive to practise the purest disinterestedness, we must be contented though we meet with selfishness in return; and while laying out our lives for the good of mankind, we must submit to reproach without murmuring, and to ingratitude without resentment. And to render us equal to all these services, Christianity bestows not only the precept, but the power; she does what the great poet of ethics lamented that reason could not do, "she lends us arms as well as rules."

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For here, if not only the worldly and the timid, but the humble and the well-disposed, should demand with fear and trembling, "Who is sufficient for these things?" Revelation makes its own reviving answer, 'My grace is sufficient for thee."

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It will be well here to distinguish that there are two sorts of Christian professors, one of which affect to speak of Christianity as if it were a mere system of doctrines, with little reference to their influence on life and nanners; while the other consider it as exhibiting a scheme of human duties independent on its doctrines. For though the latter sort may

admit the doctrines, yet they contemplate them as a separate and disconnected set of opinions, rather than as an influential principle of action. In violation of that beautiful harmony which subsists in every part of Scripture between practice and belief, the religious world furnishes two sorts of people who seem to enlist themselves, as if in opposition, under the banners of Saint Paul and Saint James; as if those two great champions of the Christian cause had fought for two masters. Those who affect respectively to be the disciples of each, treat faith and works as if they were opposite interests, instead of inseparable points. Nay, they go farther, and set Saint Paul at variance with himself.

Now, instead of reasoning on the point, let us refer to the apostle in question, who himself definitively settles the dispute. The apostolical order and method in this respect deserve notice and imitation: for it is observable that the earlier parts of most of the epistles abound in the doctrines of Christianity, while those latter chapters, which wind up the subject, exhibit all the duties which grow out of them, as the natural and necessary productions of such a living root.* But this alternate mention of doctrine and practice, which seemed likely to unite, has on the contrary formed a sort of line of separation between these two orders of believers, and introduced a broken and mutilated system. Those who would make Christianity consist of doctrines only, dwell, for instance, on the first eleven chapters of the Epistle to the Romans, as containing exclusively the sum and substance of the gospel. While the mere moralists, who wish to strip Christianity of her lofty and appropriate attributes, delight to dwell on the twelfth chapter, which is a table of duties, as exclusively as if the preceding chapters made no part of the sacred canon. But Saint Paul himself, who was at least as sound a theologian as any of his commentators, settles the matter in another way, by making the duties of the twelfth grow out of the doctrines of the antecedent eleven, just as any other consequence grows out of its cause. And as if he suspected that the indivisible union between them might possibly be overlooked, he links the two distinct divisions. together by a logical" therefore," with which the twelfth begins :-" I beseech you therefore," (that is, as the effect of all I have been inculcating,) "that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, acceptable to God," &c., and then goes on to enforce on them, as a consequence of what he had been preaching, the practice of every Christian virtue. This combined view of the subject seems, on the one hand, to be the only means of preventing the substitution of pagan morality for Christian holiness; and on the other, of securing the leading doctrine of justification by faith, from the dreadful danger of Antinomian licentiousness; every human obligation being thus grafted on the living stock of a divine principle.

This is the language of our church, as may be seen in her 12th article, viz.

"Good works do spring out necessarily of a true and lively faith; insomuch that by them a lively faith may be as evidently known, as a tree discerned by its fruit."

CHAPTER XXI.

On the duty and efficacy of prayer.

It is not proposed to enter largely on a topic which has been exhausted by the ablest pens. But as a work of this nature seems to require that so important a subject should not be overlooked, it is intended to notice in a slight manner a few of those many difficulties and popular objections which are brought forward against the use and efficacy of prayer, even by those who would be unwilling to be suspected of impiety and unbelief.

There is a class of objectors who strangely profess to withhold homage from the Most High, not out of contempt but reverence. They affect to consider the use of prayer as derogatory from the omniscience of God, asserting that it looks as if we thought he stood in need of being informed of our wants; and as derogatory from his goodness, as implying that he needs to be put in mind of them.

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But is it not enough for such poor frail beings as we are to know, that God himself does not consider prayer as derogatory either to his wisdom or goodness? And shall we erect ourselves into judges of what is consistent with the attributes of HIM before whom angels fall prostrate with self-abasement? Will he thank such defenders of his attributes, who, while they profess to reverence, scruple not to disobey him? It ought. rather to be viewed as a great encouragement to prayer, that we are addressing a Being, who knows our wants better than we can express them, and whose preventing goodness is always ready to relieve them. Prayer seems to unite the different attributes of the Almighty; for if he is indeed the God that heareth prayer, that is the best reason why "to Him all flesh should come."

It is objected by another class, and on the specious ground of humility too-though we do not always find the objector himself quite as humble as his plea would be thought-that it is arrogant in such insignificant beings as we are to presume to lay our petty necessities before the Great and Glorious God, who cannot be expected to condescend to the multitude of trifling and even interfering requests which are brought before him by his creatures. These and such-like objections arise from mean and unworthy thoughts of the Great Creator. It seems as if those who make them considered the Most High as "such an one as themselves;" a Being who can perform a certain given quantity of business, but who would be overpowered with an additional quantity. Or, at best, is it not considering the Almighty in the light, not of an infinite God, but of a great man, of a minister, or a king, who, while he superintends public and national concerns, is obliged to neglect small and individual petitions, because his hands being full, he cannot spare that leisure and attention which suffice for everything? They do not consider him as that infinitely glorious Being, who, while he beholds at once all that is doing in heaven and in earth, is at the same time as attentive to the prayer of the poor destitute, as present to the sorrowful sighing of the prisoner, as if each of these forlorn creatures were individually the object of his undivided attention.

