Difficulty.

God decides.

Now all her difficulty arises from misunderstanding the nature of the faith which ought to be exercised in prayer. The remarks made meant, or they ought to have meant, that we are to come to God confident that he will do what is on the whole for the best,—not positive that he will do exactly what we ask. God never has given assemblies of Christians authority to mark out a course for him to pursue, in such a sense as that he shall be bound to pursue it. He has promised to give us what we ask; but still the exceptions, universally understood to be implied by this language in other cases, are attached to it in this. We must offer our petitions, trusting in God,-believing, as the Bible expresses it, that he is, and that he is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him; but after we have offered our most earnest requests, we must leave the matter with him. This is what is meant by the prayer of faith, so often alluded to by Christian ministers. And this was the kind of faith our Savior required of those who came to him to be healed. "Believest thou," said he, "that I am able to do this?" not that I shall do it. When the apostles and brethren came together to pray for Peter, they were so far from believing that their prayer for deliverance would be granted, that they were incredulous when they saw him. They trusted in God, and believed that he would do what was right. This confidence in him was the faith that they exercised. Believing that ye shall receive them, then, must mean— believing that God is able and willing to grant, except in those few cases where imperious reasons compel him to deny. He sees many material considerations in every case which are entirely beyond our view, and we must accordingly always leave the final decision wholly with him.

It is very often said that prayer for spiritual blessings will always be heard and granted. But we can be no more absolutely certain in this case than in others. God does often

The mother.

God decides.

withhold the influences of his Spirit, as we all know full well. Who of us can tell what are the causes? Look at yonder mother. She has an only son. Her first prayer in regard to him was that God would make him his. She consecrated him to his Maker's service at his earliest breath. She rocked him to sleep in infancy, singing a hymn of acknowledgment that he was the Lord's. As soon as he could understand the lesson, she taught him his duty to his great Creator. She has often knelt with him in prayer, and her whole heart is set upon having her only son devoted to the service of God. But all her efforts are fruitless, and her prayers are not answered. Her son grows up in indifference about God, which perhaps becomes, when he has arrived at maturity, open hostility. How many such mothers there are! She was praying, too, for spiritual blessings, for the conversion of a son to God, but the sovereign Ruler leaves him, notwithstanding these supplications, for a time at least, to his own chosen way.

Yes, God is a sovereign. He dispenses all his favors as he himself thinks best. He listens to our requests, and takes them into kind consideration, but he reserves to himself the right to make the ultimate decision. Let us come to him then with real sincerity, and with a deep sense of our need of the blessings we ask, but always with this humble feeling, that God sees farther than we, and can judge better,—and that he will himself make the ultimate decision in regard to every thing we ask.

And we must remember that this is just as true with regard to spiritual blessings as to any other. The cause of religion advances in the world in a manner which we can not predict or account for. I do not pretend to say precisely how far and in what respects this progress depends upon the agency of man, and how far upon power which is in the hands of God. But every one, whatever may be his ideas

Case supposed.

God a sovereign.

Submissive spirit.

of the boundlessness of human freedom, acknowledges that a most important agency in determining where the Gospel shall triumph, and where it shall fail, and in regulating its progress throughout the earth, rests in the hands of the Supreme. Now what Christian is there who can understand the principles which guide Jehovah in the exercise of the power which he so obviously possesses? How many secretly think that the sudden conversion of a whole city, perhaps, to God, would be a glorious achievement of the Redeemer, and fancy that if they had the power over the heart which God possesses, they would produce the effect at once, and exhibit the magnificent spectacle of the undisputed reign of holiness and peace in a community of one hundred thousand. Suppose now every Christian in some great city were to unite in a sincere and heartfelt prayer that God would pour out his Spirit universally among them, and in a single day awaken all the multitudes around them to piety. It is indeed unquestionably true, that if this united prayer should be offered, and should be accompanied by the efforts which sincerity in the prayer would insure, most uncommon effects would follow. But who believes that the whole city would be converted in a day? No one. Why? Because this is not according to the analogy of God's working in spreading the Gospel. And why does he not work in this way, converting whole communities at once, leading them to him by his own direct agency upon the heart, as he now often leads individuals in silence and solitude? Why does not God work in this manner? Some one may say, because Christians are so cold and negligent in duty. Why then does not the power which raised up Paul, raise up thousands like him now, and enkindling within them the spirit and devotedness of the great apostle, and send them forth to bring the world at once to him?-Who can tell?

No: we can not direct. God guides by his own wisdom

Prayers for the young.

Danger of perversion.

the chariot of his coming. We can ask, but we can not dictate. If we attempt to take the reins, he holds them up far above our reach, and the wheels roll on where God points the way.

Men

The experienced Christian who reads these remarks, intended to show that God really controls and directs every thing relating to the progress of piety in the world, will immediately say, "How liable are we to pervert this truth, so as to excuse our own neglect of duty." Yes, it is so. are everywhere so prone to throw off responsibility from themselves, that the minister of the Gospel is often almost afraid to vindicate fully and cordially the supreme and unbounded power which God exercises over the human heart, for fear that men will lose their sense of their own accountability. A mother will ask that God will change the hearts of her children, and sometimes wait, as she expresses it, for God's time to come, while she in the mean time does nothing, or at most only goes over a formal round of duties, without any of that spirit, and enterprise, and ingenuity which she would exercise if she knew that something depended upon her own efforts. But this perversion of scripture truth is not necessary or unavoidable. However difficult it may be for us to understand how man can be free and fully accountable, while God retains so much direct power over his heart as the Bible so distinctly describes,—it is possible cordially to feel the accountability, and at the same time sincerely to acknowledge the dependence. Look at the case of that Christian teacher. She prays most earnestly that God would come and bless the school to which she belongs. She brings individual cases in secrecy and solitude before God. She prays that faults may be forgiven-froward dispositions softened—and all brought under the influence of Christian love. She asks that God will pour out his Spirit and diffuse peace and happiness over the school-room improving every charac

The humble yet active teacher.

Conclusion.

The ship.

ter, purifying and ennobling every heart, and in making the dejected happy, and the happy happier still. She has seen such an influence diffused over a school-she knows that it is an influence from above, and she looks to Him who rules all human hearts to come into her circle with his benign Now, does she after this go away and

influences once more. spend her time in inaction, on the ground that God only can change the heart, and that she has done all that it is in her power to do by simply bringing the case before him? No, she comes to her morning duties in the school-room with a heart full of desire to do something to procure what she has asked God to bestow. And she does accomplish something. By her kindness she wins her companions to her confidence and love, and in thousand nameless ways which never can be described, but which a heart full of love will always be discovering, she carries forward very effectually in her little circle the cause for which she prays.

It is so universally. When a minister allows his sense of his entire dependence on God to become feeble or indistinct, his efforts, instead of increasing, diminish. It may be called the Christian paradox, that he who, in theory, ascribes least efficacy to human efforts and most to the Spirit of God in the salvation of men, is ordinarily most indefatigable in those very efforts which he knows are of themselves utterly fruitless and vain.

And here I might close this long chapter, by urging my readers to commence immediately the practice of bringing all their wants and cares to God. I trust that they have been persuaded by it to do so. Some of my young readers, however, probably wish to know what became of the passengers in the packet-ship whom we left in such imminent danger; for that narrative is substantially true, though I was not myself an eye-witness of the scene. When we left them, they were tossing about upon the waves; the storm was increasing, the