02 - Manner of Prayer

Chapter 2 MANNER OF PRAYER The incident is an interesting, and even a most beautiful one, which led the disciples of Christ to request him to " teach them to pray." He himself had been praying ; there was a simplicity, a propriety, a comprehensiveness, a fervor and spirituality in his prayer, that so instructed and affected them, that they desired to sit at his feet, if it were but to learn how to pray. " And it came to pass, that as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us how to pray, as John also taught his disciples." Every Christian has an interest in knowing how the Saviour would pray. The best of men need direction in prayer. Who may not adopt the language, " Teach us what we shall say unto him : for we cannot order our speech by reason of darkness ?"

How then shall we be instructed in the matter and manner of prayer? How shall an ignorant and guilty creature learn to address himself to the great Creator, who is God over all, blessed forever? The Bible is a sufficient rule of conduct in all things pertaining to life and godliness. The subject matter for prayer is to be found in the word of God. There is not one of its doctrines, in all their richness and variety, that does not contain truths which the lips of prayer may make use of, and turn to good account at the throne of grace. What God is, what he has done, and what he has purposed and is disposed to do; what we are, and what we need, are not less guides in prayer, than they are principles of truth. ’’ He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him." His love to the world in giving his Son to die, the condescension of his Son in laying down his life as a sacrifice for sin, and the work of the Holy Spirit in applying the truths of the gospel to the soul, furnish not only the appropriate, but the indispensable aliment to the spirit of supplication. " How shall they call on him in whom they have not believed?" The point is too plain to require either illustration, or proof, that the mind must be furnished with the truth of God, in order to be furnished with matter for prayer. Nor need we any more painful conviction of this, than the absolute sterility and barrenness of thought, and worse than chilling coldness of those prayers, which it may have been our unhappiness to listen to from men who deny the essential truths of Christianity. Socrates, or Seneca, dwelling on the barren truths of Natural Religion, would have offered a richer prayer to the "Unknown God," than I have heard from the hesitating and embarrassed lips of an unchristian ministry. The precepts of the Bible also teach us how to pray. They describe the spirit of prayer ; while they teach us what graces to ask for, and for what duties we need strength. The promises of the Bible are revealed for our instruction and encouragement in prayer. They teach us what blessings God is willing to bestow, and how willing he is to bestow them. They are " exceedingly great and precious ;" they are wonderfully various, adapted to all cases of want, and all the varieties of Christian experience. They are promises for health, strength, food and raiment; they are promises of peace, safety, success, courage, comfort. They are adapted to seasons of temptation, sickness, poverty, persecution, calumny, darkness, and fear. They are promises of light, of regeneration, of repentance, of faith, of peace, of joy, and of the indwelling witness of the Holy Spirit. They are promises of obedience, of perseverance in holiness, of the coming of God’s Kingdom on the earth, of calmness and hope in death, and of eternal glory. Nor is there one of them that does not give a fresh impulse to the soul that wrestles at the throne, and that may not be used as an argument in prayer. The threatenings of the Bible teach us what we have reason to fear and deprecate; while the very sins that are there recorded teach what we should pray against and deplore. " All these things," says the Apostle, ’’ happened unto them for ensamples; and they were written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come."

God has also recorded a multitude of facts in his word, that are comments upon its truths, its promises, and its threatenings, of which he condescends to permit his people to remind him, and which furnish them with powerful considerations in pleading at his mercy seat. They are facts which belong to the history of his dealings both with good and bad men, with nations and individuals, with the church and the world.

There are instances of ’prayer, too, there recorded, which show us its spirit, its comprehensiveness, its appropriateness to times, and places, and circumstance and men, as well as its fruit and power ; and which show us for what it is to be offered, and God’s readiness to hear and answer. The Bible tells of Moses, of Elias, of Daniel, of Job, who ’’set their face to seek the Lord God by prayer and supplication." God has there recorded also a great variety of the experience of his people, and of his own conduct toward them, and of their supplications under the dealings of his hand. Of all the books in the Bible, the book of Psalms is the one which is fitted to teach men how to pray, and how they do pray when influenced by his Spirit. In this book the Spirit of God has delineated his own operations on the hearts of his people. The book, generally, is nothing more nor less than a diagram of a good man’s heart — "the inside section of a believer’s soul."

