pedient. 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 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 sceptically 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.

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 canvass that he can hoist, or an effort