ten our pace, and regain lost opportunities, lest any become hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. And, of thy goodness, cause all our past sins to be blotted out of thy book of remembrance, by a timely forsaking of them, that we may become the objects of thy mercy; and by a holy and entire obedience to thy laws, for all time to come, may at length attain to that eternal life, which our Saviour Christ came to reveal from thee, and which of thine infinite unmerited goodness thou hast promised to bestow upon us!

Now unto Thee, O Father, &c.

January 25, 1778.

SERMON VI.

MATTHEW vi. 7, 8.

And when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be beard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.

BEFORE I offer you any reflections on our Lord's injunctions here concerning prayer, it may be proper to prefix a few things concerning the reasonableness and benefit of prayer.

It was the observation of some wise and good men amongst the heathens, that the belief of a God, and the worship of him, made the true discrimination betwixt mankind and the animals around them. For that, in respect of the reasoning faculty, there were obvious traces of it discernible, in different gradations, in brute creatures, and also grateful and kind affections:

affections: but man alone was capable of recognising a first cause and invisible author of all things, wise and good; and of rendering him the homage due to him.

And one of these, Plutarch, whose admirable writings are held in just esteem, asserts it to be wrong and improper, to own such to be human beings, who did not acknowledge and adore the deity; maintaining that so irreligious a turn of mind must arise from some stupor which took away their senses and degraded them from their rank in the creation.

We read of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, that, for his pride and impiety, (Dan. iv.) "he was driven from among men, and had his dwelling with the beasts of the field the

proper meaning of which is, that he lost his reason, and took himself to be a beast, and acted as such, till it pleased God to restore him to his right mind, when he made a better and more pious use of it.

Where any are wretchedly ignorant of, or wilfully neglect or oppose, the knowledge and worship of God, the benevolent parent of his creatures, it is happy when by any way or means they are recovered from so depraved and horrid a state.

The

The reasonableness of our worship, and of prayer to God, is founded in our feeble dependent condition, oftentimes insufficient for our own happiness, which prompts us most naturally to look up to him that made us, in the fitness of acknowledging his continual favours, and the assurance we have that he is present with us, attends to us, and directs and governs all things for the good of those that endeavour to recommend themselves to him in the best manner they are able.

The power, wisdom and goodness displayed in bringing us into being, and the various ways and methods to make it happy to us, are a just foundation for this our application to our Maker. He cannot be indifferent to his creatures, on whom (if we may so speak) he bestows so much labour and thought, or be regardless of their reasonable desires and requests.

Nor can he ever be absent from us, so as not to hear and attend to us. For the same divine energy by which he first made us and all nature is necessary to support us in being. We cannot divest ourselves of the idea of his continual presence with us and with all his works.

Nor