More than this; the Bible teaches us where to go for assistance in prayer, " For through him, we have access by one spirit unto the Father." In every act of true devotion, there is a concurrence of the Spirit’s influence. No man is wise enough or holy enough, or sufficiently acquainted with his own wants, or with the mind and will of God to pray as he ought to’ pray, unless directed and assisted by the Spirit of God. With the most guileless sincerity, Apostles themselves acknowledge, " For we know not- what we should pray for as we ought ; but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered. And he that searcheth the heart, knoweth the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God." Men are ignorant, forgetful and erring ; but the Spirit " helpeth their infirmities," by enlightening their understandings, assisting their memories, warming their hearts, and directing their desires in prayer after right objects. It is no marvel that men who pray without feeling their dependence on God’s Spirit, and seeking his aid, offer disconnected prayers, random prayers, and prayers that have no object. Prayers they may be that are fluent, but they mean nothing - wordy prayers, destitute of thought and emotion, because those who offer them have forgotten that " they are not sufficient of themselves to think anything of themselves." It is the work of the Spirit to teach men to pray. The heart and the tongue must be under his influence. " Open thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth thy praise," The prayer that reaches heaven must come from heaven. It is " the Comforter" alone who imparts the spirit of adoption, whereby we say " Abba, Father." " The preparation of the heart in man, and the answer of the tongue, is of the Lord." The Spirit of God himself is called "The Spirit of supplication." It is he that prays in the people of God; and when he teaches them to pray, it is " with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit." On every page of the Bible there is matter for prayer; and he who would pray with intelligence and with fervor, must study his Bible. The best instruction we can give on this subject is to refer you to the Bible. Let the Spirit of God impress you with a sense of your wants, and direct your desires. Let your mind be richly furnished with all God’s truth, and let your bosom be filled with devotional emotions, and then freely utter your requests before God. There is thought in prayer; strong thought, and often close, compact, and connected thought. There is emotion, too, heavenly emotion. There is memory, too, in prayer; and there is conscience and even imagination. There is the argument of Moses and the piety of Isaiah and David in prayer; and the fittest combination of them all, directed by God’s Spirit, uttered with simplicity and fervor, and with no burdensome restrictions upon the heart, constitutes the sweetest, humblest, most grateful and heavenly devotion. To aim at eloquence in prayer, is of all abominations one of the greatest; to affect singularity in it, the strangest of all affectations. There is a copiousness of diction in the prayers of some Christians, which is not found in others; and there is an unusual copiousness in the same Christian at different seasons and under the power of different thoughts and emotions. All this is natural. "There is a diversity of gifts, but the same spirit." But this is not all the instruction the Bible gives in relation to the matter and manner of prayer. While it contains the principles by which we are to apply the matter of prayer, there is a special rule of direction, in what is commonly called The Load’s Prayer, I cannot help thinking it is a mistake to call it so, because it is a prayer which our Lord himself could not use; it contains confessions of sin which he could not make. If there be a prayer in the Bible which may be properly called the Lord’s Prayer, it is contained in the 17th of John; a prayer which no other than he could ever offer. This formula, commonly called the Lord’s Prayer, contains the substance of prayer for his disciples. In no other part of the Bible is the service of prayer so methodically specified. It reduces the matter of prayer to certain great subjects; under one or other of which all lawful requests may be presented. It is distinguished for great tenderness, great sincerity, great simplicity and precision, giving us the different heads of prayer, and at the same time giving us the whole range of the Bible for matter to put under these heads. A question arises here, if we may not use this form in our supplications at the throne of grace? Most certainly we may; most certainly we do; most certainly we ought; though there is no evidence that we ought to do so uniformly and always. The Christian ought not to be so much the enemy of forms, as to depreciate this most beautiful form of prayer; nor so much of a formalist, as not to pray without it. That we must use it as a form, not to depart from, as if there was some charm in the words, is not conceded.

We are naturally led in our inquiries on the general subject of prayer, to a consideration of the question of praying with or without a prescribed form. There has been, and is still, a great variance in the belief and practice of professed Christians in the manner of addressing the throne of grace in this particular. Some churches have set and stereotyped forms, prescribed by ecclesiastical authority- even upon their Archbishops, their Bishops, their Presbyters, and their Deacons. It has never before fallen in the writer’s way to speak extensively upon this subject; nor does he do it now without some misgivings — misgivings not of truth and principle, but misgivings arising from the fact that, as a general axiom, it is no part of true religion to find fault with the religion of other people.

