We feel it is befitting that we render adoration to Him on whom we are dependent for breath and all things, extolling His greatness, expressing our dependence, seeking His favour, and thanking Him for His gifts.

DIRECT BENEFITS OF PRAYER.

The almost universal practice of prayer is proof of a general belief in its utility. Its reflex benefit to the mind is not disputed; but we pray, expecting some direct advantage, not because of the wholesomeness of the exercise. Digging a garden may improve the health, but the hope of produce speeds the digging. Holy Scripture and the authority of Christ encourage us to expect direct and positive benefits from prayer.

OBJECTIONS.

That God knows already whatever we can tell Him.— Yes, and He knows far better than we do, what we really need. But He would also know our wishes from ourselves. An earthly parent may know many of the child's desires and griefs, but likes to hear them from the child's own lips, because they interest the parent, and the habit of telling them cultivates filial affection in the child. In prayer we are not instructing God, but communing with Him, and lifting up our minds into the region of His own.

That we cannot improve God's Methods nor alter His Decrees.-These co-exist with our moral nature. His Will does not destroy the freedom of our own.

Benefit to us from action of His may depend on a corresponding fitness in ourselves. The gift, to be beneficial, needs certain qualities in the recipient. The purpose of God may therefore embrace the prayer of man, the object of which is not to improve His plans, but only to complete their manifestation. God may, in answer to our prayer, change His methods without any fluctuation of purpose. A sailor alters his tack to reach his port. A father carries out his abiding intention by altering his treatment according to the child's conduct. A physician varies his medicine with varying symptoms, in order to accomplish his unvarying purpose of cure. And so, though by prayer we cannot improve the Divine plans, prayer may so alter our own moral condition as to render suitable a change of method on God's part, which will bring us the very blessing we ask. Though all God's purposes are eternally fixed and unalterably sure, every one tries to guard his body from accident, improve his estate, and secure the comforts of life. If we think we can improve our condition by exertions of our own, is it foolish to hope God may improve them in answer to our prayer?

That if God is willing to give all good, asking is superfluous. Our asking may be a necessary condition of His giving. Good seed will be wasted unless the soil be prepared to receive it. Without healthy appetite, wholesome food may injure. The soul must "hunger and thirst after righteousness before it can be filled; and prayer stimulates as well

as reveals this spiritual appetite. So also gifts of Providence may require the receptivity which prayer cultivates, to render those gifts beneficial. By prayer we come into the Divine storehouse where God's gifts are waiting for us. Those things which God intends for us, we bring to ourselves by the mediation of holy prayers" (Jer. Taylor).

God's light is

always shining, but into the region of it we must come as He has ordained. "Thus prayer becomes the turning of the heart to Him who is always prepared to give, if we will receive what He gives. Unto a fountain so vast, the empty vessel must be moved" (Augustine-Trench).

No place for Prayer in the realm of Law.—It is alleged that all existing things are subject to definite forces which operate uniformly and irresistibly, so that prayer can have no influence in bringing to pass any desired event. But among natural forces that of Will cannot be omitted. It is the force of which we know most, because we know it by our own consciousness. By our will we can influence that of others, through instruction and persuasion, and prompt them to set in motion a train of physical causation which may bring to pass events otherwise impossible. I may by personal influence (call it prayer) induce the crew of a lifeboat to save shipwrecked seamen, whom otherwise the waves, by natural law, would destroy. I may by persuasion (prayer) induce a physician to go to a man seemingly at death's door, and he, not by miracle, but by working within the sphere of law, may

save a life which otherwise, by physical law, would have been the victim of disease. I may, by the exercise of my own will, hold out my arms to catch, when falling from a window, the child whom otherwise the law of gravitation would have killed. If then even I, by the exercise of my will, can interpose to bring about results in the operation of natural law, and can influence other wills to do the same, it cannot be impossible that the Author of Nature, without any interference with order, may do, in answer to prayer, what my fellow-creature can do on my request, and what I can do myself. Must the Divine order shut out the operation of the Divine will? Shall the uniform working of natural law be consistent with the exercise of freedom on my part, and not with that of freedom on God's part?

We do not believe that the "Reign of Law" excludes the agency of the "Lord of Law." Whence came the laws but from the Divine Mind? "I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth," and not in eternal forces without thought, emotion, or character. He is free to act in modes novel to us, yet in harmony with law. Seeming changes may be law's developments, and my prayer and His response may be parts of the eternal order; God working according to pre-arranged principles which are developed whenever their appropriate sphere of operation unfolds. Thus our prayers may bring about the very conditions in which the results we ask may come to pass, in harmony with the higher order which includes moral

as well as physical forces. This argument assumes the universal reign of Law. But we also believe in the reign of Grace.

Such objections have been current in all ages; yet in all ages prayer has been offered; and the worshippers have included the wisest and best of men. Poets, statesmen, heroes, prophets have prayed. Abraham, Moses, David, Daniel brought petitions to God, habitually, earnestly, and in full assurance of faith. They have had numberless counterparts up to the present day. Have all men who in all ages and lands have thus gratified the special yearning and employed the highest faculties of the mind been mistaken? If So, "the whole human race has a lie enshrined in its inmost heart; and this lie perpetually emerges age after age, generation after generation, in the child and the philosopher, in the heathen and the Christian. If it be so, the most noble are the most deceived; those who have risen highest, and who have in the largest extent blessed their fellow-men, have been the most entirely baffled and deluded; while, on the other hand, the sensualist, the barbarian with the fewest ideas, the imbecile who is most like the brute that perisheth, has made, in a matter that is fundamental to happiness, honour, and usefulness, the nearest approach to the truth of things" (Reynolds).

O men of science! all honour to you in your own sphere. Show us the beauty, the wisdom, the beneficence of God, by showing us the order that pervades His works. But do not shut Him out of His own