whatever be the burden that is heaviest, whatever be the suffering that is most pungent and poignant-pray that that may be removed. It is right, it is duty, it is privilege. Some say, "I don't know if it be good for me that it should be removed." That is not your business; it is God's. What God asks is that we shall disclose to him our deep wants, whatever these wants may be; leaving to him to determine in his wisdom what is best and most expedient for us. If you do not ask temporal blessings, you are saying that the blessings of the footstool are not worth having. But is not health an inestimable blessing? Is not "neither poverty nor riches, but food convenient for us," an inestimable blessing? Is not protection and preservation from danger a blessing? Ask these things, then, that he would feed you with daily bread, that he would save you from "the terror by night, and the arrow that flieth by day;" that he would keep you under his feathers; that he would give you all good things. Mother, pray for the child; child, pray for the mother; healthy, pray for the sick; ask temporal blessings, ask them fully, as children of a Father; and when you ask them, do not trouble yourself with thinking, "I am afraid to ask, because I do not know whether it will be good for me.' You are thus intruding into God's seat: you must leave with him to determine whether it be good for you. It is for you to lay bare your aching heart and its deep wants, in the presence of your Father; and you will find what peace and comfort there is in the thought, "I have told him what I feel honestly to be the want that is deepest; I leave it with him who knows all things completely, to give it when and how he pleases, or to withhold it when it seems to him most expedient." I beliveve we have many wrong views of prayer. We ask things, and doubt whether it is right to ask them or not. Ask every thing you honestly

believe you have need of. Leave it to God, and he will withhold as his wisdom may see to be most expedient. Do not intrude into God's province; take the supplicant's part; for whatsoever things ye have need of" you are to ask for; you are to pray "in all things." "Is any man afflicted? Let him pray. Is any man merry? Let him sing psalms." Let every thing bring you to God; and tell your heavenly Father of all the wants you feel that he may relieve them. Not that Not that prayer is necessary because God needs information of what you want. He knows it; but it is his law, it is his arrangement, that whatever you want you are to tell him of it, and he will give it exceeding abundantly. And if he give you not that very thing which you ask, he will give you something ten times better; he will never give you worse than you ask, but always better. "If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him." Do not think that God's delay is unwillingness: his willingness is infinite; his unwillingness is seeming, his willingness is real; his seeming unwillingness is to make you do as the Canaanite woman did-persevere; his willingness waits to bestow more than we can ask or think. Do not, then, argue, as some have ignorantly and skeptically argued, that God knows what we want, and that if he is determined to give it, he will give it without prayer; and that if he is determined not to give it, it is of no use to pray for it. That is atheism. We are, my dear friends, to feel satisfied that God, in his decrees and eternal purposes, has resolved to give to prayer what he is resolved not to give without prayer. Prayer may be one of the wheels on which his purposes move to performance. It is his law a law that we are under, and that we are to receive-that if we ask not we shall not obtain; and it is

his law, equally explicit, that if we ask we shall obtain. All that he requires of you is the unfeigned, earnest, sincere, persevering disclosure of all your wants-your little wants, and your great wants: for do not think, as some think, of his providence, that it takes care of kings, but does not condescend to beggars-that it takes care of empires, and not of atoms-that it takes care of the leviathan, but not of the emmet or the fly. God's providence embraces all things-rises to the greatest, and descends to the minutest is in the disclosures of the microscope, as well as the discoveries of the telescope. So with reference to prayer; God hears prayer for little things as well as for great things; and little things may be the hinges on which great ones turn. Therefore, the lesson that I would again repeat, is, whatsoever ye want or need, ask and pray for, at all times, every where-lifting up holy hands, nothing doubting that the hearer of prayer will hear and answer. So our experience on earth, and our retrospect for glory, will equally prove that we never sincerely and earnestly prayed in vain.

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LECTURE X.

THE CALMER OF THE STORM.

And when he was entered into a ship, his disciples followed him. And, behold, there arose a great tempest in the sea, insomuch that the ship was covered with the waves: but he was asleep. And his disciples came to him, and awoke him, saying, Lord, save us: we perish. And he saith unto them, Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith? Then he arose, and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a great calm. But the men marvelled, saying, What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him!-MATT. viii. 23–27.

MANY of the miracles on which I have lectured have related to the diseases of the body, to which Christ was the great Physician; and the death of that body, to which he had proved himself the life. This miracle relates not to disease or to death in the experience of man, but to another of the effects of sin, the storms and tempests, or disharmony of nature, of which he alone is the queller, and from which he alone will one day retrieve her.

It appears that Jesus, as stated in the record of the miracle here given, went into a ship. Never, certainly, did the waves of the sea bear a more precious burden; never had ship constructed by man a more glorious passenger; it was the glory of that sea that its bosom bore him; it was an honour to those winds that they were permitted to waft him; for it was not one that had shared with them in nature's shock, but one who made it holy,-for "all things were made by him,”—and came to right it, for he is the great Redeemer of all things.

It appears that when he was in this ship, a storm arose.

The sea, commonly called so, is a large loch or lake; it was inland, but of great extent; and, like all inland seas, as one may be aware, subject to tempestuous hurricanes, that rushed down the mountain gorges unexpectedly, and very frequently buried large vessels in its waters. It appears that one of these gales or storms smote the ship in which Jesus and his disciples were. The fishermen, or the sailors, plainly felt it to be no common or ordinary storm, by the very fact that they appealed to him for deliverance.. A sailor will never take foreign help as long as he has a muscle that he can use, or a rag of canvas that he can hoist, or an effort that his skill, his genius, or his physical powers can have recourse to. Whenever a sailor has recourse to foreign help on the sea, it is generally evidence that he has given up all for lost. These men were accustomed to storms and tempests, and, no doubt, would not have appealed to Jesus for miraculous deliverance unless they had been fully conscious that human strength was weakness, human skill was folly, and that without such interposition all was hopeless.

We gather from these facts that the presence of Christ, near and dear to his people, does not exempt them from affliction. Christ has promised to conduct us to an everlasting and glorious haven; but he has not promised that we shall also have a fair wind, a smooth sea, and a delightful and serene passage. The passage may indeed be tempestuous, but the haven will certainly be reached; and often the storm by the way is a necessary element in that process by which we are fitted for the enjoyment of the haven that is before us. No one so enjoys the calm harbour as the long tempest-tossed sailor; no one so enjoys his home as the weary traveller who has come many a mile to reach it; and the Christian will find heaven not to be the less sweet, but the more so, that he has buffeted many