AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY ON PRAYER, &c. PRAYER is the application of want to Him who alone can relieve it-the confession of sin to Him who alone can pardon it. It is the urgency of poverty, the prostration of humility, the fervency of penitence, the confidence of trust. It is not eloquence, but earnestness; not the definition of helplessness, but the feeling of it not figures of speech, but compunction of soul. It is the "Lord, save us, we perish," of drowning Peter-the cry of faith to the ear of mercy. |