pired, he assembled all the lame, all the blind, all the sick, whom the Church supported, and shewing them to the tyrant, he said; "These are the funds of the Church; behold its revenue! behold its riches! behold its true treasure!"*

I bring together all these examples, and ali these testimonies, my Brethren, to shew you, that we have degenerated from the virtue of our ancestors, and that the life of the primitive Church, was, at least on this article, a living commentary on the doctrine of its Master.

On the Duty of Prayer.

THE reasonableness of prayer will appear very obvious from a consideration of our unceasing obligations to God, as our maker, preserver, and benefactor. It is in him we live, and move, and have our being. To him we are indebted for every

The Offices of Ambrose. Book 11, chap. 28.

mercy we enjoy: from him we receive all we have: and it is owing to his goodness that we If blessed with wealth, with

are what we are. strength, or with riches, they are his gifts; of which he may justly deprive us at pleasure, and with equal propriety set us upon the dunghill with the beggar. These certainly are truths that must at once strike the mind of every considerate man, and which the most abandoned and profane cannot be hardy enough, when serious, to deny. How, then, ought every testimony of God's goodness to excite our love, our gratitude, and our praise! The smallest temporal advantage is a favor to which we have no claim. If we have food and raiment, they are inconceivably more than we deserve; for in many things we all offend.

Why are we commanded to pray, "Give us this day our daily bread," if not to teach us, among other things, our daily dependance upon God as the dispenser of temporal blessings? Most of our wants return with the morning; and to whom should we look but to him who is able to supply them? We need his direction through the perplexities and difficulties of every day; and without his gracious interposition and support, we can effect nothing to any valuable purpose. In the evening we seek rest in vain, unless he give slumber to the eye-lids, and sleep to the eyes. Now as these

are wants common to every individual, it is our indispensable duty to supplicate the divine goodness, and also to return thanks for the many mercies of which we have been partakers. Surely each can say with the Psalmist, "It is good to give thanks unto the Lord, and sing praises unto thy name, O Most High: to shew forth thy loving kindness in the morning, and thy faithfulness every night; for thou, Lord, only, makest me dwell in safety."

That prayer is a duty resulting from our relation to the Almighty, as our Creator and Benefactor, is evidently the dictate of nature. It is besides a mean by which the comfort and the happiness of his dependant and sinful creatures are promoted. He that knows what is in man, stands in no need of intelligence respecting his condition. "All things are naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do."-In this case, as in every other, duty and privilege are inseparably united and the utility of prayer will appear abundantly manifest when it is remembered, that it is not intended to give the Father of spirits information concerning either our wants or our unworthiness, for these are perfectly known to him before they are felt or acknowledged by ourselves, but to impress the mind with a deep conviction of both;

and to keep perpetually alive a sense of our entire dependance on him for the supply of the one, and the pardon of the other.

Nothing so forcibly restrains from ill, as the remembrance of a recent address to heaven for protection and assistance. After having petitioned for power to resist temptation, there is so great an incongruity in not continuing the struggle, that we blush at the thought, and persevere lest we lose all reverence for ourselves. After fervently devoting our souls to God, we start with horror at immediate apostacy: every act of deliberate_wickedness is then complicated with hypocrisy and ingratitude: it is a mockery of the Father of mercies, the forfeiture of that peace in which we closed our address, and a renunciation of the hope which that address inspired. But if prayer and immortality be thus incompatible, surely the former should not be neglected by those who contend that moral virtue is the submit of human perfection.

In the neglect of prayer, we act much more inconsistently than we do in the common occurrences of life. Were we to receive but the smallest token of respect at the hand of some earthly friend, we should be prompt to make every acknowledgment in our power; we should feel pain

in recollecting but one opportunity when we might have testified our gratitude, but which was then neglected or forgotten. Now if we pretend to be sensible of our obligations to that Friend who sticketh closer than a brother; who giveth all things liberally, without upbraiding; by what shall we demonstrate the sincerity of these pretensions, if not by yielding the obedience we acknowledge to be due, and which the present state of our existence renders both a privilege and a duty?

In prayer, which is the breath of spiritual life, we supplicate the throne of grace; we adore the wisdom, the goodness, and beneficence of our heavenly Father. In this path of privilege and of duty we find the fulfilment of that promise, "Those that honor me, I will honor; and at the same time we feel and acknowledge it just, that they who are otherwise minded should be "lightly esteemed."

There is nothing, says a good writer, which has so a powerful a tendency to generate in the heart of any person good-will towards another, as the constant practice of praying to God for his happiness. Let a man regularly pray for his enemy with all that seriousness which devotion requires, and he will not long harbor resentment against him. Let him pray for his friend with that ardor which

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