diligent use of means we must also knock with persevering importunity. Jesus wishes His people to "pray always and not to faint." Jacob wrestled with God and prevailed. All believers are called Israel, because, like Him, they are princes with God, who by dint of holy earnestness and importunity prevail with Him. They will not let Him go until He bless them. He invites His people to this holy wrestling, and He assures us that "the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force."

He never

That earnest, believing, importunate prayer will assuredly be answered, might be argued from the very nature of God. He hath proclaimed Himself to be the hearer and the answerer of prayer. said to any one of the seed of Jacob seek ye my face in vain. He is not only the greatest but the kindest, the tenderest, the best of beings. God is Love. And under what title hath our blessed Redeemer taught us to address a reconciled God in prayer? "Our Father which art in heaven." If then ye have ever known on earth a father's love, or experienced a father's care, endeavour from such an imperfect and necessarily feeble emblem to rise to the contemplation of the care, and the tenderness, and the kindness of your Father in heaven.

It is from the relation existing between the father and the imploring child that the Redeemer argues in the passage before us :—

Vv. 9 and 10. "Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?" Even the mere promptings of natural affection in a father's heart lead him to grant the reasonable entreaties of a loving and obedient child. "If his son ask bread," which is absolutely necessary for his bodily support, would his father mock him by giving him a stone; or if he ask a fish, which is suitable and healthful food, would he answer his request by giving him a serpent, which might injure and perhaps destroy him? Such conduct were contrary to the plainest dictates of natural reason and feeling. The Redeemer accordingly taking this for granted thus argues:

V. 11. "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him?" This verse contains much precious truth, and is fitted to afford much comfort to believers in drawing near to their heavenly Father. It proceeds, you observe, on the assumption that in the constitution of man, fallen and depraved though he be, there are remnants still of what is amiable, and kind, and loving. Parental affection is found to glow in the bosom of even the most wicked and abandoned of men. It is one of those instincts of our nature

which seem to survive the wreck of all the rest. And if amid the deceitfulness and desperate wickedness of the human heart, there is a sharp-sighted sagacity in discerning, and an irrepressible promptness in supplying, the wants of our children, how much more shall God, who is infinitely good in Himself, and the very origin and author of all that is good upon the earth; whose regard for his redeemed children, far from being like the parental affection in man, a mere instinctive feeling, is regulated by unerring wisdom and unspotted holiness; how much more, we say, shall God give good things to them that ask Him? It is contrary to the strongest feelings of our nature that a parent should give his child what is useless, or what would be injurious to him; and how much more are we warranted in believing that the All-wise, who knows with unerring certainty what is best, will give, as He knows how to give, good things to His praying children. The expectation of the child of God has here a wide range, "good things," all that is truly good, not in the estimation of man, but in the estimation of God. Luke, in a parallel passage to that before us, names in express terms that gift which comprehends all good gifts, xi. 13. "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?" The Holy Spirit is the Author of all that is good in man, and in re

ceiving the Spirit we obtain possession of all that is truly good for us, nay, we have the earnest of the purchased inheritance.

If, then, the promise given to believing prayer be so extensive, yet so certain, why are our corruptions so strong, and our graces so languishing? Why does sin exercise such power in our hearts, and why do our enemies so often triumph over us? Why do we realise so little of God in our religious duties, and why are we so far from enjoying God as the chief treasure of our souls? Why have we so little of the mind that was in Christ Jesus? Why so uncharitable, ungenerous, and unkind in our dealings with our fellow-men? Why so little, in short, of the life of God in our souls, of the love of God in our hearts, or the peace of God in our bosoms, or the image of God in our lives? Is it not written,-" Open thy mouth wide and I will fill it?" We are not straitened in God then, we are straitened in our own souls. Were we only more earnest, more fervent, more persevering in believing prayer, we would find the fruit of it in a visible growth in grace, a manifest advancement in holiness.

SECTION III.-UNIVERSAL EQUITY.

MAT. VII. 12.

In the passage we have considered in the previous

section, Jesus has been appealing to our own nature, as an argument in favour of believing prayer, and He proceeds to lay down a rule founded on the same nature, whereby to regulate our conduct to our fellow

men.

V. 12. "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets."

This is the winding up of that part of the Redeemer's exhortations to His people, in reference to their conduct in social life. The radical evil of the human heart is selfishness, and the great object and tendency of the Word of God is to subdue and gradually eradicate that depraved principle. It is important that we should bear in mind that there are two principles which are sometimes confounded together, self-love and selfishness. The one is a necessary and inherent part of the human constitution; the other, a vicious tendency engrafted upon it by the fall. Selflove is that instinctive principle by which we are impelled to seek our own preservation and the promotion of our own happiness. Selfishness, on the other hand, is inordinate self-love, prompting us to promote our own comfort, and to advance our own interest at the expense of our neighbour. Against this last principle the whole of the second table of the law is obviously directed," Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."