He would preface what he is about to say, with a single remark, and that is, in this matter " Let every man he fully persuaded in his own mind." If there are those who, from conscientious convictions of duty, give an honest preference to forms of religious worship, they may well say to us, who honestly differ from them, "Who art thou that judgest. another man’s servant; to his own Master he standeth or falleth.’’ Since, however, our own principles and practice are dear to us, we hope it will not he deemed unfitting, or uncharitable, to advert to some of the considerations by which they may be defended. This we shall do without embarrassment, though without designing to give offense to those who differ from us, unless they be offended by God’s truth.

Jesus Christ has nowhere authorized a restriction to any set form of prayer. The only passage in the New Testament which has the semblance of this authority, is the declaration made by him in relation to what is called the Lord’s Prayer: "After this manner pray ye." Our position here is, that the Saviour gave his disciples this prayer, not as a form in words, but in substance and manner. He does not say after these words; his object was to furnish his disciples hints on the subject of prayer ; nor could they, from the nature of the case, be entitled to expect anything more. The most rigid advocates of forms do not profess to believe that by the instructions here given, the Saviour designed to limit his church to these words, or even to these thoughts; because they themselves have with great care and pains presented other and more amplified forms. To us it seems that a fair mind must confess that the Great Teacher here designed to furnish his people with the great outlines of prayer, without attempting to draw out the whole system of devotion, and filling up all the parts of it. Men of prayer will readily class these several topics, and naturally remember and resort to them when they pray. There is not one of them that is extraneous and foreign to the subject of prayer, nor any one of them which, when prayer is offered upon a large scale, may be omitted. The order is natural, and the transition from one thought to another is such that it is not abruptly made ; nor is the mind at all embarrassed in perceiving the association of thought which connects the whole. It covers the common wants of man ; so far as it goes, it is adapted to all the stages of Christian experience, and not less fitted to the babe in Christ, than to those of mature age. The Sacred Scriptures nowhere speak of reading prayers, or make any allusion to a Liturgy. Would they not have done this, if established Forms of Prayer were indispensable to the prosperity of the church, or the comfort and beauty of her worship? The prayers of Abraham were not written prayers. Nor was the prayer of Eleazar at Haran; nor the prayer of Jacob, at Peniel; nor the prayers of Moses and Aaron for Egypt and Israel. The prayer of Joshua at the defeat of Ai, the prayer of Manoah, of Samson, of Hannah, of Samuel at Mizpeh, of Elijah at Mount Carmel, of Hezekiah against Sennacherib, of Jabez, of Ezra, of Nehemiah, of Job, of Daniel, of Jonah, and of Habakkuk, were none of them dictated by the pen. Nor was the prayer of Zacharias, nor that of the Publican, nor that of the disciples in any one exigence of their history. The prayers offered by the disciples of Christ subsequently to the period when he thus taught them, that are recorded at length in the Acts of the Apostles, grew out of the peculiar condition in which they were offered, and were offered under the impulse of their peculiar exigences; yet, in not one of them is there one word of the Lord’s Prayer, nor the remotest allusion to it. The prayer of the Apostles on the appointment of Mathias to the Apostleship; their prayer on the release of Peter and John from the Jewish Council; and Paul’s noble supplication, as recorded ill the third chapter of his Epistle to the Ephesians, have not the slightest reference to the Lord’s Prayer, but in method and thought are entirely different from it throughout. They were prayers for special occasions, called for by the occasion itself, offered without the least restriction by this prescribed form, and under circumstances in which this form of prayer would have been altogether inappropriate. There are also instructions on the subject of prayer scattered throughout the Epistles, in addition to those given in the Lord’s Prayer, and which this form does not include. We are taught to offer all our supplications "in the name of Christ," which this prayer says nothing about; evidently teaching us that there are other and superadded revelations on this subject, and that this form, excellent as it is, is not the sole directory. Jesus Christ, therefore, has nowhere authorized a restriction to any set form of prayer. In the next place, forms of prayer invert the order of prayer ; they make the words lead the heart, and not the heart the words. True prayer flows from the heart ; the heart is the seat of supplication. This truth is, indeed, so obvious that the best writers who are the strenuous advocates of forms, contend for them only as aids to the worship of the heart. But in doing this, they do no more, even by their own showing, than make the lips affect the heart; whereas, the nature of the case, the meaning of the terms, and the uniform teachings of God’s word, make the heart in prayer affect the lips. It is in prayer as it is in speaking, before a man speaks he must have something to say, his thoughts must first give an impulse to his tongue. Before he prays, he must have thoughts and emotions to utter; his heart must move first, his lips after-wards. This is the true order of prayer. God first gives the heart to pray, and then the words ; he does not give the words first, and after-wards the heart. In every instance, in the beginning, during the progress, and at the close of prayer, the heart goes before the lips, and not the lips before the heart. A man’s mind and affections may be excited by the sound of his own voice in prayer, and one sentence of supplication may thus prepare the way for another ; but the incitement is produced by the utterance of thoughts and emotions already existing within his own mind. They are not vain words which move him, but thought acting upon thought, emotion upon emotion, each and every one of them taking precedence of the utterance of his lips. No man begins prayer with mere words, as forms teach him to do. We do not deny but the heart may follow the words, and only affirm the words ought to follow the heart. When we read in the Scriptures of men " stirring up themselves to take hold on God’ who does not see that this is an intellectual and spiritual stirring up, and not a rhetorical effort? It is not an effort of the lips to affect the heart, but an effort of the heart to affect the lips. And hence it is that an habitual reliance upon forms of prayer encourages spiritual sloth, and an idle mind, and tempts men who read or repeat a prayer, to be careless of self-examination, and too little solicitous of exciting grace in the heart to pray. We do not say men are hypocrites whose religious worship is restricted by forms; on the other hand, we have no doubt of the piety of many of them; while of the piety of not a few, we have evidence of the most convincing and delightful kind. But this we say, that the natural tendency of their system is to encourage hypocrisy. There may be hypocrites who pray without a form ; but they are more exposed to be hypocrites who are induced to believe that saying the prescribed words of prayer is prayer. With regard to secret prayer, the true and natural idea of it is, that it is a man’s own mind and heart that prays; while the one who uses the prayers that are made for him by another, makes use of the mind and heart of another, and not his own. There is danger of hypocrisy, and still more of honest self-deception, everywhere; but the danger is greatly increased where the words professedly lead the heart, and not the heart the words. We judge not other men; we know not the influence of habit on their own minds; but to us it appears a very strange thing that a Christian man, much more a Christian minister, should wish to find his prayers written in a book.

