those feelings and dispositions of mind which ought ever to accompany us in that solemn act of devotion, when we are permitted not only to approach the Throne of God, but to address him in the very words which have been prescribed by his Son.

1. Let me entreat you, then, my young brethren, to observe, in the first place, the majesty and solemnity with which it opens. It is short, and it is enjoined us as our daily prayer; and yet the first words of it involve the greatest and most exalted views of Divine Providence, which human language has hitherto expressed. While we pronounce them (if we pronounce them with thought and understanding), we feel as it were the whole universe annihilated around us,-we see nothing but God,-we see nature prostrated at his footstool with ourselves,and we think only of "Him in whom

66

everything lives, and moves, and has its being," and who alone inhabiteth both space and eternity.

;

It is not, my brethren, for light reasons that we are thus instructed to pray. There is a carelessness which habit is apt to produce even in the best of us, when we address our supplications to Heaven and there are few who can make a sudden transition from the affairs of the world to that solemn and exalted tone of mind which prayer so justly demands. It is on this account, probably, that the opening of this prayer is made so solemn and majestic; and to remind us whom we are addressing, that all the mightiest evidences of his providence are brought forward to our imagination. It is to remind us, that, when we kneel before God, we are engaged in the highest and holiest service of our nature; that in his presence all lower desires and emotions

should cease; and that the only sentiments which then become us, are veneration for his unbounded greatness, and thankfulness that He permits the children of the dust to draw near unto him.

2. If such are the feelings which become us when we address our prayers unto God, let me entreat you to observe, in the second place, what is the light in which he deigns to invite us to approach him.— Is it as the Sovereign of nature, by whom we are summoned to pay our homage before his throne? Is it even as the Master of his people, whom he calls, like the Jews of old, to listen to the commandments he enjoined ;-" while the moun"tain burned with fire, and all the people "fell with their faces on the ground." No, my brethren! it is as the Father of existence, that he here invites his children to come unto him. It is as the great Parent of being, that he calls the souls which

he has made, to come and unveil their hopes and their fears before him, and "to "put their trust under the shadow of his "wings."

It is impossible not to see for what end this beautiful opening of our daily prayer is intended. The distance between man and his Creator is so immense, and there is something so awful in approaching voluntarily into his presence, that nothing but the most exalted views, or the most sinless purity, can seem to embolden natural man, to hold regular communion with "Him that inhabiteth eternity." Opinions of this fearful kind, however, would have a tendency to destroy or to corrupt all the principles of religion in the human mind. They would tend either to excuse us, in our own opinion, from the service of God, and thus gradually lead us "to live altogether without Him in the "world" or they would dispose us to ap

proach him with the indistinct terror of slaves,-to mingle the gloom of superstition with our religious service, and to worship him," not in spirit and in truth,” but with the dark and ceremonial rites of a constrained homage.

The model which is here given us of Christian prayer is very different. It banishes at once from our imaginations, all the fears so natural to mortality. It is our Father to whom it teaches us to speak; it is that name, so dear and venerable, which it brings forward with all its associations to our minds,-the name which all men have known, and in which all have been taught to trust,- and which cannot be pronounced without awakening in every heart the feelings of confidence, and hope, and love. It is the Father, and not the Lord of Nature, who is here revealed to our view ;-that Father "who "careth for us, who knoweth whereof we