The Parable of the Unjust Judge

Luke xviii. 1.

In descending by one of the passes of the Alps into the lovely valley of the Saarnen, the traveller may notice on the right hand of the path a pine-tree, growing in extraordinary circumstances. Enormous masses of hoary rock lie scattered in the bottom of the ravine; they have fallen from the crags which form its stupendous walls; and it is on the top of one of these, a bare, naked block, that the pine-tree stands. No dwarf, misshapen thing, like the birch or mountain ash on an old castle wall, where the wind or passing bird had dropped the seed: it is a forest giant — with rugged trunk, and top that shoots, a green pyramid, to the skies. At first sight one wonders how a tree, seated on the summit of a huge stone, raised above the soil, with no apparent means of. living, could live at all; still more, grow with such vigor as to defy the storms that sweep the pass, and the severe, long winters that reign over these lofty solitudes.

A nearer approach explains the mystery. Finding soil enough on the summit, where lichens had grown

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and decayed, to sustain its early age, it had thrown out roots which, while the top stretched itself up to the light, lowered themselves down the naked stone — feeling for the earth and food. Touching the ground at length, they buried themselves in it, to draw nourishment from its unseen, but inexhaustible, supplies to feed the feeble sapling into a giant tree. So we thought, as we stood looking on this natural wonder, the believer grows. ‘Tempest-tossed by many storms, but, like the pine-tree with its gnarled roots grown into mighty cables, firmly moored to the Rock of Ages, he also raises his head to the skies, and through his prayers, draws spiritual nourishment and growth in grace from the inexhaustible supplies which lie hidden in Jesus Christ, and are provided for all such as love him. Often placed in circumstances not less unfavorable to his growth than that naked stone to the growth of the pine perched on its summit, his prayers, like the roots that descended to the soil, and penetrating it, brought up its riches to feed the tree, form a living communication between him and God. Thus his life is sustained: thus he grows in grace — green and fruitful where others wither, and living where others die. Such being the office of prayer, and the end it serves, it can surprise none to find one or two of our Lord’s parables devoted to so great a duty: indeed, anything else would have surprised us on the part of Him who spent, not hours, but whole nights, in prayer. The sun, as it sank in the western sea, often left him, and as it rose behind the hills of Moab returned to find him on his knees.

In almost all our Lord’s other parables, the truth which they are intended to teach is stated at their close. We travel through the story before we arrive at the moral. Here that meets us at the entrance, standing like an inscription over the door of a public building. to tell its use and purpose, in these words: ‘‘ He spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint.” As Matthew Henry says, ‘‘ This parable has its key hanging at the door.” Let us, however, take up the story first, and afterwards the persons it introduces in the order in which they appear.

THE UNJUST JUDGE.

Others besides judges may be unjust — the trustee who takes advantage of his position to defraud the widow or fatherless whom a dying friend has cast on ‘his care; the merchant who, adulterating his goods, deceives his customers, or, removing them, defrauds his creditors; the tradesman who, earning the wages of iniquity, makes bad work pass for good. But these are not to be compared with an unjust judge. Of all men, he is the worst; unless, perhaps, the minister of religion, be he Bishop or Presbyter, who takes advantage of his position to disseminate error, or corrupt the morals of society. ‘To such cases how appropriate the question — If the light that is in you be darkness, how great is that darkness! If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?

To pollute the fountains of justice is, indeed, one of the greatest evils which can be inflicted on society. It is like poisoning the public wells, or the air we breathe, or the bread we eat. Its inevitable result is anarchy. Denied justice by those who should dispense it, despairing of protection to life, liberty, and property, men will, as our forefathers did, take the law in their own hands — become, as the Apostle says, a law unto themselves; and, executing vengeance on the workers of iniquity, commit deeds which it is easier for us to condemn than it was for them to refrain from, — and which no man will harshly condemn who remembers these words of Scripture, “‘ Surely oppression maketh a wise man mad.”’ This unjust judge recalls days when in England one of her greatest sons, the father of modern philosophy, and we trust, notwithstanding his error, a true Christian, Lord Bacon, was ignominiously dismissed from the bench for accepting a bribe; and when, in Scotland, scaffolds reeked with the best blood of the land, shed by iniquity on the seat of judgment. We ought not, and we cannot, recall those times without blessing God that, though not without the frailties that belong to humanity, our judges are just and our exactors righteous. It is certain that hundreds and thousands now living who have done no wrong would have been hanged in olden times; and, when expressing our loyalty to the heir of a throne that, amid the convulsions which shake other nations, stands secure in the affections of our own, let us cherish the memory of the mighty dead; and the gratitude we owe to the patriots who shed their blood to purify the fountains of public justice, and purchase the liberties of the people

