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unchangeable love; what reason have we then to entreat His favour? He knows better than we ourselves can know what our states require; and what need then to inform Him of our wants? He is more ready to give than we can be to ask or receive; why then entreat Him to bestow His gifts? He inspires every good desire; whence then the need of expressing those desires in His presence? All those statements are true, and yet the conclusions thus drawn from them are false. is true that the Almighty knows our wants and is willing to supply them; yet the conclusion which some draw from this, that therefore prayer is unnecessary, is far from being just, and shows the necessity of right views on the subject. Such views are equally required to correct the opposite error that prayer can prevail with God, and procure from Him spiritual and temporal blessings which He can, but will not otherwise bestow. In endeavouring to show how prayer is efficacious in bringing down the Divine blessing, we only desire to make more evident its reasonableness and advantages.

There are two principles that must be admitted before we can understand the subject of prayer. The first is, that prayer can produce no change in the mind of God. "He is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." As His nature is unchangeable, so are His laws. The laws of His Providence originate in His unchangeable love, and are framed by His unerring wisdom, which sees and provides for the states and circumstances of all to eternity. On the immutability of the Divine attributes, and the constancy of the laws according to which they operate, the preservation and welfare of the moral as well as of the physical world depend. The language of the Scriptures, that God repents when man returns, is the language of accommodation to the simple-minded; and yet it shows, what is sufficient for such to know, that the Divine clemency is ever secured by sincere repentance.

If prayer can produce no change in the mind and dealings of God, it must be intended to produce a change in the mind and state of the worshipper. This is the second principle to be admitted before we can understand the manner in which prayer operates its beneficial effects. It acts upon the worshipper in such wise as to prepare him for receiving the things which he asks in prayer. We would not be understood as limiting the benefits of prayer to the worshipper alone. There is no mind in the universe which is alone or which can be affected alone. Space cannot separate mind from mind, or soul from soul, nor the spiritual world where angels and demons dwell from the natural world where men sojourn. They have their proximi

ties and their distances, their connections and their separations; but these are determined entirely by the law of sympathy and antipathy, or by similarity and dissimilarity of state. The same law determines our nearness to and our distance from God. All are equally near Him as regards space, but all are not equally near Him as regards state. All those expressions in the Scriptures which speak of man's nearness to and distance from God, and of his drawing near to God, and departing from Him, must be translated out of the language of nature into that of spirit, before they can be understood in their true sense.

Admitting, then, these two essential principles, that prayer can produce no change in the mind or in the laws of God, but is intended to produce a change in the mind and state of the worshipper, we come to consider how that change or improvement is effected.

Every duty which God requires of man, though it may appear in the Scriptures simply as a command, will be found, when viewed in relation to man's nature and necessities, to be grounded in the profoundest wisdom. God has required man not only to desire but to ask for the gifts of His bounty. Prayer is the desire of the heart expressed. Desire is the essential of all prayer. But something more than the desire is necessary. If the desire had been sufficient, the desire only would have been required. Since God has required that the desire should be presented to Him in the words of human speech, we may be assured there is a cause for this requirement worthy of Divine wisdom and goodness.

The greater efficacy of prayer than of the unexpressed desires and wishes of the heart, is grounded in the law of our nature, that an act of the mind is not truly an act of the man till it has also become an act of the body. To express it more correctly—no act of the inner man, till it has become an act of the outer man also, is an act of the whole man. The obstacles to the carrying out of a principle or to the performance of a duty, are in the outer man— -in the natural affections and thoughts, appetites and habits; and until these are first brought into compliance, and then into harmony, with the desires of the heart and the convictions of the mind, there is something wanting of the unity in which there is strength, and of the harmony in which there is peace. Every desire of the heart and every conviction of the mind requires to be embodied in some suitable form of action or of expression, that it may be fixed, that the desire or conviction may acquire an actual and permanent existence. Desires and thoughts are unsubstantial, and very often delusive, when they only play about the head and touch

the heart. To become real, they must descend into the duties and exercises of actual life. In descending from the region of the mind into that of the body or outward life, they encounter difficulties, and find many obstacles to overcome-obstacles arising from natural disinclination, pride, selfishness, habit. But the conquest of these difficulties, the surmounting of these obstacles, and the consequent subjection of the refractory members under obedience to the law of the mind, is one of the greatest benefits which we can derive from fulfilling the law of Scripture, which is so wisely adapted to the law of our nature -that good must be done as well as willed, desires must be expressed as well as felt, in order that they may be actual and not merely ideal and transitory things. We may apply this principle to the subject of prayer.

