and a deaf and obdurate God! For kings and all in authority, for all men, St. Paul admonishes that we plead with "God our Saviour, who will have all men to be saved." "I will therefore," he adds, "that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands without doubting. That God is willing to hear such supplications, and that he holds himself ready to reply to them, is manifestly the lesson the apostle here enforces. And do such petitions, after all, fall upon the ear of a heedless deity? Or is their scope and purport compassed in the tranquillity in which they lull and leave the suppliant?

The truth is, the opinion we oppugn is but an offshoot of the skeptical objection to all prayer. As that objection is a plausible one, and one apt to perplex minds unaccustomed to think patiently on religious topics, let us state and answer it. "Is not the whole system of the divine gov ernment, in its smallest details, equally as in its most comprehensive movements, settled long ago, solidly, and immovably; is not the moral, as well as the physical dominion of God, subordinated to sure and steadfast laws, and do you hope-you, a mere unit in the multitudinous procession of his creatures, your place assigned, your path of march prescribed unalterably,-to disturb that arrangement by your interrupting prayers? Do you not see that the displacement of a single link would disorder the universal machinery; that the interposition of the divine aid you demand, must necessarily derange the whole jointed fabric ?"

Such is, we think, a fair statement of the apparent difficulty; and we are confident it is only an apparent one, and that it involves its own answer and defeat.

For admitting, as fully as it demands, an assent to its postulate, that the whole system of creation and providence is a result of the Maker's pre-arrangement, no less in its minutest particulars, than in its general constitution, is it not obvious, that among those particulars the prayers of men are included, and have their place appointed, and their effects assigned them? Here lies the oversight of the skeptical argument. In its survey of the Almighty plan, by which, rightly enough, it contends that the destinies of the world are ordered, it omits one large class of forces, as really and effectively operative upon the movements of the whole, as any of the other million agencies VOL. XII. 8

by which the divine purpose is carried forward to its g To prove that prayer is such a force, it is not at all ne sary that we first attempt to correct the low estimat which our opponent may choose to hold it. He may sume, if he choose, that it is only so much idle br expired upon the heedless air. It is an existent actua nevertheless; this he cannot deny. It is as real as an those thoughts and ideas which shape the conduct of n and are the sources of their fates and fortunes. And such, as a positive reality, a veritable fact, according the argument which would fain explode it, it has its p appointed, and its consequences allotted it in that gr design, which comprises, in its omniscient scope, and combinations of perfect adjustment, every event and currence, every purpose and emotion, transpiring throu out the universe. The skeptical argument then, desig to shake our faith in the power of prayer, when caref examined, and tested by its own essential principle, serves to confirm our confidence in God as the hearer answerer of prayer.

During the lapse of the past hour, and of every ho which, since the world's birth, has floated over its bos into the depths of the past eternity, myriads of suppl tions from all parts of his universe have been pouring the open ear of the great Father of Life; and is it to supposed, that he, whose prescient wisdom in the beg ning adjusted all causes to their appropriate consequen all means to their exact and adequate ends, overloo and omitted from among the efficient agencies by wh the destinies of his children were to be controlled, th functions and exercises in which their deepest wants i utterance, through which alone they can maintain cherish their dependence upon him, and by which, touc with a sense of kindred interest and weakness, they themselves all linked together in sympathetic union to throne of the compassionate heavenly Father?

I think we may very confidently conclude, that in construction of the mighty plan from which he elimina his perfect creation, he, who knoweth the end from beginning, did not neglect, but carefully comprehen among the casual powers of his government, the petiti of his human creatures; apportioned to every sincere

treaty its special acknowledgement and boon; stands ever ready, without jar to a single process of his administration, to come to us when we call; and is far less cumbered to bestow and bless, than we, his tardy suppliants are, to seek his presence, and implore his help.

Let us now return, ere we quit this branch of our subject, to a consideration of the difficulty which challenged us when we started. It is, as every one must perceive, only a decorous modification of the skeptical objection we have just discussed, but when it assumes a Christian garb it perhaps requires a separate treatment.

"Is not the deity an unchangeable being? Does not St. James assure us that he is without variableness, or the shadow of turning? And do you flatter yourself by your importunities to allure him from his steadfast throne, to alter and re-arrange the lines of your lot? Do you expect Him, the unalterable, to vibrate to the cries of your sorrow stricken heart, and to shift his course to distil on your exigency the dews of his heavenly help? Pray if you please," for the objector in this instance is a Christian, and dare not inhibit prayer entirely,-" pray if you please, but look not, foolishly, or look in vain, for any direct recognition of your requests, and let the tranquil and grateful temper which is the spontaneous issue of the office, suffice and satisfy you." Now, as in the former case, we might hint, that our supplications and his response to them, are perhaps appointed by the prescient God to be powerfully influential upon the disposal of the lines of our lot, and that our cries of anguish are pre-ordained as the adequate means procurative of the heavenly solace we solicited; and that so, just because of our conviction of his unchangeableness, are we confident of the certainty with which in both instances he will hearken and do.' But let us attempt a reply by analogy, rather.

