assured that over the abyss the Spirit of love and life sits brooding. O for this sacred calm of soul ! This holy hush of the collected mind! This losing of our petty self in the immensity of being, and reclining on the bosom of the Infinite with this one single feeling, "I wait upon the Lord, - my soul doth wait !"

CHAPTER IV.

DEVOUT EXERCISES OF WILL.

WE have seen already that there can be no true Piety which does not affect the Will, nay have its seat and throne in the Will, renewing it into conformity with the will of God. We cannot conceive a child of God having a will at variance with his Father's will, or even indifferent thereto. There can be no true delight in God's presence, nor dependance on his help, where there is not also devotion to his service. He that has received the spirit of adoption at all, must have received it, however feeble in degree, yet complete in kind. He must possess therefore, with whatever fluctuations, a general desire and purpose to honour God's name, to walk worthy of Him who hath called him to his kingdom and glory, and to become perfect as his Father which is in heaven is perfect. In a word, to use the expression of our Lord concerning his Apostles," his spirit must be willing"- his pur*Matt. xxvi. 41.

poses must cordially harmonize with those of God, and he must be ready to do his will. It was so with those Disciples even amidst their heedlessness, their rashness, their ignorance of themselves, and their dulness towards the warnings of their Master. They had no treachery of heart towards him (as alas the absent Judas had); but felt and meant all that they said when they exclaimed, "Though we should die with thee, yet will we not deny thee." And so will it be with all who are 66 transformed by the renewing of their mind that they may prove what is the good and acceptable, and perfect will of God."

But then, with this " spirit which is willing,"

there is still about the Christian" the flesh which is weak;" - the prejudices, preferences, appetites, and passions of his lower and original nature; and these are continually opposing his new and higher purpose, seeking to mislead it, to enfeeble it, or at least to clog its efforts. We see this in those same disciples. The very men who were at one moment full of generous zeal for their Divine Master, are soon found "sleeping, for their eyes were heavy !" The very Apostle who now is ready to go with his Lord to prison and to death is within the hour forsaking him and flying-nay shrinking from the mention of his name-nay protesting with an oath, “ I do not know the man!" The best intentions are

forgotten; the most expanded zeal collapses to a point; the most resolute determinations have slunk away; the Spirit was willing, but the flesh is weak. And who does not confess that so it is with every Christian man ? Who is not compelled to cry continually with bitter self-reproach, "The things that I would I do not, and the things that I would not, those I do!"

Here, therefore, we perceive the strong necessity of Prayer as a means of exercising, and thereby strengthening, the Will. It was to this that Jesus directed his Disciples as their great preservative in the coming trial" Watch, and pray, that ye enter not into temptation." He knew their willing spirit, and he loved them. But he knew too their weaker flesh, and he was fearful for them. He endeavours, therefore, to arouse them to a sense of their Spiritual danger, and to the earnest seeking of that divine strength without which they must fall. And herein does he teach us that in Prayer must lie our strength-by constant bringing of our will under the eye and influence of God must we reduce it into harmony with His.

And this, Prayer enables us to do, by settling our judgment of what is the will of God in each particular case. However honest our desire to please our heavenly Father, we are continually in danger of mistake concerning what will please him. The

general principles of God's will are, it is true, set forth by him in his Holy Word, and enforced by the responsive voice of his Spirit in the heart. But when we come to act out the details of duty, we are in danger either of forgetting those principles, through the prevalence of a crowd of selfish, worldly maxims of the Understanding, which judges, not according to the grand ideas of Faith, but according to the mean suggestions of Sense; not according to the Distant and Unseen, but according to the Visible and Immediate ;-or of misapplying those principles, through the perplexity and ignorance of this same Understanding which can only judge according to the evidence-obscure and meagre, nay conflicting, though it be- which may be brought before it; and which therefore leads us into many an evil path, and involves us in a thousand errors, before we are aware. It is, therefore, one thing to have a will for God, and quite another to have this will sufficiently predominant above all other wills, and sufficiently enlightened, when predominant, to direct our steps aright.

Now here our remedy is Prayer. Prayer, which does not merely seek for strength to execute our judgment, for that judgment may be wrong-but lays out that judgment before God, that in his presence, and in dependance on his promised guidance, we may consider and decide it. We are in danger