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haps but fixing more inveterately than before the distaste of children or of friends for God and godliness. And so might they be tempted to desist, even as the apostles desisted, from their countrymen. Yet let them never forget, that what has heretofore been impracticable to performance may not be im

practicable to prayer. With man it may be impos

sible; but with God all things are possible. That cause which has so oft been defeated and is now hopeless on the field of exertion, may on the field of prayer and of faith be triumphant. Never cease then your supplications to the sanctuary above, for that power to turn the unregenerate and subdue them-which all your experience has told you does not reside unless it be given, in the earthen vessels that are below. Let those anxieties for the Christianity either of your household or of your acquaintanceship, which have hitherto been so unproductive of good-let them still continue to be unbosomed as before in the ear of your Father in heaven. willeth intercessions to be made for all men, and He willeth all men to be saved. These declarations place you on firm and high vantage-ground in praying for human souls; and never, we may be well assured, never can any intercession be lifted with greater acceptance than that of a Christian parent, when he asks in behalf of those children who now gladden his home upon earth-that they shall be preserved and permitted to spend with him their eternity in heaven.

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It must not be disguised however, that this is a

matter on which parents may delude themselvesthat in their disinclination to spiritual things, and their indolence together, they may be glad to stand exonerated from the fatigues of performance, and take refuge in the formalities of prayer-that under the semblance of doing homage to the omnipotence of grace, they may omit the doing of those things which it is the office of grace to make effectual for the conversion of the human spirit-that in contemplating the part of the Holy Ghost as the agent, they may forget their own part as the instruments of this mighty operation: And therefore would we warn them lest they turn the orthodoxy of their creed, into a justification for the laxity and remissness of their conduct. That prayer never can avail which is not the prayer of honesty; and it is not the prayer of honesty, if, even though you pray to the uttermost for the religion of others, you do not also perform to the uttermost. Could we only purge the prayers of men of all their hypocrisy, then should we behold the promises of the Bible nobly accredited by the verifications of experience; and the interchange of petitions and their responses between heaven and earth would demonstrate to the eye of observation, that there was indeed a living reality in the gospel. Even as it is, though we cannot just say that Christianity always ruus in families, yet frequent enough are the instances of a transmitted faith and a transmitted holiness from parents unto children-to assure us that did the former but acquit themselves in all

strenuousness and with all supplication, of their duty, the blessing of an efficiency from above would descend upon the souls of the latter; and manifold more than at present would be the examples of those who were born unto Christian parents being also born unto God.

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LECTURE LXXVIII.

ROMANS, X, 2.

"For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.

VER. 2. It is evident from this verse that the Israelites had one good quality while they wanted another. But the remarkable thing-I had almost said the strange thing of this verse-is, that the apostle should make their possession of this one good quality the reason of his prayer. It is my prayer that they might be saved-for I bear them record that they have a zeal of God.' They had zeal, but they wanted knowledge. One would think, that, if, they wanted both, they would at least stand in greater need of his prayers; and the mystery is, how it comes about, that their having something of what is good should be the moving cause why Paul should be led to pray for their supreme good, even the everlasting salvation of their souls-a pretty plain intimation, that if they had not been in the possession at least of this something, if they had not had thus much of good, even zeal for God, he would not have prayed for them.

The only explanation I can give of this peculiarity, and it appears to me a very probable one, is this. You know that it is only the prayer of

faith that availeth; and that in proportion as this faith is staggered or weakened in any manner, in that proportion prayer loses of its efficacy. It is thus that you have not the same heart, the same encouragement, the same confidence, in praying for some great and palpable unlikelihood—as in praying for that which you either know to be agreeable to the will of God, or to be in harmony with the established processes of nature and of providence. It is thus that you could not pray so hopefully for the salvation of a thorough and confirmed reprobate, as for that of a man in whom you could perceive some lurking remainders of good-some aspirations towards a state of betterness-some symptoms or promises of a coming penitency or coming amendment. When all these are utterly extinguished, then faith is extinguished, and the tongue of prayer is either put to silence or paralysed. There is the despair of any reformation; and whosoever asks for that which he despairs of, let not that man think that he shall obtain it of the Lord. There is a dependence affirmed constantly in the New Testament between that faith wherewith a prayer ascends upwardly to Heaven, and that fufilment which comes in answer thereto downwardly upon earth; and whatever therefore shall tell adversely or favourably on the faith of supplicants below, must tell adversely or favourably on the fulfilments that are granted in the sanctuary above. And so it is just as if all chance of a man's salvation were done away, when all hope of it had died

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