DEAD SLEEP IN SIN.

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moral sensibility. And this sleep cannot be disturbed while he remains impenitent, otherwise than by disclosures of God as a consuming fire. His experience, therefore, in the forms of devotion, while he abides in impenitence, can only vibrate between the extremes of weariness and of terror. Quell his fear of God, and prayer becomes irksome; stimulate his indifference to God, and prayer becomes a torment.

The notes of a flute are sometimes a torture to the ears of idiots, like the blare of a trumpet. The reason has been conjectured to be, that melodious sound unlocks the tomb of idiotic mind by the suggestion of conceptions, dim, but startling, like a revelation of a higher life, with which that mind has certain crushed affinities, but with which it feels no willing sympathy; so that its own degradation, disclosed to it by the contrast, is seated upon the consciousness. of idiocy like a nightmare. Such a stimu

lant only to suffering, may the form of prayer be in the experience of sin. Impenitent prayer can only grovel in stagnant sensibility, or agonize in remorseful torture, or oscillate from one to the other. There is no point of joy between to which it can gravitate, and there rest.

It is not wise that even we, who profess to be followers of Christ, should close our eyes to this truth, that the uniform absence of joy in prayer is one of the threatening signs in respect of our religious state. It is one of the legitimate intimations of that estrangement from God, which sin induces in one who has not experienced God's renewing grace. A searching of ourselves. with an honest desire to know the truth, and the whole of it, may disclose to us other kindred facts, with which this feature of our condition becomes reasonable evidence, which it will be the loss of our souls to neglect, that we are self-deluded

THE STILL HOUR.

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in our Christian hope. An apostle might number us among the 'many,' of whom he would say, 'I now tell you, even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ.'

III.

IF I REGARD INIQUITY IN MY HEART, THE LORD WILL NOT

HEAR ME.-Ps. 66: 18.

WE often affront God by offering prayers which we are not willing to have answered. Theoretical piety is never more deceptive than in acts of devotion. We pray for blessings which we know to be accordant with God's will, and we persuade ourselves that we desire those blessings. In the abstract, we do desire them. A sane mind must be far gone in sympathy with devils, if it can help desiring all virtue in the abstract.

The dialect of prayer established in Christian usage, wins our trust; we sympathize with its theoretical significance; we find

ROMANCE IN PRAYER.

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no fault with its intensity of spiritual life. It commends itself to our conscience and good sense, as being what the phraseology of devout affection should be. Ancient forms of prayer are beautiful exceedingly. Their hallowed associations fascinate us like old songs. fall into delicious reverie over them. Yet down deep in our heart of hearts, we may detect more of poetry than of piety in this fashion of joy. We are troubled, therefore, and our countenance is changed.

In certain imaginative moods, we

Many of the prime objects of prayer enchant us only in the distance. Brought near to us, and in concrete forms, and made to grow lifelike in our conceptions, they very sensibly abate the pulse of our longing to possess them, because we cannot but discover that, to realize them in our lives, certain other darling objects must be sacrificed, which we are not yet willing to part with. The paradox is true to the life,