which is ascribed to mere handiwork, to performance separate from principle, to that bodily exercise whereof the apostle saith that without godliness which is a thing of soul and sentiment altogether it profiteth little. Their delusion is that it profiteth much; and we fear it is a delusion which has left deep and enduring traces behind it, even among a people who have abjured the communion of Popery, and would treat its disciples with intolerance. Under all the disguises of our Protestantism, the inveteracy of the olden spirit breaks forth at sacraments. And when we behold of many who breathe the element of irreligion through the year, how at the proclamation of this great religious festival they come forth in families-how although on any other Sabbath the ordinary services of the house of God should be honoured with but half a congregation or with half an attendance, yet on the Sabbath and the service extraordinary, the place should teem to an overflow with worshippers-how an importance so visible should be given to this solemnity, and by those who have not habitually in their hearts any solemn reverence for the things or obligations of sacredness-We cannot but recognise somewhat like the dregs of our ancient superstition in this great periodical homage, founded as it often is on a sort of magical or mystic spell which is ascribed to sacra

ments.

Be assured of this and of every other ordinance of Christianity, that, unless impregnated with life and meaning, it is but a skeleton or framework-a

*

body without a soul—a mere service of bone and
muscle-which the hand can perform, but which
the heart with all its high functions of thought and
sensibility has no share in. It stands in the same
relation of inferiority to genuine religion, that the
drudgery of an animal does to the devotion of a
seraph. This is not the service which God who is
a Spirit requires of His worshippers-who, to wor-
ship Him acceptably, must do it in spirit and in
truth. Religion is no doubt the homage of crea-
tures who are immeasurably beneath the Sovereign
whom they address; but still it is the homage of
intelligent creatures the homage of the subordi-
nate to the Supreme intelligence of beings, there-
fore, who look with the eye of their mind towards
Him who sits in presiding authority over the uni-
verse which He has made; and who at the same time
are conscious, that they are looked upon with the
eye of a Mind that discerns all and that judges all.
In one word, if in the doing of any ordinance there
be not the intercourse of mind with mind, there
substantially is nothing; and
t we fear it to be
just such a nothingness as is yielded by many who
are regular in prayer, and who walk with decency
and order through the rounds of a sacrament.
this wretched drivelling, both superstition and hypo-
crisy appear to be blended-a vain confidence in the
efficacy of forms, and at the same time a willing
substitution of them for the purer but more arduous
services of a moral and spiritual obedience. It is
this last alone which availeth. Your sacrament is

In

vain, if the dedication of the whole life to God do not come after it. Your prayer is vain, if, unlike the apostle's in the text, the desire of the whole heart have not gone before it.

But let us now attend to the subject of the prayer -even that Israel might be saved. And here we may remark that although desire be a constituent part of prayer and therefore essential both to its reality and to its acceptance-yet it is not all desire thus lifted up from earth that will meet with acceptance in heaven. It were an attempt much too unwieldy at present, yet none more interesting, to specify what all the desires are of creatures here below which are sure of welcome and of a willing response in the sanctuary above. It is not every random desire that will meet with such a reception-for the same scripture which holds out the promise of "ask and ye shall receive," has also held out the warning that many ask and receive not "because they ask amiss, that they may consume it upon their lusts." Still, believing as we do, that Scripture does furnish the principles by which to discriminate the warrantable from the unwarrantable—and so, if I may thus speak, to classify the topics of prayer-we know not any exposition of greater practical importance, than what those things are which we may confidently seek at the hand of God even till we have obtained them; and what those other things on the seeking after which the Bible lays such discouragement, that we dare not or rather cannot though we would pray for them in faith, or pray for them in

that which gives to every request its prevalence and its power. As an example of what now I can but briefly touch upon, it is written "that if we ask any thing according to his will he heareth us.” This does not confer a sanction upon every suit or solicitation that we may press at the court of heaven, but certainly upon a vast number of them. Thus surely, every petition in that prayer which He himself hath dictated, even the Lord's prayer, may, as according most thoroughly with His own will, be preferred with utmost confidence on our part; and so it is that while we have no warrant to pray for this world's riches, we have a perfect warrant to pray for daily bread. The same principle of agreeableness to the will of God sustains our faith, when praying in behalf either of ourselves or others, for the riches of a glorious immortalitybeing expressly told that God willeth such intercessions to be made for all men, and on this ground too that He willeth all men to be saved. Such is the large and liberal warrant that we have from God Himself for turning our desire into a request, when the object of that desire is salvation. No imagined desire on the part of God, or imagined destiny on the part of man, should lay an arrest on this plain exercise. Let there be but a desire in our heart after salvation, even as there was a desire in the heart of Paul for the salvation of his countrymen the Jews; and the patent way of arriving at our object is just to vent this desire in confident utterance before the mercy-seat of Heaven. So

near does God bring salvation to us-So fully does He place it within the reach of all, and at the re ceiving of all. It is just as if we had it, for the. taking; or as if no obstacle whatever intervened. between our sincere wish for it, and our secure possession of it. At least there seems, in that gracious economy under which we live, to be but one stepping-stone between them; and that is prayer. So very near and accessible to us has God made the blessedness of our eternity. He has positively, committed His attribute of truth to the declaration, that if men will but ask He will bestow. He has invested, as it were, every honest petitioner with a power over his own future and everlasting destiny; and made the avenue so open between the earth we tread upon and His own upper sanctuary, that if the bent or aspiration of our soul be towards heaven, heaven with all its glory and its happiness is our own. This at least is the object of a most legitimate desire, and that prayer is a most legitimate one which proceedeth therefrom. Ask and ye shall receive, is a promise which embraces within the rightful scope of it, all that is good for the soul and for the soul's eternity. And so let us ask till we receive-let us seek till we find let us knock till the door of salvation is opened to us.

But thus to say that we may have salvation for the asking, certainly points out what may be called a very cheap way of obtaining it cheaper far than we naturally or usually have any imagination of For what may be easier it is thought than the