Another objection to forms is, that they check the teachings, of the Holy Spirit. If what has been said in relation to the work of the Holy Spirit in prayer, in a previous paragraph, be true, we know not how to get over this difficulty; it is absolutely fatal to the whole system of forms of prayer, save in those cases where they are necessarily imposed as leading-strings in childhood and ignorance. God has promised to give the spirit of prayer and supplication. For what? To indite our own petitions at his throne. Does the man need this influence who finds them already indited in a book? Is it said, he needs this influence to enable him to enter into the import of the prescribed form? It is nowhere promised for this purpose. He has no certain evidence that the original authors of the form he uses were influenced by the Spirit of God; for while God has promised to give the Spirit of prayer to those who pray, he has nowhere promised to give his Spirit to any man, or any set of men, to enable them to write prayers for other people. And what is still more to our purpose, the Apostle Paul, in giving an account of the work of the Spirit on the Christian’s heart in prayer, says, " Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities, for we know not what we should pray for as we ought." Now if we use prayers that are made for us, it is not true that we do not know what we should pray for as we ought. We do know, because we have all our requests before us in the book. Either we do know, or we do not. If we do not, then in using forms, our own requests are not offered. If we do, the Apostle is in a sad mistake. But the mistake is not Paul’s; it is in the book of prayer, which professes to know what we should pray for as we ought, which the Spirit of God says we do not know, and which he himself teaches us when we ourselves pray.

Retired, and sometimes sweet and awful, are the secrets between the soul of man and God. " What man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of a man which is in him ?" And who searches and develops them in prayer, but the Spirit of God, whose influence forms of prayer supersede, and who himself alone " searcheth the deep things of God ?"

Still another objection to forms of prayer is, that no set of prayers is, or ever can he, adequate to the necessities of the church. Who does not see, that however excellent any Liturgy may be, and however great the variety of its forms, it is a simple impossibility, without the aid of a new revelation, and without the spirit of prophecy, to form a set of prayers that shall suit a church at any period of time hereafter? Hence we find that new editions of the Book of Common Prayer are continually making their appearance. By common consent and authority it has been altered, abridged, enlarged, amended, and otherwise disposed of according to the various exigencies of times and occasions. The Church of England has, in the reign of several princes, since the first compiling of her Liturgy in the time of Edward the Sixth, not only made unessential alterations, but alterations in the main body and essential parts of it. And she must do so again, if she cuts off occasion of complaint in her own members.