—-making our country the envy of the world. By them the Lord hath done great things for us whereof we are ‘glad, and wherefore we should be grateful. This parable turns on a state of public affairs of which we happily are ignorant; but it came home to the understanding of those whom our Lord addressed. The most common characteristic of Hastern nations was, and is still, the difficulty of clients obtaining justice. How astonished we should be if any judge, on retiring from the bench into private life, were to protest that he had never sold justice; never by accepting a bribe, stained the ermine of his robe! Yet a better man than they, or we, did so. In taking his leave of a people, some of whom, judging that noble old man by themselves, were mean enough to suspect him of mercenary ends, Samuel, indignant at the foul suspicion, said — ‘‘I am old and grayheaded; behold, here I am; witness against me before the Lord and before his anointed. Whose ox have I taken? or whose ass have I taken? or whom have I defrauded? whom have I oppressed, or of whose hand have I received any bribe to blind mine eyes therewith, and I will restore it?’ It is a sorrowful thing to think that such a man should have had to stoop to this defence; but if calumny had breathed even on Samuel, dimming for a brief moment the lustre of his character, it shows how many unjust judges there were in old times, and how our Lord, in the picture of this one, was painting a very common pcrtrait — as was his wont, drawing his illustrations of divine truth from familiar objects,. oie

Now, in studying this picture of the Judge, let us look at

HIS CHARACTER.

A bold, bad man; he says — ‘“‘I fear not God, nor regard man.’? What unblushing effrontery! yet in their autobiographies men are seldom so honest. His conduct corresponds to his character. Had he feared God, this widew had not waited so long on justice. ‘Ye shall not,’’ said the Lord, “‘respect persons, in judgment; but ye shall hear the small as well as the great. Ye shall not be afraid of the face of man, for the judgment is God’s.”’

A bold, bad man; he had no regard for the good opinion even of his fellow-men. Not that that morally qualifies a man for an office which he only is fit to fill who believes in the judgment of the oath which he administers, and that he who tries others, stripped of his state and placed at God’s bar, shall himself one day be tried. An immoral life debauches the mind as well as the body — blunting the fine edge of conscience.

Nor, unless they are men of principle and of character, has a country any security that her judges will be just or her exactors righteous? Animated by the fear of God, a man will do right though all the world think him wrong; Pilate would have faced round on the Jewish crowd, and placing himself between Jesus and his enemies, seized a lull in the storm, to say, in answer to their cries of ‘‘ Crucify, crucify him,’’ — He shall not be crucified; otherwise than over my dead body you shall not reach this innocent victim. The — world, no doubt, has substitutes for the fear of God; and though in their nature inferior motives, a sense of honor, regard to the good opinion of mankind, the love of praise, and the fear of censure, are not without value. But even to these this judge was insensible,, caring neither for God nor for man, so he gained his - own selfish ends — got his appetites gratified, and enjoyed a life of ease and pleasure.

Let me remark that, in this hateful picture of selfishness incarnate, we see human nature, if I may say so, full blown; and in him, what all of us should be, were God to withhold the influences of his Spirit, or withdraw the restraints of his Providence. In yonder starved and beaten, caged and cowed animal of velvet step and painted skin, that but now and then shows its teeth to utter an angry growl, you do not see the tiger. Unchain him, uncage him; and there now is the bloody tyrant of the jungle, as with roar of thunder and eyes of fire, he leaps from his den, and with a blow of his paw felling one of the flying crowd, fastens on his throat to suck the flowing blood. And never is the sin inherent in our nature fully seen but in cases such as this, where, somehow or other, it grows up to its full development — fearless of God and re-| gardless of man. Hence the necessity of being borne again; and that we all should offer, and God to all of us should answer, the prayer of David, ‘‘ Create in me a clean heart.”

