be so, or prayer is the great exception. If united to the words there is also the glowing thought, so that the soul as well as the body of the prayer is to come up and stand before God, and if he is then to shut his ear, surely that separate and unrelated fact should be shown. Then, and only then, will we admit, however reluctantly, that though the trend of all things else is toward the belief in answered prayer, yet for some good reason deeply hid in the heart of God, he does not listen and will not respond to our cry. But we are not forced to any such painful conclusion. There is no proof that prayer is the sad excep. tion. It cannot be that while an oath is recorded, a prayer makes such slight record as to be quickly obliterated. The Omniscient must know when we pray. He will not vacate his omniscience by refusing to regard any such fact as prayer. God cannot, being God, but hear, even if he did not wish to listen. He is in the room where you pray. He could not possibly be absent. He holds up the earth beneath you. Each object in the room,

the floor on which you bed against which your hand rests, are all kept in existence and in form by him. "By him all things consist;" i. e., stand as they stand. It is his present energy, there and then exercised, that keeps all things in being and works all laws.

kneel, the chair, table, or

He must at least hear, if he does not answer. But the immense probability is that, going so far as to hear, he will take the one step more, that of choosing to answer the suppliant's petition.

Further such an arrangement for hearing would obviously be a good arrangement. It would provide for God's manifestation of himself and for man's development in the highest lines of religious living. It certainly would not be dishonorable to God, and as certainly would be helpful to man. It would seem to open a way

for God to disclose his will and direct our mortal life, which would not be omitted by one who, as a worker on the same moral plane, must care for our welfare in caring for himself and his own plans.

It is true that a crude interpretation of some few texts of Scripture, under pretence of magnifying prayer, has really left God no room to answer. Under the effort to exalt God's promise, it has really discrowned God himself. Good men, pleading that the words "whatsoever ye shall ask" are unlimited-an error which would have been avoided by study of the context-have made God vacate sovereignty in their behalf; have not even left him the poor liberty to deny them any wish or whim; have regarded him as yielding to them, through his unlimited promise, the con

trol of events. If their view is correct, they are sovereigns, and he is the subject who is to do what they may say when they ask anything in prayer. But we are not told that we may mount the throne in our "whatsoever ye ask;" only that this is the liberty we have, to ask what we will of strength and direction for work in which we seek that "the Father may be glorified in the Son."* Prayer is not human whim, but holy desire offered up for things according to the will of God. It is not a man imposing his test on God, but God proposing the line along which, in his promises, we may prove him. Prayer sees him always on the throne to grant or to deny, answering equally in either case. It never discrowns the God it addresses. Let no man think the less of true prayer for that rashness of interpretation which, under color of honoring prayer, is really dishonorable to God.

On the other hand, could one imagine any exercise more adapted to ennoble man than this of true prayer? It would promote that genuine humility which consists well with the highest exaltation. It lifts mind and heart toward him who is the sum of all excellence. We imitate whom we worship. We grow like him whom we adore. We are ourselves exalted in exalting him. It

* See John, xiv. 13, 14.

stands to reason that no man can be a worse man, but on the contrary a better man, for entering daily his closet and praying to his Father and his God. Prayer tends to make the relations we sustain to God more definite. It is an act that is between himself and our central selves. It is called "drawing near to God." The sense of the Divine Being as one ever present may grow dull elsewhere, but it becomes sharp again in the closet. Prayer vitalizes the best truths. It refines the ore of Christian doctrine and leaves behind the true gold. Truth that can be prayed is truth that is newly tested and minted. The creed that ministers to true prayer is thereby the proven creed. We see further into spiritual truth on our knees than when standing highest on our feet. Heart then leads head, as it was made to do. If God has an arrangement for hearing and answering prayer, it must tend to vitalize all his best truths for us. In this way he can get himself believed with a profound and living faith. It would be, if he has chosen prayer as a fact in his universe, a sort of continuous authentication of revelation; not indeed by way of adding new truths, but by vivifying those that are already known. For if prayer and its answer are correlated facts, they are also related facts to other things in the supernatural realm of God and souls.

The great facts of revelation go well with this exercise of prayer. They do indeed bear on themselves the brand of miraculous signature and indorsement. But they are centuries away from us. They cannot be repeated; since, if frequent, the miracles attesting them would cease to be authentications. And they are in danger, because of their infrequence, less of being denied than unused as proofs of divine utterances. They and the truths indorsed by them, are in danger of lying useless on the surface of one's belief, the spiritual side of the miracles neglected, and their moral worth as divine object lessons not duly estimated. What is needed is some such exercise as prayer which shall put a man's soul into moral mood, so that the Christian facts shall have a fair chance in their double appeal to heart and to head; so that from the vantage ground of a profound moral sympathy these facts shall have the kind of reception to which they are entitled. The separating centuries will depart and the full force of these truths not be weakened by distance in time. We need to be put into close communion with them. Prayer would do this thing for those generations of men which, like our own, are necessarily separated from those occurrences. Prayer would find these facts at their due strength. It would bring them back in