Listen to a parable. A certain ruler had two servants, and said unto them, 'Labour every day in the fields from morn till eventide, or be imprisoned for a time.' Now it came to pass upon a certain day when the sun was hot, that both the servants fell asleep and woke only as evening fell. They heard their master coming in and were called to come before him: and the first came in and said, 'Master, no prayers can move thee,' and in angry silence took his sentence: and the other heard, and knew his master to be faithful to his law, but because he loved him he could not be silent, but ran and fell at his master's feet and prayed, saying, 'Release me of the prison.' And his master smiled on him, and said, 'I cannot; take him away.' And he arose and went, but as he went his heart was lightened, and he said to himself, "The pain at my heart is gone, for I have spoken, and my master has smiled on me.' And he thought of his master's inexorable order, and as he thought, it grew beautiful in his eyes, even while he suffered in the prison. But his fellow-labourer was more angry every day with his master, and the prison grew darker as he chafed against a law which would not forfeit punishment.

So is prayer, when the inexorable laws of the universe threaten your life or the life of one you love. Make no use of it, and your heart breaks from the passion of hidden grief, or grows bitter from the change of grief into anger. But use it, pour out your wild petition at your Father's feet, even though you know it is useless, and the expression gives relief. The perilous stuff is lifted off, and you are able to bear the new pain with the

old courage. You have cast your care upon a Father, and though He does not stay the blow, He smiles upon you, and the prison of your sorrow is made bright with the thought of His love. A strange conviction of security comes upon your life. He will not err from order,' you say, 'even to relieve me of my pain; I can therefore trust Him as I could not trust Him if I thought my weak and ignorant will could bend His all-wise will, directed by His love. His love!—yes, I feel that His love would not be worth having, could not be trusted were it not one with unchangeability. In this way, we learn slowly to grow into harmony with His will, to submit to it with contentment mingled with the pain we suffer, to say to ourselves, Better that His perfect will should guide me, than that I should be the victim of my own imperfect will.' The result of that is peace. Therefore, pray, for it relieves you by expression-it brings God's fatherhood and all its infinite comfort home to the heart; it leads to the peace which comes of recognising that you are in the hands of unchangeable affection directed by unchangeable Right.

Lastly. Prayer at such moments produces change of mind in you towards the suffering you endure. The prison seemed terrible to the servant, but when he got there, it was not what he expected. His prayer and the smile he had won had altered the relation of his feeling towards the punishment, and alteration of character changes things, not in themselves, but to us. A man is perishing, I will suppose, in a tempest. His wildest prayer, he knows, cannot save him or his wife, folded in his last embrace. But natural feeling will have its

way, and the prayer, Save us, our God, rushes to his lips. They are not saved, the sea drinks up their life -but it is no dream, but told by many a survivor, that in the ghastliest wreck there have been those over whose faces after prayer there has stolen an expression of unutterable peace and joy. Words have been spoken, which said that death had become beautiful, that spirits brought into harmony by prayer with the will of a Father, and beholding the smile upon His face, had seen, by a wondrous triumph over all that is terrible to man, in the raging sea and the terror of the midnight hurricane, only the vision of perfect love, and died as men die in happy sleep. In this way the necessary expression of impassioned feeling in prayer, which is the poetry of the spirit, changes our relation to suffering, and so changes suffering itself into peace or joy.

And now, to sum up all these things. We cannot, dare not, ought not to ask God to change the order of nature, with any expectation that He will grant our prayer—yet, we must use such prayers for the sake of expression of feeling. And in so praying to God as our Father, we do get rid of half our suffering, though not of that which causes our suffering, and even, in a further result, change our pain, our punishment, or our misfortune, into causes of the peace and joy which flow from the realisation of His Presence with us who is the Lover of our souls.

L

THE FORCE OF PRAYER.

'Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.'-Matt. vii. 7.

THE key-note of my text is the force of Prayer, and it is our subject this morning. We spoke not long ago of the difficulties between prayer and science, and I endeavoured to find a common ground on which both could endure the existence of the other.

Our decision was, that if the constancy of force be true, those who pray for the slightest change of sequence pray for a miracle. When we pray for a shower of rain, we ask for as great a miracle as the levelling of Monte Rosa to a plain. There is no large or small in nature, except to us—and a change infinitely small to us may produce immeasurable results. Unless we are prepared, then, to declare that miracles are things of daily occurrence-and that destroys the notion of a miracle-unless we are prepared to hand over the order of the weather to the wants and freaks of religious men, we must give up imagining that our prayer can change the order of nature, or that God will change it at the instance of our prayer. Prayers for rain, for fine weather, and the whole class of prayers which deal with physical changes, are impotent so far as these physical

changes are concerned. Prayer, unless we assume a miracle, has never altered and does not alter a single physical sequence. It has no direct influence on nature. The question then arose, whether it had any indirect influence, or whether a prayer of this class was of any use whatever. We were forced to consider this, for we were met by the fact that the human heart in difficulties arising from physical causes naturally rushed into prayer. It was scarcely possible, we thought, that this natural impulse had no meaning and no end. I attempted to give an answer to that question, but as I left it partly unexplained, I will now add enough, I hope, to make it clear.

Though prayer does not change law, it changes the relation of men to law, not physically, but spiritually. Take for example a national prayer against a pestilence. It will not take away the pestilence, but when a whole mass of men pray for one thing, attention is directed to it, enquiry is set on foot, unity of action is supported, and the pestilence is checked by the discovery of its causes and their destruction. But if prayer only did that, it would do no more than a few vigorous speeches made by physicians might do. It does more. It puts in motion the mighty engine of moral feeling; it makes every man conscious of his national responsibility to God for the health of the nation; it kindles the charity which devotes itself to the sick, the faith which supports endeavour; it makes each man feel his sinfulness and his need of God, and his connection with a Father. And as a consequence of these feelings a higher tone pervades and a higher spirit fills the