Let it be properly understood, that the Lord, in all his requirements, regards human happiness. He desires not our worship for his own gratification, but because it is a most useful and powerful means of arousing and elevating the affections, and of opening and preparing the soul to receive the communications of Divine life, light, and blessing. The only object of the Lord is to render mankind capable of receiving and enjoying his fulness of love and wisdom, in order to constitute their eternal felicity. It is supposed, by many, that when God pardons the sinner, a change takes place in his own unchangeable Divine mind, from vengeance to clemency, in consequence of which the decree of condemnation which had gone forth against the now penitent worshipper, is reversed, and he passes immediately from a state of condemnation to a state of salvation; and as a further consequence he is taken out of the hands of the devil, (into whose custody he had been committed in wrath) and is instantly admitted to all the privileges of a true child of God, and all the blessed hopes of an heir to the kingdom of heaven! But how very different is this from a just idea of Divine forgiveness! and how altogether inconsistent with all that we know both of the nature of God, and of the nature of man. To pray for pardon agreeably to just ideas, is to ask that we may be re-admitted to communion with the Lord, by the reception of Divine influences from him, which influences have been previously intercepted by our sins, and by the states of evil which we have induced upon, and inrooted in our nature by actual transgressions. Thus to pray for pardon is to pray that the Lord may exercise his clemency, not out of us, but in us, by removing those evils which hide his face from us, and separate between us and our God. "JESUS MY SAVIOUR and my LORD, Affliction, whether mental or bodily, spiritual or temporal, should lead us to implore patient endurance, support, and consolation, and to supplicate that we may be led, by the afflictive state or dispensation, to more complete purification and devotion of the heart to our Heavenly Father, who under every possible change is operating and thereby drawing (as far as man co-operates) us nearer to himself. The proper object of prayer is to move and oblige ourselves; not to move and oblige God, who is unchangeable in his essence or nature, and in his will. Sincere prayer produces an alteration, not in God, but in ourselves. Prayer should aim at producing a change, not in the dispensations of God, but in the dispositions of man. Prayer is resignation and submission to God's arrangement to receive, in the order which he has established; it is the desire, the wish, the longing, and so to speak, the opening of the soul for a full enjoyment of the gracious favours which our Heavenly Father is waiting to bestow. "Would we be gentle, pure, and chaste, He is only waiting for our reception, which the desires of a sincere heart will produce; for in the same proportion as we really desire his blessings, the influences of his Holy Spirit will flow into our souls. As the soul of man was not created for this world, but for heaven, so the will of the Lord has regard only to everlasting life; it inclines only towards the furtherance and accomplishment of eternal ⚫ends, and it regards all temporal things merely as means conducive to those ends; the Lord's will, then, should be regarded by us as a suitable pattern to our will; and we, in conformity to it, should submit our temporal to our spiritual desires, and both to the Lord, saying in all things, "not my will, but thine be done!" 66 "O for a heart to praise my God, A heart from sin set free; A heart resign'd, submissive, meek, A humble, lowly, contrite heart, Which neither life nor death can part, Let the reader consider well the connection between practice and successful prayer, pointed out by the Apostle in the following words:Beloved, whatsoever we ask, we receive of God, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight; and this is his commandment, that we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, (that is the Divinity of his glorified Humanity,) and love one another, as he gave us commandment. He that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him." 1 John iii. 21-24. Exercises of piety are utterly useless when not united with sincere obedience, watchfulness, and self-denial. "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. To worship, but not to obey, is not to offer the prayer of faith, because the mind is divided; the thoughts of the inferior part of the mind-the understanding being given to the Lord, while the affections of the nobler part- the heart or will, are devoted to his enemies! "To obey is better than sacrifice;" but since we are commanded "always to pray, and not to faint," and to "offer unto God thanksgivings," therefore, to render the "sacrifice" of prayer and praise is an act of obedience; and sincere obedience requires, that no Divine command should be left uncomplied with. We have also the Lord's special and impressive command, to ask, to seek, to knock, accompanied with a gracious assurance that we shall receive, find, and that it shall be opened unto us. May the reader so ask for Divine grace and assistance, with the full desire of the heart, as to receive it; may he so use it, and seek for the wisdom and power of Divine Truth with all the energy of his understanding, as that he may see clearly what he must "do to be saved;" and may he so knock at the gate of heaven within him, and remove obstructions to the Lord's entrance there, by shunning evils as sins, that the Lord may open unto him the purity, the wisdom, the love, the peace, and joy of heaven, in a blessed (interior) consociation with angels, even while he is an inhabitant of the earth! Punishment not an infliction.—God is immutable in his nature, and he is equally immutable in his will; his laws are the expression of that will. Perfect conformity to the will of the Deity thus expressed, imparts all the happiness which the creature is susceptible of receiving; deviation or transgression, according to the moral order of the universe, involves in it corresponding misery. The infinite perfections of the Supreme are ever active in the communication of good in every form, to every object, and to the same extent as it may be capable of reception. "In all creation He is seen, In all his blest perfections shine; His love and wisdom form each scene, Each scene displays a hand Divine." To all rational beings who shut not themselves out by their sin from this communion, every internal and external capacity of receiving delight becomes opened (by repentance) and constantly filled from the Source of all purity and joy; for "in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand are pleasures for evermore. Punishment is the necessary result of sin. The consequences of sin are not inflictions, as generally imagined; but they are events and states of things which follow of themselves according to established laws of intellectual and moral nature, which are essential to the harmony and government of the whole universe. Inflowing life.-In man's faculty or power of re-acting in opposition to the nature of the inflowing life (love) proceeding from "the Sun of Righteousness," is the origin of evil; evil being the perversion of the inflowing life of good from the Lord. But in this faculty (the will) of perverting, is the power also of adoption or appropriation of good, from whence man's life becomes properly human, with its almost divine delights; whence is his immortality and eternal life, and whence, also, is the power of progressing in love and wisdom to all eternity. And in this progressing in love and wisdom, there is a continual renewal of life from |