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man is also followed, in things natural, by a growing success in virtue. Effort 

 from the individual, as the frequent spring of action, however subtle in its 

 origin, is a fact vindicated in its results. The Christian attempt to conform 

 to the All-perfect is thus encouraged by both the precept and example of 

 our Master. 



"After this manner pray ye," is His tirst precept and instruction for 

 prayer ; and its first movement is towards placing man in his true relation 

 at once with God his Father. "Thy name be hallowed — thy rule or king- 

 dom prevail — Thy will be done, as in heaven so on earth ; " this is the 

 preliminary condition of all prayer. All is to be "after this manner." 

 And His own last personal example of prayer before he died is this, " Not 

 my will but Tlmu be done." The very coarse supposition of the deniers 

 of the moral world — that we in our prayers are to attempt to give law to 

 God, is their own travestie. Even our effort in prayer to rise to the Divine 

 goodness so that we can even believe we are reaching it, "in prayer 

 believing," is still guarded by this, — " Ye ask and receive not if ye ask amiss, 

 to consume it on your lusts." 



And thus we do not shrink from the examination of the broad question as 

 to the whole subject of definite answers to prayer, if once it be based, as Christ 

 has based it, on this moral foundation. A grand answer to such inquiries 

 is to be found indeed in the lives of all the Saints, both under the Old 

 Covenant and the New. Elijah's prayer both for and against rain, is referred 

 to in the New Testanrent expressly to tell us how " effectual " even in detail, 

 may often be the prayer of the "righteous," i.e., of those who have brought 

 their will to be one with God's. So Job's intercessions are truly " answered," 

 because he had spoken of God " the thing that was right." On the other 

 hand, St. Paul's prayer for deliverance from some special infliction, being 

 in some degree " asked amiss," was answered not directly, he says, but in 

 a way that brought his will nearer to God's will, — "My grace shall be 

 sufficient for thee." 



What prayer, indeed, has'actually done on the largest scale, the whole world 

 can tell. Those few men praying in the Upper Chamber a few days before 

 the first Pentecost set in motion causes which, by the will of God, have 

 created Christendom, and (what is more than all that is commonly called 

 Christendom) a line of " saints" from age to age who have lived above the 

 world, and helped in ten thousand ways to raise the world also . And it is 

 not in the Bacons and Newtons and Keplers alone — the world's giants — nor 

 even in Athanasius or Anselm or Bernard, that we have knowledge of the 

 dignity and moral power of prayer, but in humble hundreds of millions of 

 a, baptized world, whose countless utterances, " Thy will be done," have con- 

 formed them to that will, and calmed their lives, and cheered their deaths. 

 But there are some things, even as to prayer, which St. Paul said it " was 

 not lawful to utter " — the secret communings of the Spirit of Man with the 

 " God who heareth Prayer." We speak but to Christians here. They have 

 " fellowship " with God. 



To conclude. There are no facts more certain, more universally recognized, 