One of the purposes to be answered by worship is, to produce in the worshipper a state of profound humiliation before God. Such humiliation itself is but a means to an end. God requires His creatures to humble themselves, not only that He may be relatively exalted, but that He may be able to exalt them. Humiliation is a means to this end, because it removes the pride and self-sufficiency that are natural to the human heart and understanding, and produces a sense of the infinite goodness and wisdom of the Lord. In the soul thus humbled the love and truth of God can be implanted, and man exalted in the strength and glory of God instead of his own. Humiliation may no doubt to some extent be cultivated by contemplative piety; for who can reflect on the greatness and goodness of God and on the insignificance and vileness of man; who can think of God as the Being by whose power he has been created and by whose bounty he is sustained; as the Being against whom he has rebelled, and by whom he has been reconciled, without being affected with humility as well as gratitude? But if this humble feeling is never brought into manifestation in acts of outward worship, it will remain undeveloped and imperfect. It may exist as a law of the mind, but it has not become a law of the members-it is confined to the inner man, the outer man remaining unfashioned and unaffected by it; the consequence of which is, that the law is but partially if at all fulfilled.

It is well known that every affection of the mind has its appropriate form of expression or manifestation in the body, into which it naturally or spontaneously descends, and in which it finds relief or satisfaction. Hope and fear, joy and sorrow, have their outward manifestation as well as their inward activity; and sorrow is relieved and joy is exalted by flowing out from their fountain in the mind through the channels

and into the forms which have been provided for them in the body and in the world.

It may indeed be objected, that, if we explain on this principle the benefit resulting from religious acts in general, and from the act of devotion in particular, we assign a natural cause to that which the Scriptures ascribe to a Divine origin. But this is not the case. We appeal to these facts simply as evidences and examples of the law of our nature, which has been fixed by the Creator Himself, and to which His spiritual laws are adapted and are in harmony. And we desire to show from it the wisdom of God in requiring of His creatures acts as well as feelings, prayers as well as desires. If man were in a state of order, the manifestation of his religious feelings would be as spontaneous as that of his natural feelings. There being in such a state a perfect sympathy and harmony between his inner and outer man, whatever was felt and thought in the mind would fall into its proper action or expression in the body. This is not, however, the case. Man is naturally in a state contrary to the order in which he was created. Religious convictions and feelings have as it were to be created; and those feelings and convictions, when they come to exist in the mind, find opposition in the members if the habit has not been acquired with the principle. This opposition has to be overcome by a determination of the will. In consequence of this, man has to force himself, in many instances, to do from a sense of duty what he would otherwise have done from a feeling of delight. Yet, whatever is done from duty is rewarded eventually with a feeling of delight; for that which is performed from principle removes the discord which prevented the sense of delight, and gives the result in outward as well as inward satisfaction.

But there is another agency to be taken into account in order that a complete view of the subject may be obtained. Besides and between God and man-God as the Object of worship, and man as the worshipper -there are the whole angelic heavens, through which, as mediums, there is communication between man and God, and between God and man. That which Jacob saw in his dream takes place with every true worshipper-the angels of God ascend and descend in every act of true devotion, and true prayer is the ladder which connects earth and heaven, and the Lord and man. For true prayer is according to the Word, the truths of which are the steps by which the angels elevate the thoughts and affections of man to God, and bring down the law and truth of God to man. Angels and spirits are attendant on every

one. But by these special attendants there is communication with societies in heaven. "The thought of man, as well as of spirits and angels, spreads itself round into many societies in the spiritual world. According to the extension of the thought and the affections into societies, the faculty of understanding and perceiving is produced in man, spirit, and angel. He who is in the good of charity and faith has extension into the societies of heaven ample according to the degree in which he is in them and in genuine good, for those things are in agreement with heaven, wherefore they flow in thither of their own accord and to a great extent. There are some societies into which the affection of truth reaches, and others into which the affection of good extends. The affection of truth pervades the societies of the spiritual angels, and the affection of good the societies of the celestial" (4. C. 6600).

As man as to his spirit lives in the spiritual world, and thinks and feels in company and in unison with its inhabitants, it is evident that when right thoughts and good affections are excited into activity and directed heavenwards, with the earnest desire to receive from the Lord the gifts He is ready to bestow, the "windows of heaven" are opened for the Lord to pour out a blessing on the earnest worshipper. According to another scripture, in answer to earnest prayer the Lord bows the heavens and comes down, so that He who dwells in the high and holy place is with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.

Prayer therefore is efficacious, without its effecting any change in the Divine mind or in any of His laws of providence or creation. All the changes that can take place are in the human mind through its own efforts and those of the intermediate powers which the spiritual world supplies. The Divine Being is ever pressing for admission ; and opening the mind is the only necessary preparation for the reception of His love and truth, which comprehend in themselves all gifts and graces that can enrich the mind and save the soul.

Regarding prayer as an exercise intended to bring us nearer to God, and induce in the mind a state favourable to the reception from Him of the good which our spiritual and temporal welfare requires, we may now properly consider some particulars which are necessary to successful worship. First, the worshipper must approach and address the true Object of worship. God does not willingly withhold any blessing from those who ask in sincerity, however deficient may be their knowledge or mistaken their views of Him as the true God. Where