Yet with all this liberty, no form can meet their exigencies. When events take place in the providence of God, for which the prescribed forms of prayer furnish no appropriate and adequate supply, the whole church must stand still, and wait until the constituted authorities prepare a new form of prayer, and publicly authorize the use of it. Not one, even of her ministers or bishops, may go beyond the prayer written in his book, however unexpected and extraordinary, and urgent the demand may be for some marked and strong peculiarity in their devotions.

If from public and social prayer, we go to the devotions of the family and the closet, the embarrassment is increased a thousand-fold. Every family, and every individual has mercies of its own to be thankful for, sins of its own to confess, wants to be presented before God, which no prescribed form can reach; and to be limited by such a form is an encroachment upon Christian liberty and privilege, to which no heart, no conscience ought to be subjected. The primitive Christians and churches did not know anything of such a restriction; nor would they have submitted to such bondage, "no not for an hour." And hence no small part of the devotions of the Papal and Episcopal churches, consists of ’’vain repetitions," of disjointed prayers, of "shreds and fragments" of prayer, which have no connection with each other, and which are far from presenting anything like a continuous address to the throne of grace.

We may add that forms of prayer are in their nature absurd and preposterous. The spirit of prayer never requires men to pray in any set form of words. Its emotions are so various that it must necessarily seek its own way of expressing them; they are often full, and such as cannot he suppressed, but must give themselves utterance in a way adapted to their own strength and tenderness. A hungry beggar does not ask alms, nor a drowning man cry for relief only by a set form. The idea were preposterous. No more does a perishing sinner plead for mercy and grace to help in the time of need by a set form. The great controversy between God and his visible people, in every age, has arisen from the strong tendency of the human heart to satisfy itself with mere forms. It relates to a spiritual religion on the one hand, and a formal! religion on the other. From the corrupt state of the church in the days of the prophet Isaiah, down to the Pharisaic formality, which was so severely rebuked by the Saviour, and from that time to the present, this is the great subject matter of controversy. Is it not safe to be on the right side of this great question?

Such are our objections to Forms of Prayer. Let us not, however, do the injustice to advert exclusively to the considerations against them, but give all due weight to the considerations which have been suggested in their favor.

It has been said that the example of the primitive Christians is in favor of Forms. Much has been written to prove the antiquity of Liturgies, and Bishop Bull has strongly urged the probability of their being of Apostolic origin. The Church of England has preserved in her Book of Common Prayer some prayers of ancient date, to which she attaches great importance from their mere antiquity. But were the example of Christians, even from the days of the Apostles to the present hour, in favor of Forms, so long as there is no warrant for them in the word of God, it lays no obligation on our consciences. The statement itself, however, that the example of the primitive Christians is in favor of Forms, is not true. The posture of the primitive Christians in prayer was such as to render it impossible to read prayers. They stood with their arms crossed on their breasts, their heads back, and their eyes often closed. It is confidently asserted by those who have made close search, that there is not such an expression as ’’ reading prayers," to be found in the history of the first four centuries. " The most eminent ritualist the Church of England has produced for a hundred years, confesses that the public services of the primitive church were ail performed extempore, or memoriter, and that no one office was reduced to writing until the fourth century." After this, we know there were set forms of prayer ; but it was an age of remarkable degeneracy and corruption ; and it was superinduced and came on by a punctilious and superstitious regard for modes and forms of worship. There is no fact better established, than that for several centuries after the resurrection of Christ, prescribed forms of prayer were unknown. When strict inquisition was made for " the books" of the Christians by their persecutors, it was a singular fact that their Bibles were demanded, and not a word is said of their Prayer Books. So when the Emperor Constantine, in his zeal for Christianity, directed the Christians to be supplied with the Bible, he said not a word about Prayer Books. In early ages, too, very many of the clergy, and not one of the common people, could read; and what good could Prayer Books do? The Christian families of that illiterate age must either have worshiped God without forms of prayer, or not worshiped him at all. We have also the expressed testimony of the early Christian Fathers on this subject. " When Justin Martyr is describing the worship of the second century, he says, that the officiating minister offers up prayer and thanksgiving, according to his ability, an expression which would be unmeaning if he had read prayers from a book." Tertullian too, in the same century, says, " We pray without a monitor, because we pray from the heart." In favor of forms, it is also said, that it is important to have matter to ponder upon, to pray with intelligence. We have only to reply, most certainly it is so; but then there is more matter in the Bible than in a Book of Common Prayer.

