desires us. In the imperishable language of fervent piety, it is "Father, Thy will be done!" And where this feeling abides in all its purity, it sanctifies all forms of petition with which it may be joined. When the heart has reached this climax of reasonable faith, the lips may, or may not, utter words of petition in times of sorrow and care; but whatever supplications may be poured out for the soul's relief, they are fully justified on the grounds of the relation between the soul and its God.

If we believe that God knows all our thoughts and foresees every want, and lends a pitying ear to every sigh of his children, we have a right, and it is our most sacred privilege, to pour out our hearts before Him and say just what we feel. The "good" of such prayer, does not consist in giving us the hope that our wants will be relieved just because we have told God about them, but it consists in reassuring our own minds that we have a Father in Heaven in whose wisdom and love we may entirely confide. It does us good to perform, as it were, an act of resignation in which we surrender our own wills to His and lay ourselves in His loving arms to be disposed of "as seemeth Him good."

We have heard much lately of the reflex action of prayer, and I am not prepared to say that there is none of the kind; but I do most strenuously urge that no sane man would continue to pray, merely for the sake of its reflex action, after he was once assured that his prayer would not be heard, nor his distress sympathized with by a loving Heart above.

Prayer to be of any value must have something more than this reflex action. It is a legitimate, reasonable, relief to our own souls to betake ourselves to God whenever we feel so inclined; and the more convinced we are of the hopelessness of any miracle, and the more our hearts revolt against the idea of wishing to change God's purposes, the greater will be our peace of mind and relief in praying to Him.

But, of course, the whole reasonableness of prayer turns upon the question as to God's knowledge of us and His sympathy with our infirmities.

We cannot blame anyone for inconsistency who has given up prayer because he no longer believes in God as a Being who knows his thoughts and who loves him as a friend. No other course is, to such an one, reasonable. But on the

other hand, to those who firmly believe in the sympathy and friendliness of God, it is unreasonable not to pray. It is deeply unnatural, and, I might almost say, it is impossible.

Whether the time will ever come for mankind to wake up to the most awful of bereavements, to know without doubt that they have no Father in Heaven, to realize the hopelessness of its desolation, is a question which the future will alone decide. At present, though the eclipse of faith may be dense indeed, yet it is but partial, and millions on millions of eyes are still rejoicing in the Heavenly light of God's countenance. And we may draw encouragement and fresh hope from the fact that that light is shining more brightly, and its blessed beams warming us more genially than ever, in proportion as we are driving away the mists and fogs of our early superstitions, and having our own eyesight cleared and strengthened by the removal of those scales of traditional ignorance and prejudice, which have so long obscured and distorted our vision of the world and its God.

The "great perhaps " of which Mr. Herbert speaks, and over the doubtfulness of which his own faith in God so grandly triumphs, is no solid hindrance to the reasonable exercise of our religious emotions, so long as they beat within our breasts.

We have but moved on a pace or two; but it is forwards and not backwards. We are nearer to, and not further from, God since our feet have been released from the fetters of our youth. Our retrospect of the past is more favourable to the dignity of man and the honour of God. Our view of the

present more full of inspiration to deeds of herioc virtue. Our hopes for the future more wide and more exalted. The clouds of fear have rolled away, and the confidence of faith now fills the firmament. The thunderbolts of an outraged Deity are no longer hurled at our shrinking heads; but whether in storm or sunshine we are ever in peaceful security. No hell-fire yawns beneath our feet, though the Pope but yesterday repeated the false alarm; but all the blue Heaven of rest and goodness and love lies open for all the weary and wicked and hard-hearted when their troubled and erring course is run.

When science forced her way into our pagan temples, trampling on our sacred books and shattering our idols, and men's hearts failed them when they saw, as they thought,

the last links broken which bound earth to Heaven, her ruthless work was only opening the way for God's light to reach our shrouded souls, and letting in the pure air of rational religion upon those who had been stifled by sepulchral exhalations.

And as we have more faith and hope and love than ever, so, prayer, now set free from the encumbrances which superstition had woven into it, is a brighter, gladder, exercise of our souls. We banish more and more every day of the old whining, and murmuring, and petitions for mercy. We get every day more free-not from anxiety to amend our ways and to control our ill-feelings, but-from that painful and microscopic self-examination which paralysed as well as tortured the morbid soul. We ask less and less for good things, and for self-indulgence; and pray more and more to be able to give and to do good things to others, and to have the heroic fortitude of self-denial. And then, after due time, our prayers melt into an inexpressible adoration, and what words we use are words of praise. Perpetual thanksgiving becomes the music of our life, and our very woes and cares are swallowed up in the sense of everlasting and universal Love.

