shall you be also. He has prepared a place for you, and will prepare you for it, by raising up the life and nature of heaven in you. This is what I am to open and declare to you; and I God enable me to do it to your conpray viction. Christ says, Ask, seek, knock; i. e. as I have already told you, ask for the Spirit, seek for a blessing upon your souls, knock, that the door of grace may be opened to you. If you are a natural worldly man, pray that your eyes may be opened, and your heart turned within you; if you are a convinced man, pray that your sins may be forgiven; if you are a believer, pray continually for your establishment in the faith, and increase in godliness. And that they are the things of the Spirit, and those only, which you are here required to ask, you may be satisfied by comparing Luke, xi. 13, where it is said, "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the HOLY SPIRIT to them that ask him?"

1. Therefore consider the importance of them. The things of this world we may want; we may be patient and contented though we have them not; we may be well pleased and happy without them. For the most part, they are a hinderance to us in our Christian progrèss; and if they are not desired with moderation, and employed to the glory of God, will be a curse to us instead of a blessing. But the things which God offers to our choice, and warrants us to ask of him, peace by Jesus Christ, renewal to his image in holiness and fitness for heaven, as they are unspeakably great in themselves, so we must be for ever undone, if we are not possessed of them. They are the riches of our souls, and the things of eternity. Everlasting happiness or misery depends upon our seeking or not seeking after them.. They are what Christ calls the one thing needful-needful in the highest degree, and as if nothing else was so. Whatever else we

do for ourselves, can signify nothing to the great end we were made for, the favour of God, and our acceptance with him. And for this end Christ came into the world, that he might raise us out of our dead state, turn our eyes and hearts to the work of our salvation, convince us of the necessity of securing it, and put us in a way of doing it. He saw us in our wretched condition of blindness, corruption, and alienation from God. He saw us dead in trespasses and sins, the devil's bond slaves, and liable to eternal death. Our misery pierced him to the heart. And, when nothing could relieve us from it but his incarnation and death, he took our flesh, and with it our sins, and was made a curse for us, that we might be delivered from wrath, and have hope towards God. See your condition in this glass. Think how it appears to God. Consider what Christ did and suffered to open your eyes, to bring you to repentance, to reconcile you to God by faith, to confirm you in a state of holy willing obedience, to prepare you for the heavenly inheritance, and you will be convinced of the necessity of being so prepared, and of the great value and importance of the blessings he has purchased for you, and of the graces he came to work in you. You would ask them of God, as you would pray for your lives, and be very thankful to him for putting in a condition of obtaining them by Christ, and for giving you such an assurance of it as he has done in the words of the text: "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you."

you

2. Besides the great value of the things to be asked, and their unspeakable importance to us, let us also duly consider our weakness. They must be had, and yet of ourselves we cannot attain them. For it is God that worketh in us, both to will and to do of his good pleasure;" Phil. ii. 13. And this is manifestly implied

in the exhortation to ask, seek, and knock. For God would not put us upon asking of him what we have of our own, and could easily give to ourselves if we please. No; the Spirit, with all his blessings, is his gift. Repentance is his gift, faith is his gift, holiness is his gift. Our whole salvation is his gift, and we want assistance in every part of it. Our souls must be continually watered with the dew of heaven, and can only bring forth fruit, as the earth does, by a blessing from above. The work we have to do can never prosper in our hands, without some better help than our own. We are bowed down with a spirit of infirmity. We have crooked natures, which we cannot reform; earthly hearts, which we cannot change; stubborn wills, which we cannot bend; evil lustings, and unruly passions, which we cannot master in our own strength. Brethren, I fear we generally deceive ourselves in two respects; either by taking a false measure of our work, or supposing that it may go well with us though we leave it undone. If, in the main, we think it needless, we shall of course be slothful in it, and mind other things a great deal more. And, on the other hand, if we take a wrong measure of our work, that is, bring it down to a small matter, and proportion it to our abilities, and resolve with ourselves that God shall accept us for what we can do without him, we shall for ever keep ourselves out of the way of help. But when once we are convinced, in good earnest, that we are in an evil case by departing from God, and must become new creatures; that our natural desires and inclinations must be changed; that sin must be hated, and God loved; that we must cleave to Christ in sincerity, and forsake the vain customs of the world, and put ourselves in the pilgrim's path to heaven; that we must strike at the root of all corruption in the heart, and be holy as God is holy, and perfect as he is perfect; we shall then say, who is

sufficient for these things? and cry mightily to the Lord for help. I do not mention the difficulty of your work to discourage you. It is fit you should know it, that you may know how to combat it, and that there is no hope of surmounting it with any degree of success, but by continual dependence upon God. You know your worldly business will not prosper without the divine blessing, and yet you do not think this a reason for neglecting it, but sow in hope, and reap the fruit of your labours. Think and act thus for your souls. Look up to God in your spiritual concerns, and let the sense of your weakness keep you close to him in prayer. There is your remedy. All difficulties will fall down before it, and without it you can do nothing. Nature will maintain its ground, the world will be your portion, sin will reign in you, and the strong man armed keep possession, in spite of all your endeavours.

3. But now, lest we should be hindered by any vain reasonings in this matter, as if the exercise of prayer was a questioning of the omniscience, infinite goodness, and unchangeableness of God, who knows, without our information, what is best for us, will be moved by his own gracious will to bestow it without our asking, and cannot be wrought upon by any importunity of ours to change his purposes; or lest we should be discouraged, by the sense of our unworthiness, from approaching so great a Majesty, and notwithstanding the importance of the blessings we want, and our utter inability to receive them in any other way than as a gift from God, fear to ask them; let me desire you to consider once more, that he has removed all such apprehensions, and answered all objections to the duty of prayer, by an express command to us, to lay our wants before him, and by making our asking the condition of obtaining. He has in mercy made it our duty to importune him with our earnest

petitions, for what he knows to be necessary for us; and by not asking, we add to all our other transgressions the breach of a plain command. For such the text is: "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." This does not mean that we may choose whether we will ask or not, but lays us under a necessity of doing it. And we wrong our souls every way by not complying with the injunction. We famish them by not seeking for those supplies of grace which must keep them alive; and plunge them deeper into guilt by a continued act of wilful disobedience. This, like every other command, obliges strictly to performance, as such; and we cannot neglect it without throwing up our duty, and rebelling against the authority of God. But then, like every other command, it points to a blessing. For God commands nothing for his own sake, or because of any advantage it brings to him, but solely for the use and benefit of man; either to prevent our misery, or procure some great good to us. And what good does prayer, true prayer, not procure to us? Itis the key to the heart of God, the bond of our friend ship with him, brings heaven into the soul, and fills it with the riches of eternity.

For these reasons, - because we must have spiritual blessings from God- because we are in a state of great weakness and disorder, and cannot give them to ourselves -and because of the command. every man whose eyes are opened does pray.' It is the bent of his renewed nature, his will is to it, and his heart is in it. He presents himself continually before God, with some such words as these: "Oh, cast not out my prayer, nor turn thy mercy from me!" His work is before him, he knows what he has to pray for, and cannot but pray. He loves his soul, values the peace of God, aims at heaven, and would not neglect his title to it for the world. And he