and give him as many as he needeth." Our prayer in such a cause should be the holy violence of reiterated entreaty. It should be the loud and lengthened cry of him, who finds no medium between a friendly access to the throne of God, and the agonies of the lowest hell. It should be the cry of one who fears that he is going down into the pit, but who finds in the depth of his heart a remnant hope, that God will yet hear the prayer of the poor destitute, and turn again and place beneath him the refuge of his everlasting arms. It should be the holy remonstrance of him, who discovers in God's word, a promise of grace applicable to his desolate condition, and who pleads it with increasing confidence that God will remember and be gracious.

Such, brethren, should be the prayer of man to God. If we are in want, we may ask. If we are sensible of loss, we may seek to recover. If we feel that the door of divine intercourse is shut against us, we may knock to have it opened. But though we notice this gradation in the nature of prayer, we are not limited, on any occasion, to the mere utterance of a request; we are warranted on all occasions, and under every sense of need, to employ to the utmost the whole privilege which God has thus laid open to us. That we are permitted to pray at all, is a covenant mercy. We should not use our mercy scantily. No; our prayers for all spiritual and really needful bless

ings, should rise in energy and earnestness, as we move forward towards the attainment of our object. We should ask, we should seek, we should knock. Let the praying soul be encouraged to press his petition to the utmost. Let the cry of humiliation, and penitence, and want, come thundering with ceaseless importunity at the gate of heaven. Let the words of prophetic mercy be fulfilled; let "the kingdom of heaven suffer violence, and let the violent take it by force."

II. Let us turn, in the second place, to consider the nature of the encouragement which our blessed Redeemer has on this occasion given to prayer. And here, at the outset, let us consider who it is that gives this encouragement. It is He through whom we are authorised to ask. Here, brethren, is the great secret of the prevalence of prayer.Here is the clue to the extraordinary condescension and mercy of this encouraging language, It comes from a reconciled God. It fell from his lips, who was content for our sakes to "become poor, that we through his poverty might be made rich." It is the word of God, who was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself. It is the word of him who knew that he was about to justify man before the throne of judgment, by his own atoning death, and to put him again, by his own infinite merits, upon the footing of favour and acceptance with his Creator and Judge. He has said, “what

soever ye ask in my name, believing, ye shall receive." When, therefore, he gave this injunction in the text, it was not to man as an enemy: it was to man as the chosen object of his compassion ;-it was to man as redeemed by his blood. It was to man as graciously restored to all that he had lost. It was to man, as having a way into the holiest opened and consecrated for him through the death of the surety, and boldness given him to enter it. When, therefore, we give this fact its due weight in the scale, and consider these words as the words of the "mighty God" incarnate for the redemption of his people, and as an harmonious part of his whole scheme of mercy and salvation to ruined man; when we view it as the Author of all things, the absolute sovereign of all worlds, opening the charter of his mercies to his justified and restored creature, and renewing his suspended blessing to his pardoned rebel; then rich, boundlessly rich, as the privilege appears to be, we may conceive of its reality, and rejoice in it. We see, then, that prayer is the turning of the wandering prodigal to his father; and that the sanction to pray, and to plead with importunity, is in fact the father saying of his alienated child, "This my son was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found;" "Bring forth the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his finger, and shoes upon his feet, and bring forth the fatted calf, and let us eat and be merry."

Now, the first point of encouragement to prayer,

is the direct promise of the Saviour. "Ask," he says, "and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened." Such language is unspeakably gracious, and we ought not to limit it and clog it with conditions. He who paid the price of man's restoration to God's favour, states the terms on which we may receive it. He thus lays out before us the practical riches to which we are invited. The treasures of grace are open to the draft of real prayer. We have only to come in the way of God's appointment, and we shall be blessed. This is no warrant to the unholy seeking of worldly things, by a greedy worldly mind. It is no warrant for the selfish, and the presuming to expect to have every thing their own way in this world, and grieve, and complain, and impugn the truth of God, if they be not satisfied. But it is a warrant for something better.

The direct promise of Christ is a warrant to expect much indeed, and more than many of us seek for. If the poor, guilty, wretched creature feels his poverty, and guilt, and wretchedness, and in his necessity, turns to the God whom he has offended, and asks for what his melancholy circumstances require, and seeks the holiness and the heaven which he has lost, and knocks and importunes again for admission to favour and communion with God, he shall be answered with blessing. The grace of God in Christ Jesus is real grace. It is free and full. It is a provision for the restoration of

the lost. Christ "came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." And here, in our text, are the very words of the covenant to give. If the sinner is brought to the throne of grace, and asks repentance, God will give it. He will authorize and command him to ask. He will encourage him to importunity. He will bless his importunity. “Knock, and it shall be opened." It cannot be that the fallen creature shall again turn to the source and centre of holiness with sincere desire, with the earnest breathing of an honest wish to be renewed in God's image, and God not hear him. I cannot believe, that, in the heart of any fallen creature, however fallen, there could exist a sincere wish to be holy for holiness sake, and the God of holiness not hear and answer it. Yea, if even it were possible, that, in the deepest regions of the bottomless pit, such a wish could arise, it would quench the violence of that tormenting flame; it would burst the barriers of eternal night; it would be wings to that soul from the desolate regions of utter ungodliness, to the dwellings of holiness and peace.

2dly, The next ground of encouragement to prayer, is the appeal to experience." For every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth." This is a direct statement of the fact, that the promise of God is fulfilled. The Lord Jesus does not merely put forth a promise, and propound a theory; but he states a fact. No man