The prayer of your minister, your relatives and friends, does not make your own prayer unnecessary. Their prayers may be of use in obtaining for you grace to seek God more earnestly; but you cannot expect to obtain his mercy and blessing, unless you yourself unfeignedly apply to the throne of grace. And as to ability to pray, it is a deep sense of your necessities, and a simple faith in God's word, that are the great helps to real prayer. Hence all persons, high and low, learned and unlearned, are by nature on a level in this respect. A beggar, feeling his poverty and wretchedness, does not want book learning to teach him how to come to ask your alms. He simply tells you his distress, points to his tattered garments, or his pallid or diseased body, and thus most effectually makes his way to your heart. And so, though you cannot read, you may still pray to God, and be accepted by him.

It is not an uncommon objection, 'I AM TOO MUCH OCCUPIED TO PRAY: Prayer is very proper for those who have time, but I am so full of other engagements that I cannot attend to it.'-You surely do not mean to say so! Time! cannot get time! how do you employ your time? Is none of it wasted in sinful pleasures or pursuits? Do you never find leisure to talk about your children's or friend's good qualities? Do you never find opportunities to thank men for earthly favours? and have you not time to acknowledge God's goodness, of which your lives are full? If you are afflicted, can you not find time to unbosom yourself to a friend, who yet perhaps can afford you no effectual help; and should you not tell your cares and sorrows to God, your best friend, who can deliver you from all your troubles? But you forget

that devotion itself is the most important part of your business, the greatest work of your life. You have more to do with God than with the whole world. Prayer will obtain God's blessing on all you do. It will prepare you for a happy eternity. You are not lavishing away your time or misemploying it by prayer. It was a saying of Dr. Donne's, 'that the only time he saved, or employed to the best purpose, he spent in piety and prayer, and in doing good.' I answer your plea of business, by the experience of a devout man who said, 'When I have hastened over the duties of God's worship, out of a too eager desire to follow my worldly business, I did many times meet with some secret cross in my affairs; whereas when I took my ordinary time, God did make my other business to succeed the better, or else my mind was brought to a quiet submission to the divine will.' No business in the world brings such unspeakable gain as private prayer does. He that prays well will do all well besides. What are you labouring for? the good things of this life? Remember, then, that devotion procures,' as Barrow observes, 'wealth inestimably precious, pleasure infinitely satisfactory, honour incomparably noble, above all that this world can afford.' Look at David, Daniel, and St. Paul, men the most constant in devotion, and yet inces

1 Fenelon, quoted by Shepherd, remarks, 'We must reserve the needful hours for communion with God in prayer. Persons who are in considerable offices, have so many indispensable duties to fulfil, that scarcely any time remains to them for communion with God, except they strictly apply themselves to its regulation. It is neces. sary then to be firm in adopting and observing a rule. Our rigour in this may seem excessive; but without it all falls into confusion; we are dissipated and relaxed: we lose our strength; we are insensibly at a distance from God.'

santly engaged, and manifestly blessed, in their several stations.

Another man will tell us, I FIND NO BENEFIT FROM PRAYER.-I have prayed, and seem no better for it; nay, rather worse.-If you feel more of your guilt and sinfulness, that of itself is an advantage, and should bring you more to the Saviour. This is a vain excuse. Shall the minister give up preaching because his congregation seem to receive no immediate benefit? Shall the husbandmen, because the seed just sown in one part of the field has not directly sprung up, not sow the remainder of the field? Let this objection lead you not to forget your prayers, but to examine their character. We know that true prayer is attended with the greatest benefits. One devout person would sometimes say to her friend, 'I would not be hired out of my closet for a thousand worlds.'

Some venture to say, 'I AM TOO WICKED TO PRAY. -The sacrifices of the wicked are an abomination to the Lord. Is it my duty to pray while unregenerate?' But he who thinks that he shall get rid of the duty of prayer on account of his wickedness, does not only confess, but aggravate his guilt and his condemnation. You must not, indeed, come with the same wicked mind with which you committed your sins; but go grieved and penitent; and the sooner you go the better. The ploughing of the wicked, all they do, is sin! and yet even a worldly man would not therefore justify them in being idle. Your neglect of prayer is perhaps the very cause of your wickedness. Begin to seek the grace of prayer, and God will give you grace to amend. It is your duty, though unregenerate, to pray, and to pray especially for a new

heart. When God has promised the new heart and the new spirit to the Jews, he adds, I will yet for this be inquired of by the house of Israel to do it for them. Ezek. xxxvi. 26, 37. Who more wicked than Simon Magus? and yet the Apostle calls on him to repent and pray to God. Acts viii. 21. Your guilt should bring you to the Saviour, and not keep you from him. Will not the sick man desire to see the physician? Is keeping at a distance, and contemptuous and negligent conduct in the offender, as likely to gain the favour of him that is offended, as a humble and meek confession of faults, and entreaty for pardon? All the practice and conduct of man, all your own experience, all the confessions of sin, and all the petitions for mercy which are recorded in the Bible, testify against such an idea. If your confession of wickedness be the real feeling of your heart, you must see it is the very reason that you should immediately begin to meditate on your sad condition, to repent, and seek God's mercy in prayer. But if it be not the feeling of your heart, this excuse for neglecting prayer needs no answer.

There are others who seem to think that all exhort

ations to prayer savour of LEGALITY. We are to be saved by believing, and not by working.-But how gross is the mistake of such! We press it not as a mere task or a meritorious labour, but as a plain duty. We state it to be a privilege and a blessing bestowed on all the children of God. We are not, it is true, saved by our prayers, but by Christ; yet we shall never be saved without prayer, for the spirit of prayer is a part of our salvation. Living in neglect of prayer is a plain proof, whatever men's notions or fancies may be, whatever their doctrinal sentiments

are, that they have none of the spirit of adoption, and so do not belong to Christ. Nay, a disregard of prayer shews that you have none of the real feelings of evangelical truth, which, working by love, ever influences the soul to seek the presence of him we love.

Is there not at the bottom of all these objections, a reason of this kind, I DISLIKE PRAYER-It puts a restraint upon all my ways-It compels me to think of that which I had rather forget?-But what are you thus owning yourself to be? It is the character of the wicked, that God is not in all his thoughts; they dislike to retain God in their knowledge. Ah! remember that, at one time or other, all flesh must come before God; he now sits on a throne of grace, where you may obtain mercy; he will hereafter sit on a throne of judgment, where he will for ever condemn those who have not sought and found grace to help in time of need.

This neglect of prayer is the fault of many; but there is a generation who are righteous in their own eyes, who TRUST IN THEIR PRAYERS.-They reason, little as they think it, on the supposition that for every prayer they make, God is, as it were, so much in debt to them, and that thus by the multitude of their prayers they deserve heaven. This is a common but a strange mistake. What merit can there be in begging and seeking that, which if we obtain, lays us under increased obligations? Israel of old followed after the law of righteousness, but did not attain it, because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law. Is not this too much your case? 'Be not mistaken: though prayer is good in its proper place, it is not good in the way of meriting any thing from God. It is not good in the way even of