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those to which our wishes point. sire immediate gratification without respect to those various purposes which it is the will of God to accomplish by his dispensations, and which suppose many links and windings in the course of providence of which we see not the necessity. When we seek deliverance and mercy to ourselves, it may be needful first that God should make our own wickedness correct us, and our folly reprove us, even while he will not chide continually, and his purpose is to do us good in our latter end. When we pray for prosperity to Zion, we must remember that there is a set time at which special favor shall be shown her, and her desolations be repaired and as this does not supersede the obligation and necessity of prayer, it may keep us from desponding if the answer should be delayed, and the faith and patience of the saints be farther proved. The Lord is not slack concerning his promises as some men count slackness. One day is with him as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. Not one prayer of his church shall ever be effaced from his remembrance ; Shall not God avenge his own elect who cry day

and night unto him, though he bear long with them? I tell you that he will that he will avenge them speedily.

The SECOND of the causes to which failure in answers to prayer may be ascribed, is, such defect in the ACT OF PRAYER itself, as renders it unacceptable to God.

1. There is much of what we generally consider prayer, which is nothing more than the form of prayer.

We speak at present of the case of those whom the Spirit of God has taught to pray in sincerity, and not of that numerous class of individuals whose prayers are formal altogether. The prayers even of the former are chargeable to a lamentable degree with formality, and with the absence of that desire which enters into the very essence of availing supplication. Let each Christian consult his own experience for proof of this. Examine, with some degree of attention, the acts of prayer in which you engage. After an opportunity of social supplication, endeavor to ascertain how much your spirit, instead of drawing near to God, and pleading, as in his immediate presence, for the blessings which he dispenses, has been entangled in the external

circumstances of the exercise, and has thought of the assembled worshippers, of the utterrance of him who has led our devotions, or of the most trivial impressions that have been made upon our bodily senses. Think of the sad deficiencies of your more private exercises. How often does it occur, even when attempting to pray to your Father in secret, that while scriptural subjects of petition are enumerated, and the unexceptionable words of Scripture are employed, you can scarcely say that you feel your want of what you ask, and scarcely have the consciousness of real desire for it. It is astonishing how much we impose upon ourselves with mere words, and how we substitute these with hardly a suspicion that we are doing so, for the breathing of devout desires towards God and his righteousness. How little do we know of that intense longing for spiritual good which gives birth to the groanings which cannot be uttered

-to strong crying and tears unto him that is able to save us to that vehement wrestling with God, of which Jacob was an example, when he met with God in the form of man, and said, I will not let thee go except thou

bless me. We set a high value on our own faintest desires towards heavenly mercies, and think the Most High indebted to us for our weakest prayers. We forget the immense disproportion between our unworthy impressions and the inestimable realities. We consider not that God has a right to expect from creatures, whose well-being alone he consults when he bestows his mercy, that they shall set some proportionate value upon what he is willing to give, and wanting which they are infinite losers. Let us inquire, then, whether we have really understood the standard of Scripture as to this characteristic of prayer. Whilst we wonder that we enjoy so few of those extraordinary manifestations of favor with which the saints of God in former days were visited, let us ask whether we are imitating their extraordinary earnestness in supplication! Are we waiting upon God as if we believed that from him alone cometh our help? Or have we practised prayer merely that we might fulfil what we felt in conscience to be a duty, and then gone our way, satisfied that we had done our part, and not very solicitous whether God should perform his or not. The extent

to which formality in worship prevails among professing Christians is indeed a grievous evilan evil which has deceived and impoverished the church more than the ravages of all her other enemies. The prayer of the heart is that which God alone regards; and to the absence of this requisite may be ascribed the ill success of countless addresses to the throne of mercy, which have appeared without fault in the sight of men, but which he who seeth the heart could not accept.

2. Our prayers are often unacceptable because we do not ask in faith.

We are taught this in the words of the apostle James-"But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering; for he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea, driven with the wind and tossed; for let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord.' 29* The faith of which the apostle speaks must be founded on the promises of God; and two classes of promises are particularly connected with it; those in which God engages in general to confer various blessings on his church