Let those then who must pray thus, do so in perfect assurance that they are obeying the law of their being, and acting in perfect harmony with reason; earning no scorn from the truly wise and good. And let those who cannot thus pray, because they cannot see God in the light seen by their brethren, follow their own reasonable course of silence, and not transgress the limits of reason and charity in deriding those who pray.

We fall back on the trite saying, "We are not all alike," and on every subject connected with religion, especially on this one of Prayer, it must be confessed on all sides that no one of us all, not even the wisest and best, knows yet all the truth. It is, then, more than ever the bounden duty of every one of us to act up boldly and faithfully to his own conviction; for thus only can we hope to discover the truth, and meanwhile to "keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace."

CARTER & WILLIAMS, General Steam Printers, 14, Bishopsgate Avenue, Camomile-street E.C

Controversy between Monsignor Capel and Canon Liddon.

A SERMON,

PREACHED AT ST. GEORGE'S HALL, LANGHAM
PLACE, JANUARY 17, 1875, BY THE

REV.

CHARLES

VOYSEY.

NEW KORAN, Questions, Chap. XXXVIII.,Ver. 6. “Have pity, O Lord, upon all people who are dreaming and believe that they are walking and doing Thy proper service; help them to awaken out of their false slumber, open their eyes to the light."

When Mr. Gladstone startled the country by his "Expostulation," we little thought of the benefits which have now accrued to us from it, and which seem to be still far from being exhausted.

First of all we were presented with the conflicting opinions which prevail within the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church, a church whose loudest boast has ever been of perfect unity and unanimity. In all their nakedness these differences of opinion on vital points of doctrine were paraded in our daily newspapers, and the world at large became impressed at last with a fact which few would have dared, a little while before, to have alleged.

Out of their own mouths, then, Roman Catholics are judged, and found guilty of pretences now proved to be false. Henceforth there must be two or more infallible churches instead of one; and the "faithful" will be brought face to face with a new and insuperable embarrassment.

It is not, however, my purpose this morning to dwell upon this remarkable and irrevocable revelation of the factious state of the ever one, true, united and indivisible Church.

Rev. C. Voysey's sermons are to be obtained at St. George's Hall, every Sunday morning, or from the Author (by post), Camden House, Dulwich, S.E. Price one penny, postage a halfpenny.

I pass on to notice, how Nemesis has overtaken the Ritualists and even their High-Church allies through the ventilation of the distressing schisms in the Church of Rome.

For days past, the Times has presented us almost daily with the letters of Monsignor Capel and of Canon Liddon who, with other correspondents, are maintaining a warm discussion as to whether or not the Ritualists are disseminating Roman Catholic doctrine within the Protestant Church of England.

I have no desire to weary you with a repetition of those letters, which most of us have already studied, but merely to say that the Romanist champion seems to have completely established his point and proved his charges, and that his opponent has had to take refuge in subleties of theological language into which people of common sense are both unable and unwilling to follow him. The verdict of the Times itself is kindly but impartially given to the same effect.

The three chief points of Roman Catholic doctrine and practice, which Monsignor Capel accuses the Ritualists of disseminating, are the transubstantiation of the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper into the very body and blood of Jesus Christ; direct prayer to the Virgin Mary as well as praying through her mediation and intercession; and the practice of Confession with its usual Roman Catholic adjuncts. Every student of the controversy, not biassed by prejudice, will acknowledge that these charges are made out, amply attested by the very books which the Ritualists use and enjoin, and more than half admitted by the feeble and somewhat evasive manner in which the charges have been met.

A spectacle of this kind is not pleasant; nor can anything be so which reflects on the candour of a human being. We cannot chuckle over the discomfiture of the so-called "Protestant" advocate of Romish principles, nor be anything else than sad at witnessing the futile attempts to extricate himself from his own net. But we must and we do rejoice in the complete exposure, and the unvarnished admission, of the facts thus thrust upon public notice through Mr. Gladstone's recent pamphlet. Of course, it is no news to ourselves and to thousands more who have jealously watched the growth of Roman Catholic sentiments within our own Church during the last quarter of a century; but it will open the eyes of the vast majority of people who,