The strength of the difficulty lies in the assumption of such an immutability in God, as necessitates a course so uniform and steadfast in his dealings with man, that he may not deviate from it,-for the objection assumes that he must deviate from it,-to meet any individual entreaty, how urgent soever the want, and clamorous the cry. Now, it strikes us that this very uniformity and invariability, so far from sapping, should reinforce our conviction of the efficacy of prayer, by assuring us of the certainty

with which, from within the scope of his general process he detaches and imparts special privileges to those, w employ special means to procure them.

In the material world, there are certain comforts a blessings patent to all. The light and warmth of sunshin the bland breeze of summer, and the healthful blasts winter, the smell of flowers, the grandeur of mountain and of the sea, the solemnity of forests, and all the vari beauty and magnificence of nature,-these are free to a and no inclosure excludes the poorest or the idlest fro their enjoyment. And so in the spiritual domain of t same God over all, there are common advantages unpu chased of prayer, which natural religion and Christiani gratuitously bestow. A partial knowledge of God, vague faith in him, an easy and indolent reliance up his goodness, a tolerably correct system of public an personal morality, and a somewhat dim and unassure but still comfortable hope of a future life, of pardon, ar final rest, of these, all who are Christians in name, a participants. Prayer does not include them, nor its omi sion forfeit them.

To return to the realm of Providence. From his co fidence in the suitability to the supply of human want, that general economy of nature, which lavishes unbough so many blessings upon all, assured by the very regularit and certainty of the system, that special advantages ma be secured from it by special effort, the agriculturalis tills, and sows, and reaps, and gathers sustenance for th life material. And so, from a similar confidence in th suitability of the general economy of grace to spiritua need, and hence a conviction that singular privileges ma be won from it by singular endeavor, the devout spiri waits on God, and importunes, and prevails, and gather fruit unto life eternal. In both cases, the objects ar attained by reliance upon the adaptability of the resource of that divine goodness which sheds unnumbered benefac tions upon the race, to meet and satisfy peculiar diligenc with peculiar privileges, and to do so, without the slightes deviation from the course of its steadfast and universa operations.

Further, for it is perhaps no mere fanciful speculation that would carry out the analogy-as by the skill and labor of the husbandman, in dressing and enriching hi

fields, his soil does actually inhale a greater amount of warmth and vital energy from the sun, and suck in, in a larger degree, the fertilizing juices of the rain, than the crude, unbroken earth around it; so the heart prepared by pious aspiration, and nourished by prayer, gathers in more copiously the effluences of God's comforting grace, and drinks in more luxuriant draughts of the reviving dews of his holy spirit, than the arid bosoms unsoftened by religious culture, that yield reluctant entrance to heavenly impulses, and nurture only the natural weeds of passion, and the wild flowers of unspiritual affections.

And yet again, to admonish us that to receive, we must ask, to find, we musk seek, let the cultivator intermit for one season his usual labor, and no fond persuasions on his part, of the uniform and unvarying goodness of God, will supply the harvest he has lost. So is it false to fact, however plausible it may seem in the metaphysics of natural religion, that the divine love is too large and impartial to be affected by our supplications, that as he surely knows without communication from us, all our wants and trials, he needs no importunities of ours to persuade him to a more personal appliance of his grace than that he would spontaneously exert upon us. The foolish husbandman, at the close of an idle season, standing disconsolate in his empty barns, is a fit effigy of the indigent soul desirous of extraordinary privileges, yet declining the use of prayer to procure them. Or if we will be answered from the lips of him who studied the plan of the divine government as he read it on the heart, lying in the bosom of the Father, peruse the parable of the friend at midnight, (Luke xi.) and that of the unjust judge, (Luke xviii.) and heed the lesson they were designed to teach us.

"Lightly won, lightly worn," is as true of heavenly, as of human advantages; and if, to deepen our sense of dependence on him, and to increase our appreciatian of the high value of his favors,-if to inspire us with heavenward impulses, and to habituate us to seek Him who hides himself from the heedless gaze of the indolent and unworthy-if, in this preliminary world, to train us for the skies, so that, when death releases us, we shall instinctively seek upward to him whom here we see through a glass darkly, on the threshold of his secret pavilion, to cry, "Now, I beseech