vealed in Scripture, of our relations to him, and of our dependance on him. If, therefore, we do not live in the daily study of the holy Scriptures, we shall want the highest motive 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 endeavor 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-debasing 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 com

plaint. When men indulge no other thought but that they are rebels, the hope

lessness of pardon hardens them into disloyalty. Let us look to the mercy of the King as well as to the rebellion of the subject. If we contemplate his grace as displayed in the gospel, then, though our humility will increase, our despair will

Gratitude in this, as in human in

vanish.

stances, will create affection:

him, because he first loved us.

"We love

Let us, therefore, always keep our unworthiness in view, to remind us that we stand in need of the mercy of God in Christ, but never plead it as a reason why we should not draw nigh to him to implore that mercy. The best men are unworthy for their own sakes; the worst, on repent

ance, will be accepted for His sake and through his merits.

In prayer, then, the perfections of God, and especially his mercies in our redemption, should occupy our thoughts as much as our sins; our obligations to him as much as our departures from him. We should keep up in our hearts a constant sense of our own weakness, not with a design to discourage the mind and depress the spirits, but with a view to drive us out of ourselves in search of the Divine assist

ance. We should contemplate our infirmity in order to draw us to look for his strength, and to seek that power from God. which we vainly look for in ourselves: we do not tell a sick friend of his danger in order to grieve and terrify him, but to in

duce him to apply to his physician, and to have recourse to his remedy.

The success of prayer, though promised to all who offer it in perfect sincerity, is not so frequently promised to the cry of distress, to the impulse of fear, or the emergency of the moment, as to humble perseverance in devotion; it is to patient waiting, to assiduous solicitation, to unwearied importunity that God has declared that He will lend His ear, that He will give the communication of His Spirit, that He will grant the return of our requests. Nothing but this holy perseverance can keep up in our minds a humble sense of our dependance. It is not by a mere casual petition, however passionate, but by habitual application, that devout affections are excited and maintained, that our con