sudden stroke, or under conviction of overwhelming sin, when the voice of conscience, that never can be silenced, spake out of the darkness and prophesied woe; have always knelt and cried to the gods-the bad gods or the good gods, the gods supernal or the gods infernal, but to some pow ers unseen. For the conviction that back of all that was visible there lay something invisible, that behind this material world, or beyond it, there lay an awful world of power invisible, this conviction has been in the heart of men from the beginning, and will remain in the heart of men until the end. We need have no fear of that. When men have tried all things by their own power, visible or material, then, in their despair, they have appealed to the gods. "Give us this day our daily bread," the Christian prays. An Indian corn dance is the same prayer. It differs but in object. The Indian corn dance, the sacrifice to Pan, were only human nature's dumb instincts appealing to the unseen, to the powers that hold humanity in the hollows of their mighty hands, powers that could save or could destroy-strangely, darkly, but still appealing. There is not, over all this fair earth, land that has not been dyed with the blood of sacrifice. Men have gone to the gods dyed with the blood of beasts, and asked to be saved; dyed with the blood

of men, and asked to be pardoned; dyed with the blood of their first-born offered to propitiate. The dearest thing they had they offered as their prayer to God. The dying groans of the victim, the agony of the dumb beast, the shriek of slaughtered men, have been man's prayers to the gods above him.

So, when Christ came, the word was not, "Shall we pray?" but, "Lord, teach us how to pray;" "Teach us how to come to God;" "Teach us how to approach God, and Who God is.”

The character of the God determines the character of the prayer. That was in the mind of the disciples and in the mind of the Lord when He taught them a prayer according to their request: "Show us God; tell us what His nature is, and His name, and so shall we know how to approach Him acceptably, and receive good gifts at His hands." Prayer comes to us, therefore, as the natural instinct of man displaying itself on every page of his history; men praying as individuals, or praying as communities, or praying as nations, or praying as churches, but still praying. There has gone up from the earth a ceaseless cry of lamentation and woe, or of thanksgiving and praise to the heavens above.

In speaking to you, therefore, to-night, of the

Christian Doctrine of Prayer, I must look to prayer as it was taught by the Lord Himself, and as prayer comes to us now, Christian men in a Christian land, who have had a Revelation of the Invisible teaching us the nature of God, proclaiming His Fatherhood and man's Sonship.

Of course, I am not to prove the existence of God. I am not speaking to men who believe in the dirt philosophy; I am not speaking, at least I shall not speak, to those who suppose there is nothing beyond what is visible, nothing beyond what is tangible, who suppose there is no ear that can hear, no voice that can answer, no heart that can feel. I speak to those who believe in God, and that God "Our Father," who has an ear to hear, a hand to save, a heart to feel.

And from that point of view, I am met with this objection: "God is unchangeable: how can our prayers change the unchangeable?”

Now, the unchangeableness of God is of the very essence of our faith. Christianity, first of all, reveals it. We must accept the responsibility of a God that changes not; that alters not nor wea'ries. The Unchangeable for ever and for ever is our God and Father. Now, how with such a God shall we come to pray? We bring our petitions before Him; we ask Him for pardon or ask Him

for bread. We ask Him for deliverance from some woe; we ask Him for salvation from some bodily, mental, spiritual pain. God has brought it on us— at least it has come by His law. He has at least permitted it. Do we ask Him to change? "How can man's feeble words change God?" The answer is: There is an entire mistake. No Christian man prays, expecting to change God. No prayer that was ever offered with the expectation that God would either repent or change was a Christian prayer. God is unchangeable. That is the very first thought. If God be captious, if God be changeable, if God be open to flattery, open to any propitiation, open to feel lovingly toward me to-day, and open to hating me to-morrow, how can I pray to a God that veers as the winds veer, that changes as the tides change? No. The very God we need to pray to is a God unchangeable. For it is not that I seek to change God by prayer; but quite another thing, my relation toward God; and that change is effected not by changing God, who is not changeable, but by changing myself. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself!

You stand some day on a plain, and there rises in the distance a mountain-a single peak, let us say, as you can sometimes see them on our own broad plains in the West. You pass a day's jour

ney with that mountain in your sight. At every hour of your journey, your relation to the mountain changes; the mountain still stands just the same. You approach it on the one side, and as you look at it, it lifts to the blue above rugged peaks, splintered by the lightnings, worn with the storms, glittering underneath the sunlight, flashing in the pallid moonbeams, daily and nightly. The shadow falls on you as you stand if the sun is beyond, and you are in the coolness. You pass on and around, and on another side the hot sun beats down upon you. You are footsore, dusty, thirsty, weary. On that side, no brook comes down, no springs flash out. It is a hard, barren waste. You go on still to another slope. The forest grows up, covering the shaggy sides with greenness, and there in the shadow of the woods the rivulets steal downward through the clefts to the brimming river in the valley, and you stoop and drink, and are refreshed. So, as you journey hour by hour, you may change relation to the mountain, and at no two points that you occupy will the mountain be just the same to you. You have seen it on different sides, you have borne different relations to it, you have climbed its rocky sides, you have been cold upon its snowy summit, you have rested in its cool shadow, you have been protected from the storm by

your