have access to God the Father, will have a real influence with him in regard to things entirely beyond our control. But God must reserve the right to deny our requests when made in an improper spirit or manner, and when they ask what would injure us, or interfere with the general good.

If any of you have, in accordance with the views presented in the two preceding chapters, confessed your past sins, and obtained mercy through faith in the Redeemer, you will take great pleasure in bringing your requests to God. And you may, in doing this, sometimes pray for success in some enterprise when God sees that it is on the whole best that you should fail. A man may ask that God will place him in some important station of influence or usefulness, when the eye that can see the whole discovers that the general good will be promoted by another arrangement. Thus in many similar ways your prayers may sometimes come within the excepted cases, and then God will not grant them. Still, God has revealed himself as the hearer of prayer; and it will at last be seen that he was more ready to grant all our requests presented in the name of Christ, than we were to spread them before him.

There is even among Christians a great deal of distrust of the power of prayer. Some think that prayer exerts a good influence upon their own hearts, and thus they continue the practice, without, however, having any very cordial belief that their prayers are really listened to and granted as requests by the great Jehovah. Many persons imagine that prayer has an efficacy in some such way as this: A man asks God to protect and bless him in his business. By offering the prayer every day, he is reminded of his dependence; he thinks of the necessity of his own industry and patient effort; and thus, through the influence of his prayer, the causes of prosperity are brought to operate more fully in his case, and prosperity comes.

This is indeed often one of the happy results of believing

prayer; but it can by no means be regarded as a granting of the request, or a fulfilment of the promise, "Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father, he shall do it." The Father shall do it. This is a promise that God shall do something which we ask him to do-not that the natural effect of our asking will be favorable in its influence upon us.

There is another way in which it seems to me there is a great deal of want of faith in God in regard to the efficacy of prayer. It is often said that requests may not be granted in the precise form in which they were offered, but that they are always answered in some way or other. A mother, for instance, who has a son at sea, prays morning and evening for his safe return. Letter after letter comes, assuring her of his continued safety, until at last the sad news arrives that his ship has been dashed upon a rock or sunk in the waves. Now can it be said that the mother's prayer was granted? Suppose that she was, by this afflicting providence, weaned from the world and prepared for heaven, and thus inconceivably benefited by the event. Was this, in any common or correct use of language, granting the request in another form; or was it denying it because it was inconsistent with her greatest good? Suppose a child asks his father to let him keep a knife he has found, and the father takes it away, knowing that he would probably injure himself with it. Is this granting the request in another form? No. We ought, whenever the particular request we make is not granted, to consider it as a denial, and to suppose that it comes under one of the cases of exceptions I have already specified.

There is, indeed, such a thing as granting a request in another form from that in which it was made. A family, one of whose members is in feeble health, prays for that member, that God would restore him. They come sincerely and earnestly to the throne of grace, and ask God to spare his life and make him well. Instead, however, of growing

He is attacked with vio

better, he grows suddenly worse. lent sickness, and his friends think that their prayers cannot be heard, and suppose that they must follow him to the grave. The sickness however soon passes away, and instead of carrying him to the tomb, by means of some mysterious influence which is in such cases often exerted upon the con. stitution, he rises from his sick bed with renewed bodily powers, and as his strength gradually returns, he finds that his constitution is renewed and health entirely restored. Now this is granting the request, because the thing requested, that is, the restoration to health, is obtained, though the manner was unexpected; but if the man should die, no matter what great benefits to all resulted from his death, it is certainly not right to say that the request was granted in any way. It was denied, because God saw it was best that it should be denied.

Let us then keep constantly in view the fact, that our petitions often are, and must be denied—positively and absolutely refused. The language which our Saviour uses, though without any specified exceptions, contains the exceptions that in all human language are in all such cases implied. The feelings, however, which, in this view of the subject, we ought to cherish, may properly be presented under the following head:

II. A submissive spirit in prayer. We ought unquestionably to bring a great many requests to God relating to our daily pursuits. We ought to express to him our common desires, ask success in our common enterprises and plans. Young persons, it seems to me, ought to do this far more than they do. They ought to bring all their little interests and concerns, morning and evening, to their Friend above. Whatever interests you, as I have already once or twice remarked, will interest him. Bring to him freely your little troubles and cares, and express your wants. If the young cannot come to God with their own appropriate and peculiar

concerns, they are in reality without a protector. If, however, we are in the habit of bringing all our wants to God, we shall often ask for something which it is far better for us not to have. We cannot always judge correctly; but unless we know that what we want is dangerous, or that it will be injurious, it is proper to ask for it. If we do or might know, to request it would be obviously wrong David prayed very earnestly that his child might live, but God thought it not best to grant the petition. David did right to pray, for he probably did not know but that the request might be safely granted. Let us feel therefore, when we come with our petitions, that perhaps God will think it best for us that they should be denied.

This is peculiarly the case in praying for deliverance from danger. Our hearts may be relieved and lightened by committing ourselves to God's care, but we can never feel on that account sure that we are safe. God very often makes sickness, or a storm at sea, or the lightning, or any other source of common danger and alarm, the means of removing a Christian from the world. You do not know

but that he will remove you in this way. The next time a thunder-storm arises in the west, it may be God's design to bring one of its terrific bolts upon your head, and you cannot of course avert it by simply asking God to spare you. He will listen to your prayer, take it into kind consideration, and if you ask in a proper spirit, he will probably give you a calm and happy heart, even in the most imminent danger. But you cannot be sure you will escape the lightning. The ground of your peace must be, that God will do what is best, not that he will certainly do what you wish.

From one of the small seaport towns of New England, a packet once set sail for Boston. These packets, which are intended to carry passengers, have one large cabin. The berths which perhaps I ought to inform some of my young readers, are a sort of shelves, upon which passengers at sea

sleep, one above the other

-are arranged around this cabin, and a movable partition, which can be thrown open by day, divides the room at night into two parts. On board one of

these packets, then, a few years ago, a number of persons, ladies and gentlemen, previously entire strangers to each other, found themselves slowly sailing out of an eastern harbor, on a coasting voyage of about two hundred miles. They did not know how long they were to be together, what adventures might befall them, or what dangers they might share. They were however to spend their time in the same room, and as they were tossing upon the waves in the same vessel, a sense of common interest and of common danger brought them at once to terms of intimacy.

The next morning there was scarcely a breath of air. The vessel heaved gently on the water, whose surface was polished like glass, though it swelled and sunk with the undulations of distant storms. In the tedium of waiting for wind, each one of the passengers and crew amused himself in his own way. Here, you might see a cluster talking; there, two or three passengers gathering around a sailor who was letting down his line for fish. Others, in various places, had their books.

A Christian traveller who was present, sat down upon the quarter-deck, and opened a little bundle of books and newspapers and tracts, which he had provided for the

occasion.

Presently a gentleman who had been sitting for half an hour gazing, for want of other employment, upon every sprig of sea-weed or floating bubble he could see, advanced to him, and asked,

"Will you

lend me something to read?" "Certainly, sir, any thing I have; but most of my stock here is of a religious character, and I do not know whether you will take any interest in it."

The gentleman replied that he should. He selected a