no exhaustive Sermons, laying down the rules or enforcing the arguments for prayer, will avail anything, so long as the knee actually bends not and the soul itself speaks not in God's presence. Then the first step is indeed taken: and that first step is a step towards heaven. Then is the barrier broken down, and the great gulf fixed bridged over. Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord. Then shall the experience of life enforce and explain within us the record of Revelation, and God Himself in both shall be the Teacher. Then, as days pass by, and we grasp the living clue to the labyrinth of being, in the purpose of God Himself to save our souls, we shall find the effort changed into the reality, and the habit into the necessity, of Prayer we shall be as little able to dispense with Prayer as with food, as thankful for the bread from heaven as dependent for daily life upon the bread of earth. And when on any particular day the spring of Prayer seems for the moment dry or sealed within; when we kneel without desire, say the words without feeling them, and ask for that which we ought to hunger after yet hunger not; then shall we gather both hope and also wisdom from prolonged experience: we shall take the key

of intercession, or the key of thanksgiving, or the key of simple adoration, to unlock the chamber of personal petition; and find once again, as we have found often before, that the Lord's arm is not shortened, nor His ear heavy; that the promise to all is a promise also to each; and that blessed is he, and he only, who can echo from his heart the memorable resolution, One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in His temple.

N

IV.

PRAYER IN ITS RELATION TO ACTION.

"Then flew one of the Seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar.

And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sins purged.

Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me."-Isa. vi. 6-8.

HERE is an inward life in every man,

and an outward.

A secret life, which

he lives in himself and before his God; with which a stranger intermeddles not, and in which, for good or evil, he is all alone. And a visible life, which he lives in work and speech, in business and society; influencing and being influenced, for good or evil; serving or else neglecting

his own one generation, and in it glorifying or else dishonouring the God who made and the Lord who bought him.

Now there must of necessity be a connection and a reciprocity between these two. The inward life and the outward must affect and be affected by each other. No man can erect a barrier for himself between the secret self and the visible; or say, What I am towards God is one thing, and what I am before man is another thing, and the two things shall have no community of being, and no mutual influence. The inward life must tell upon the outward, and the visible man affect and react upon the secret.

To express the matter in the terms of our present subject, there must be a relation between Prayer and Action; between Prayer, which is the soul of the inward life, and Action, which is the substance of the outward.

But, though the two lives cannot be entirely divorced, they are seldom absolutely united. The inward life and the outward are seldom equally developed. In most men there is a disproportion -in some, a vast disproportion-between the activity of the soul and the activity of the life.

There is a relation, but it is an unequal and a distorted relation, between the inward man and the outward. It is possible for a life of action to be a life without prayer. And it is possiblethough the experience is less common-for a life of prayer to be a life of no activity.

Look for a moment at the two phenomena. It will help the understanding of what follows, thus to separate the two ideas, Prayer, and Action.

We have called Prayer an instinct. It is natural, we believe, to man to look upward, and to call in God. In distress and danger, in the great anxieties and terrible crises of human existence, even the infidel, even the scoffer, will pray. But since Prayer is not an instinct only, but a mystery too; an idea as difficult to grasp as impossible to explain; an exercise demanding time, and effort, and abstraction of thought, and preparation of heart; a work, moreover, which is overlooked by no taskmaster, and sanctioned by no immediate or definite penalty; it is not to be wondered at if it is often put aside; if men of business fill their day with what is (in a worldly sense) necessary, and drive Prayer into corners; or if, in the end, Prayer slips altogether out of the common