These critics, who are for sparing the Supreme Being the trouble of our prayers, and, if I may so speak without profaneness, would relieve Omnipotence of part of his burden, by assigning to his care only such a portion as may be more easily managed, seem to have no adequate conception of his attributes.

They forget that infinite wisdom puts him as easily within reach of all knowledge, as infinite power does of all performance; that he is a Being, in whose plans complexity makes no difficulty, variety no obstruction, and multiplicity no confusion; that to ubiquity, distance does not exist; that to infinity, space is annihilated; that past, present, and future, are discerned more accurately at one glance of His eye, to whom a thousand years are as one day, than a single moment of time or a single point of space can be by ours.

To the other part of the objection, founded on the supposed interference (that is, irreconcileableness) of one man's petitions with those of another, this answer seems to suggest itself: first, that we must take care that when we ask, we do not "ask amiss;" that, for instance, we ask chiefly, and in an unqualified manner, only for a spiritual blessing to ourselves and others; and in doing this, the prayer of one man cannot interfere with that of another, because no proportion of sanctity or virtue implored by one obstructs the same attainments in another. Next, in asking for temporal and inferior blessings, we must qualify our petition, even though it should extend to deliverance from the severest pains, or to our very life itself, according to that example of our Saviour: "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be done." By thus qualifying our prayer, we exercise ourselves in an act of resignation to God; we profess not to wish what will interfere with his benevolent plan, and yet we may hope by prayer to secure the blessing so far as it is consistent with it. Perhaps the reason, why this objection to prayer is so strongly felt, is the too great disposition to pray for merely temporal and worldly blessings and to desire them in the most unqualified manner, not submitting to be without them, even though the granting them should be inconsistent with the general plan of Providence.

Another class continue to bring forward, as pertinaciously as if it had never been answered, the exhausted argument, that seeing God is immutable, no petitions of ours can ever change Him: that events themselves being settled in a fixed and unalterable course, and bound in a fatal necessity, it is folly to think that we can disturb the established laws of the universe, or interrupt the course of Providence by our prayers; and that it is absurd to suppose these firm decrees can be reversed by any requests of ours.

Without entering into the wide and trackless field of fate and free will, from which pursuit I am kept back equally by the most profound ignorance and the most invincible dislike, I would only observe, that these objections apply equally to all human actions as well as to prayer. It may, therefore, with the same propriety be urged, that, seeing God is immutable, and his decrees unalterable, therefore our actions can produce no change in him or in our own state. Weak as well as impious reasoning! It may be questioned, whether even the modern French and

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German philosophers might not be prevailed upon to acknowledge the existence of God, if they might make such a use of his attributes. truth is, (and it is a truth discoverable without any depth of learning,) all these objections are the offspring of pride. Poor, short-sighted man cannot reconcile the omniscience and degrees of God with the efficacy of prayer; and, because he cannot reconcile them, he modestly concludes they are irreconcileable. How much more wisdom, as well as happiness, results from an humble Christian spirit! Such a plain practical text as, "Draw near unto God, and he will draw near unto you," carries more consolation, more true knowledge of his wants and their remedy to the heart of a penitent sinner, than all the "tomes of casuistry," which have puzzled the world ever since the question was first set afloat by its original propounders.

And as the plain man only got up and walked, to prove there was such a thing as motion, in answer to the philosopher who, in an elaborate theory, denied it; so the plain Christian, when he is borne down with the assurance that there is no efficacy in prayer, requires no better argument to repel the assertion than the good he finds in prayer itself.

All the doubts proposed to him respecting God, do not so much affect him as this one doubt respecting himself" If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.” For the chief doubt and difficulty of a real Christian consists, not so much in a distrust of God's ability and willingness to answer the prayer of the upright, as in a distrust of his own uprightness, as in a doubt whether he himself belongs to that description of persons to whom the promises are made, and of the quality of the prayer which he offers up.

Let the subjects of a dark fate maintain a sullen, or the slaves of a blind chance a hopeless silence, but let the child of a compassionate Almighty Father supplicate His mercies with an humble confidence, inspired by the assurance, that "the very hairs of his head are numbered." Let him take comfort in that individual and minute attention, without which not a sparrow falls to the ground, as well as in that heart-cheering promise, that, as "the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous," so are his cars open to their prayers." And, as a pious bishop has observed, Saviour, as it were, hedged in and enclosed the Lord's prayer with these two great fences of our faith, God's willingness and his power to help us :" the preface to it assures us of the one, which, by calling God by the tender name of "our Father," intimates his readiness to help his children; and the animating conclusion, "thine is the power," rescues us from every unbelieving doubt of his ability to help us.

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A Christian knows, because he feels, that prayer is, though in a way to him inscrutable, the medium of connexion between God and his rational creatures; the means appointed by him to draw down his blessings upon us. The Christian knows that prayer is the appointed means of uniting two ideas, one of the highest magnificence, the other of the most profound lowliness, within the compass of imagination; namely, that it is the link of communication between " the high and lofty One who inhabiteth eternity," and that heart of the "contrite in which he delights to dwell." He knows that this inexplicable union between Beings so unspeakably, so essentially different, can only be maintained by prayer; that this is the

VOL. I.

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