It is further urged, and we confess the objection has some weight, that in extempore prayers, too much latitude is given to the speaker — that, on the one hand, his prayers may often he barren and dry ; and on the other, they may he redundant, and sometimes filled even with wild and extravagant notions. This is true; it is an evil to be guarded against: and we have only to say, that we expect too much, when we expect perfect prayers from imperfect men. And are there no such imperfections in the reading of forms of prayer? Are they never recited with chilling coldness and school-boy negligence? In order to remedy these evils, I have heard them chanted! But what would the Saviour and his apostles have thought of setting their prayers to music? Besides, are there no imperfections in the forms themselves? Is the extravagant praise so gratuitously bestowed upon the Liturgy of the Episcopal Church, the praise that is due to it ? Does it insist upon no arrogant pretensions? Does it inculcate no superstitious rites? Does it teach no errors in doctrine? Has it no defects, and no redundancies? " I have no hesitation in saying, "says the late Dr. Dick, of Glasgow," that in other churches, prayers far superior are offered up every Sabbath; and I have frequently heard a prayer poured out, by a man of God, with the assistance of the Holy Ghost, which, in my judgment was more valuable than the whole of the Liturgy." Carry out the principle of the objection, and it militates equally against the whole Gospel dispensation. A minister has the same liberty in preparing his’ sermons, as in uttering his prayers. On the principle of the objection, we must have a set of sermons prepared, as well as prayers. And the Church of England has, in former days, acted upon this principle, and prepared her Books of Homilies, or discourses for her ministers. But they were "days of ignorance, which God winked at," and which the church winked at, because the clergy were not then qualified for their office. She discontinues this latter usage, because she has, to a very considerable extent, an intelligent and devout clergy : and the reason is equally applicable for discontinuing her prescribed form of words in prayer.

Public prayer, like every other exercise, is a matter of habit, and grows out of the habit of secret prayer. It requires a mind well furnished with divine truth, and a heart that is right with God. Where these two qualifications are possessed, the habit of public prayer, for the most part, makes the service pleasant and profitable. There are, it is true, mournful exceptions to this fact in the history of every minister — seasons in which he himself feels confounded before God and the people. But there are other seasons, in which he is favored of God — seasons gratefully remembered, when his devotions are poured forth from the fulness of his heart, and much more to edification than any set form of prayer.

Once more, it is objected to prayers that are not thus formed, that the people cannot join in them, I might here reply. Let the experience of the christian world, who have never embarrassed themselves with forms, answer this objection. Is it so, that there is among us no such thing as joining in prayer? The objection assumes what is not true in fact. It assumes, also, what is not true in the philosophy of the human mind, and that is, that its operations are slow. Men as easily follow the suppliant in prayers, as they do the preacher in his preaching. So rapid are the movements of the mind, that in a praying assembly there are hundreds of digressions from the prayer that is put up by the speaker, without the loss of a single thought that he utters. The petitions of the speaker are made the petitions of the hearers; while every man of prayer among them is secretly putting up his own requests, all the while, suggested by the thoughts of the speaker, and all of them ascending as sweet incense to the throne, through the great High Priest of their profession, to his Father and their Father, to his God and their God.

We say no more; perhaps we have already said too much. Beware of a state of heart in which you feel the want of a book to teach you to pray. It may be advisable in cases of need, to use a form at the family altar ; better pray with a form, than not pray at all. Yet never use a form, unless, after patient effort, and long seeking the Spirit of God to teach you to pray, you find that you cannot do without it. Trust no council, or bishop, or pope, to make your prayers for you. Look at all the Bible, and learn how to pray. Pray as you want. Feel your wants, and then let your heart utter them without embarrassment. When God says, " Seek ye my face," let your heart reply, " Thy face, O Lord, will I seek." Alas! that there should be a prayerless heart in such a world as this, where the God of heaven has erected his mercy seat, and where he dwells on purpose to hear the supplications of sinful men !