PHILIP NICHOLAS SHUTTLEWORTH, D. D.

"SERMONS on some of the Leading Principles of Christianity), 1829." (See Vol. I. p. 273. of the Sunday Library.)

REASONABLENESS AND EFFICACY OF

PRAYER.

JAMES, V. 16.

The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

THERE is no duty, the practice of which is more uniformly enforced throughout the whole of the sacred writings, or which, as has, I trust, been experimentally felt by us all, leaves our spiritual faculties in a more healthy, invigorated, and complacent state, than that of religious worship; and yet, at the same time, so strangely are our reasoning powers occasionally set at variance with our best moral and religious feelings in this life, there is perhaps none against which, if we derive our conclusions solely from what may appear logical and consequential in argument, a more perplexing case might be made out, or which might be represented, by deductions the cogency of which it would be difficult to deny, as more nugatory, more presumptuous, and more hopeless.

Prayer, admitting it to be really available in obtaining for us the object of our petitions, is indeed a surprising, I may almost say, an incredible, privilege to be communicated to so imperfect a creature as man. Examine it, as the votary of this world would have us do, by the cold and unbend

ing rules of abstract speculation, and it will appear to be nothing less than the attempt of a weak and perishable being, to influence the volition, to sway the attributes, and to re-arrange the government of the most high God: an attempt seemingly as desperate as would be that of the same wretched being were he to strive by his mere personal strength to wield the material universe, of which he forms so inconsiderable a part; to give new laws to the elements; and to impress upon the eternal career of the heavenly bodies a different and devious direction.

Prayer may, by a definition of which, arguing by the rules of mere human ratiocination, it would be difficult to point out the inaccuracy, be asserted to be" the dictation of mortal ignorance to infinite and divine wisdom; of conscious demerit to perfect, and therefore uncompromising and unbending, justice; not merely a demand, but an actual expectation, of the intervention of an express miracle in our behalf; that is to say, of an interruption in the natural chain of consequences in the course of God's government, perhaps injurious to, if not incompatible with, other necessary parts of the same mysterious arrangement, so often as we may choose to imagine that our own individual wants require it." And on what basis of even probable presumption does this strange expectation rest? Does God really arrange things for the best in his general regulation of the universe? If he does, can we then for a single moment hope, or even desire, that he will introduce a change for the worse -as under such a supposition

every change must be-on our account, and in indulgence to our narrow views and selfish caprices? If, on the other hand, the present order of his government is capable of amendment, then, from another reason, must our devotion appear to be hopeless, as addressed to a Being, the object of whose providence is not the greatest possible advantage and happiness of his creatures; and whom therefore we can have little encouragement to address with the cravings of human sorrow, or the short-sightedness of human intercession.

Such are some of the most obvious objections and difficulties which meet us on the very surface of this question respecting the REASONABLNESS AND EFFICACY OF PRAYER, to which, with our present very limited faculties, it is evidently impossible for us to find an entirely satisfactory solution. How then are we to reply to arguments apparently so obvious and irrefragable, and yet, at the same time, if their validity be admitted, so entirely destructive of the first principles of devotion? I answer; by the very fact that they are thus entirely destructive. I answer; by an appeal from sophistical disputation to the far surer test of our moral experience; to the voice of God himself speaking within us; to that instinctive conviction of the reasonableness of our best feelings, which in a well-regulated mind will ever have force enough to break through these flimsy cobwebs of captious speculation, however incompetent our understandings may in this life be to disentangle their intricacies. Religion, we should recollect,