and beg may be continued in your own. closets but remember that this practical view of the subject applies strongly to family and private, as well as to public worship. To these most important points, in connection with the present topic, I hope to draw your attention on next Sunday morning; for Prayer is a subject so replete with interest and instruction, that it is difficult to bring it within the limits of one discourse.

SERMON XII.

PREACHED NOVEMBER 30, 1828.

PHIL. IV. 6.

In every thing by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.

In public worship we kneel as members of the great family of mankind, and citizens of the world; in private prayer we present ourselves as individuals; but the chain seems incomplete if we do not pray as a family, each household joining together to ask a blessing on our domestic life, and our various relations one to another. Job offered daily sacrifice in the name of his sons. The Israelites were not only to offer public sacrifice, but to mark each separate house with the token of the cross, that so the destroying angel might pass over it. And thus I think

each Christian household ought to mark themselves of the number who worship God, and say, "As for me and my house we will serve the Lord."

None can pass through the glens of Scotland, and hear the evening service of prayer and praise ascending from the scattered cottages, without feeling that it is a land where God is honoured. Why are its rugged hills, its scanty pastures, blessed with plenty and content, while the fertile vallies of our Emerald Isle resound with the voice of complaining?— Is it enthusiasm to say, it is because it is a praying country? But it is written, Let the people praise thee, O Lord! yea, let all the people praise thee; then shall the earth bring forth her increase, and God, even our own God, shall bless us." And it is also written, "Pour out thy fury upon the Heathen that know thee not, and upon the families that call not upon thy name." Remember, my friends, the promise is as applicable to our domestic circle, as to the great congregation, Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." (Matt. xviii. 20.) But the congregation and the family are alike composed of individuals, every one of whom is more precious in

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the sight of God than the whole material universe; and every one of whom he invites separately to "make their requests known unto him.' "But thou when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." (Matt. vi. 6.) Here all human eloquence is hushed; the whole world is shut out, and the soul approaches its Maker as though there were no being in existence but God and itself. It goes into his holy presence to reveal its inmost feelings, to make known the wants which its heavenly Father alone can relieve, to open the secret recesses which the eye of closest friendship cannot pierce, and to "ask of God, who giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not." And here let the heart of the Christian testify the privilege of prayer. It was beautifully observed by a prelate of our church, "Prayer is the ambassador which faith sends to God:"-but it is not an ambassador sent to a far country, unseen until he returns with the desired boon. No; it is the friend who conducts the child to the presence of his Father and the privilege of being there, is dearer than any gift the opportunity

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can crave, or can obtain. It opens wide the flood-gates of mercy, and pierces the stony heart to admit the healing stream.

""Tis heaven, all heaven, descending on the wings
Of the glad legions of the King of kings:
'Tis more 'tis God transfus'd into the whole;
"Tis God himself triumphant in the soul."

But I fear such seasons of full and blessed communion are rare, even to the real child of God; he oftener finds a dulness of feeling which humbles him before his heavenly Father. Religious joy is a delicate and tender exotic in a world of sin, and every blast of worldly passion blights its leaves, though the root survives.

The excellent Dr. Doddridge observes, "As prayer is the food and breath of all spiritual religion; so secret prayer in particular, is of vast importance; insomuch, that I verily believe, that if a man were to keep an accurate journal of his own heart but for one month, he would find as real and exact a correspondence between the temper of his soul at the seasons of secret devotion and in active life, as we do between the weather and the barometer."

Perhaps more particularly to private