many adversaries. If I do not watch unto prayer, the world will get between me and my duty: if I do not watch in prayer, Satan will do his utmost to prevent my sweet or continued approach unto God: if I do not watch after prayer, pride, presumption, security, or negligence, will find a way into my heart. O Lord, if I were fully and constantly aware of my true situation, how could I think to do less than always to pray and not to faint!

My fallen heart is ever ready to take up with the mere performance of duty. How often have I prayed for spiritual mercies; and not considered afterwards whether God hath granted them or not? For increase of faith, wisdom, holiness, and other graces, I have asked with earnestness at the time, and then soon have forgotten what I asked for, or neglected to mark the event. Hence all the lowness of my attainments in divine things, and my overborne subjection to things earthly. And when I have requested temporal blessings, how little have I considered the hand of God in of God in refusing them! the good for its own sake, God's glory and my spiritual welfare, and thereby was ready to turn it, if granted, into an evil! little use have I made of temporal benefits, when they have been given me, and sometimes given unexpectedly too, that I might notice God's providence; and how ready hath my corrupt nature been to take and apply them all to itself! Surely I am as much the monument of God's patience as of his love.

granting, or the wisdom How often have I sought instead of seeking it for

How

It is a matter always to be had in remembrance,

that prayer should be followed up with thanksgiving. I ought to be thankful, if what I have prayed for is received; and I should be thankful also, if what I have prayed for is restrained. God is better to me than I am to myself; and he only keeps back any thing from his children, either because it is not good at all, or not good in the time and for the purpose for which they desired it. The words of a very ancient poet, rightly turned, may express, in this case, the sentiment of every Christian :

The good we need, great King, bestow,
Whether we ask for it or no;

But, if for ill we blindly cry,

In mercy, Lord, that suit deny.

The practice of many saints under the Old Testament was to pray thrice in a day. According to opportunity, I cannot pray too often, either in the closet, the family, or the church. There are indeed stated times for these; but one kind of prayers may be used at all times, and in every circumstance of life. The prayers of ejaculation, or of darting up the heart towards God (like that in Nehem. ii. 4.) in short and pathetic sentences, have a wonderful effect in them, and tend very much to keep up the soul's communion with God, and the life of holiness in common things. Many such may be taken from the Psalms in particular. They show a sweet and healthful inclination of the soul, more perhaps than laboured expressions, or long continuance of address, which may sometimes fall into idle repetitions, or be unattended with suitable affections and fervency. O how delightfully will these aspirations often pass to

wards heaven from the soul!

How warmly stir up

the affections, and raise the mind! How strongly check the inordinate care of earthly things!

"Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be always acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my Strength, and my Redeemer !"

CHAPTER XX.

On singing Praises to God.

THE first of all earthly singers gave this as an inspired rule, “Sing ye praises with understanding." Without spiritual understanding, we can only make a noise. Unless we know how deeply we are indebted to God, and have the sweet sense of his goodness in our souls, we may please ourselves with a tune, but we yield no music to him. Some of old "chanted to the sound of the viol, and invented to themselves instruments of music;" but, at the same time, they were among those who were at ease in Zion, and who put far away the evil day, to whom woe is denounced. God never instituted varieties of music in his service, however, like other carnal ordinances, he might bear with it under the Jewish economy; but only trumpets and rams' horns, to usher in the seasons and solemnities. It is spiritual harmony which is the delight of heaven, and not outward jingle and sound; and therefore, if we are not spiritual, we can have no true notion of this delight,

nor "make melody in our hearts to the Lord." The thrills of music, and the divine joys of the soul, are very different things. Worldly men have had the first, and thought them from heaven; but they continued no longer than the sound; while the peace of gracious praise is full, sublime, and abiding. We must indeed be real Christians before any of us can say with the Apostle, "I will pray with the SPIRIT, and I will pray with the understanding also; I will sing with the SPIRIT, and I will sing with the understanding also."

The

I cannot but shake my head, when I hear an officer of the church calling upon the people, "to sing to the praise and glory of God;" and immediately half a dozen merry men, in a high place, shall take up the matter, and most loudly chant it away to the praise and glory of themselves. tune, perhaps, shall be too difficult for the greater part of the congregation, who have no leisure for crotchets and quavers; and so the most delightful of all public worship shall be wrested from them, and the praises of God taken out of their mouths. It is no matter whence this custom arose; in itself it is neither holy, decent, nor useful; and therefore ought to be banished entirely from the churches of God.

When Christians sing all together in some easy tune, accommodated to the words of their praise, and not likely to take off their attention from sense to sound; then, experience. shows, they sing most lustily, (as the Psalmist expresses it,) and with the best good courage. The symphony of voice and

the sympathy of heart may flow through the whole congregation, which is the finest music to truly serious persons, and the most acceptable to God of any in the world. To" sing with grace in their hearts to the Lord," is the melody of heaven itself; and often brings a foretaste of heaven to the redeemed even here. But jingle, piping, sound, and singing, without this divine accompaniment, are grating, discordant, jarring harshness with God, and vapid lifeless insipidity to the souls of his people.

I am no enemy to music as a human art; but let all things be in their place. The pleasures of the ear are not the gracious acts of God's Spirit in the soul; but the effect of vibrated matter from an outward sense. This may be indulged as perhaps an innocent and ingenious amusement; but what have our amusements to do with solemn and sacred adorations of God? Would not this be carnal, and after the nodes of the world, and not after Christ? Surely no believer will venture to call any thing spiritual, which doth not proceed from, or accord with, the Spirit of life, or tend to "mortify the old man with his affections and lusts."

Neither sounds of air, nor words of sense alone, however excellent, can please God. "He is a Spirit, and they who worship him, must worship him in spirit and in truth;" for such He seeketh. It is easy to do many, if not all, religious acts with a very carnal heart; but to be truly religious, or to walk and act in our spirits with God,-this hath always been too hard for flesh and blood," and can only be performed by that grace which giveth life and power to every renewed mind.