thy God, and let not the dearest friend or relative interfere with thy intercourse and converse with him. The privacy of prayer is the great thing which is here enforced. Poor persons who have but one apartment, may enter into the spirit of this direction by praying wherever they can be retired. Isaac's closet was a field. He went out to meditate in the field at the even-tide. Gen. xxiv. 63. David's closet was his bedchamber. Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. Psalm iv. 4. Our Lord's closet was a mountain. When he had sent the multitude away, he went into a mountain apart to pray, and when the evening was come, he was there alone. Matt. xiv. 23. Peter's closet was the house-top. Peter went up upon the house-top to pray, about the sixth hour. Acts x. 9. Hezekiah's closet was 'turning his face towards the wall, and praying unto the Lord. Isaiah xxxviii. 2.

But there is a retiredness of heart and a self-recollection which is of greater importance than any particular place of prayer. This is the fruit of the Holy Spirit, as has already been shewn; let us then continually look for and solely depend on his aid, which alone can enable us to give our whole hearts to this great work. Some have found it a happy means of assisting in gaining self-recollection, to have nothing to do but to pray. "We must," says Bonnel, "shut

all other businesses from our minds at that time, and say, I have nothing to do this half-hour, but to wait on my God. For if we determine ourselves no time, but are in haste to do something else, as soon as we have done our prayers, it is a great hazard if we are recollected at all during our worship."

SECT. II. On the Being to be worshipped.

It is evident that the Being whom all men are to worship, must be every where present, have all power, and know all things. Many prayers being offered up, at the same time, by many persons, and for different things, an assurance that he possesses these attributes is necessary, in order to our placing confidence in him, that he will answer all, and give to each that which is best in his particular situation. Hence the absurdity of praying to saints and angels, or through their mediation.

God is also infinitely holy and righteous; a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he. Deut. xxxii. 4. He has all means in his control; he is Lord of all worlds; and he has all riches in his possession. But when to these perfections we can add the attributes of goodness, tenderness, and love, we may then have the greatest confidence. And this is the case with the Christian. He may consider God, not only as the Father of the human race, but as HIS FATHER in a more special relation. Christians have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby they cry, Abba, Father! they are reconciled to God by the death of his Son. Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. Psalm ciii. 13. Jesus Christ delights to bring his relation before us. He tells us, When ye pray, say, Our Father. Pray to thy Father which is in secret. Private prayer is the soul's approach in its retirements to this reconciled Father; to one who has been pleased to endear himself by so condescending and so kind a title. He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of

whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, and in him he is ours also. Our Lord says to Mary, I ascend unto my Father and your Father,-first mine, and then yours. And how graciously he encourages us to bring our wants before God—What man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven, give good things to them that ask him? Matthew vii. 9, 11.

We

In praying to God the Father, we do not exclude the Son and Holy Spirit from our worship. should ever include the thrice holy Jehovah in our adoration. Isaiah vi. 3. Rev. iv. 8. In fact, we cannot, as Christians, worship the one Jehovah, but we include in that worship all the persons of the sacred Trinity God is our Father only in Christ, and we call on him as such. We We may, however, pray separately to each person of the ever-blessed Trinity. We may pray to Jesus Christ, (Luke xxiii. 42; Acts vii. 59; 2 Cor. xii. 8, 9,) and to the Spirit. (Matthew xxviii. 9; 2 Cor. xiii. 14; Isaiah vi. 3, 9, compared with Acts xxviii. 25.) In worshipping them, we only worship the one God; yet the general way of approaching the Almighty in prayer, is to God the Father, through the mediation of the Son, (John xvi. 23,) and by the aid of the Spirit.

How delightful is the relation subsisting between God and the Christian as father and child! The child receives every thing freely from paternal love; it does not come to the Father as a purchaser, or as the merchant with the equivalent. When a desire for any good arises in the child's mind, it does not

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offer to buy it at a price, but simply expresses its feelings, and asks it as a gift. In its earliest years the child cannot speak its wants plainly; yet even in infancy, they are made known by looks and cries, and the father understands these expressions of its wishes. As the child grows up, all that the father requires of it is an affectionate and dutiful conduct, a reverence, and honour, and obedience, totally distinct from slavish fear, and which in effect only tends to promote its real happiness.

It is under the influence of these feelings that we should come to God; and though we only learn to cry Abba, Father! by slow degrees, let us persevere in faith and love, till we receive the full Spirit of adoption.

In worshipping God we need not be anxious to comprehend the particulars of his nature, except as he has revealed himself. Job xi. 7. Beware of any fanciful representation, or figure of him. All such things only tend to degrade him in our minds, and to fill us with unsuitable ideas of his Majesty. They are also directly prohibited in the word of God. Deut. iv. 12-25; Isa. xl. 18-25. Jesus Christ is our only Mediator and ground of access to God the Father; and his Holy Spirit, the purchase of the blood of Christ, and sent by him to help our infirmities, our great Assistant. The view we should endeavour to have of God, is that which our Lord gives-God is a Spirit; and that which was revealed to Moses the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, and transgression, and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty. Exod. xxxiv. 6, 7. Keep fast hold, then,

of this view of the character of God; it is exactly suited to the wants of sinners.

The consideration that the EYE OF GOD IS UPON us, that our heavenly Father is in secret, and there beholds us, should be continually on our minds as a motive for continual watchfulness, and a source of the greatest comfort. Thou God seest me! should be written on the walls of our closet; or, rather, deeply engraven on our hearts. Before an earthly superior we are careful and circumspect in all our expressions and actions: how careful then should we be when we approach unto one, who, though he is our Father, is yet the KING OF KINGS and the LORD OF LORDS! If an angel in all his heavenly brightness were to be with us, surely our hearts would feel awed by his glorious presence. How much more then should it affect us, and fill us with a holy fear, to think, "I am with God; he is present in the room with me! that God is now about me, whose glory stains and sullies the beauty, and extinguishes the light of angels!"

Rush not hastily, then, into the presence of God. Pause for a few moments. Meditate on his character. Consider his goodness, he is our Father: consider his greatness, he is in heaven.

Recollect THE GLORIOUS MAJESTY OF THAT BEING WHOM YOU ADDRESS. He is in heaven, and we are úpon earth. It is with reflections of this kind that David begins many of his Psalms. Thus he says in the 104th Psalm, O Lord, my God, thou art very great, thou art clothed with majesty and honour. Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment, who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain, who layeth the beams of his chambers in the water, who maketh the clouds his