Not long years ago you might have seen a pile of

wood on the banks of the Ganges, surrounded by a mighty throng. The crowd opens, and up through the vista a lifeless body is carried to be laid on the summit of that funeral pile. Again the crowd opens, and, like a wave in the wake of a ship, it closes behind a woman, the dead man’s widow, who comes to share his fiery bed. Attired for the sacrifice, on taking farewell of children and friends, she lies down by the corpse. As she embraces it in her arms the signal is given, and the pile is lighted; and, though in some instances, mad with agony and all on fire, the victim would leap for life through the flames and smoke, commonly, while her piercing shrieks were drowned in shouts, the poor widow submitted with patience to her fate. She submitted to it very much to escape a worse one. ‘These funeral piles throw a lurid glare on the wretched state of widows in that heathen land; and, though not doomed in all other lands to so hard a fate, oppression and cruelty was the common lot of a class than which there is none that owes more to the humanizing influences of Christianity. I suppose there are few of us but, among competing claimants on our pity, time, money, help, would, whether she were a queen or beggar, give the preference to one in a widow’s garb. Here we see the benign influence of the Gospel, and God fulfilling his words — “Let thy widows trust in me.’ How cruelly. their circumstances were takeny advantage of is plain from the manner in which God, ’ constituting himself the husband of the widow, and espousing her cause, threatens to avenge her wrongs. Nor is this less evident, from the strong terms which our Lord employs to denounce those who, worst of hypocrites, made a stalking-horse of religion to get access to the widow’s house, for the purpose of devouring her substance.

It is one of this class who demands justice from the unjust judge. None had less chance of getting it. Plundered probably of her little all, she has no money. to buy it. Without powerful friends to back her, she has no means of compelling it. And to expect that this selfish, voluptuous, cold, iron-hearted man will espouse her cause, and put himself to trouble to see her righted, like a magnanimous judge — draw the sword of Justice in her defence against the rich and the great, perhaps his own friends, alas! that were to run her horses on a rock, and plow there with oxen. Well may she renew her grief over a husband’s grave; and as like a mother bird when the hawk is abroad, she gathers her little ones to her side, well may she clasp her hands to cry, God help me! there is none else to help. And yet from ene who had no regard either to right or wrong, to whose eyes her distress brought no tears, and in whose heart her sorrows touched no chord of pity, she obtains justice — bringing fire out of a cold flint, gushing water from a hard, dry rock. — Consider

THE MEANS OF HER SUCCESS.

She owed it to importunity. Nature herself prompts to this — the babe cries till it gets a mother’s breast. The power of importunity is one of the first lessons a child learns, and proceeds to practise. The boy keeps hanging on his father, harping on the same string, giving him no rest or peace, now pleading with winning smiles and now with tears, returning after every defeat to renew the attack, till, worn out, he yields assent; and thus by importunity, in a sense, the weak things of the world confound the mighty, and foolish things the wise. It is not long since it won daily triumphs in these streets, where the ragged boy, on naked feet, with piteous whine, and outstretched, emaciated hands, ran down the game. His story seemed to fall on a deaf ear; he knew better. Getting no answer but a rough refusal, he seemed to be wasting breath and time; he knew better. Following the object of his attentions like a shadow, sticking to him like a leech, robbing the day of its brightness, and the saunter of its pleasures, the urchin not only overcame the philanthropist’s sense of the evils of indiscriminate charity, but opened even the niggard’s hand. To get rid of a pest so intolerable, how often was he bought off with money?

This art is carried to its highest perfection in the Kast. A traveller in Persia tells how he was besieged by one who solicited a gift more costly than he was prepared to give. The hoary, and as the people esteemed him, holy mendicant set himself down before his gate, throwing up a rude tent to shelter himself from the noonday sun. ‘There he remained like a sentinel; nor left his post but to follow the traveller out of doors, and return with him. ‘Taking snatches of sleep during the day when the other rested in-the house, he kept up a hideous howling and clamorous demands all the hours of night, — an annoyance which,

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Such were the means by which the widow gained hers. So soon as ever this unjust judge took his seat at the gate of the city, where in the Hast courts are held and all causes heard, his eye as it roamed over the crowd fell on her. There she was, and always was — sorrow in her dress, but determination in the flash of her eye; her form bent down with grief, but her spirit unbroken; resolved to give that judge-no rest till he had avenged her on her adversary. Now breaking in on the business of the court, she is on her feet passionately demanding justice; and now stretched on the ground at his, she piteously implores it. Nor can he shake her off. Denied her suit, she follows him to his house to interrupt his leisure and embitter his pleasures. Her voice ringing loud on the threshold demanding entry, she bursts into his presence; and is dragged away by the servants, thrust out, but only to return, as the ball struck rebounds — the billow shattered on the rock falls back into the deep to gather volume and strength for a new attack. And as by constant dashing the waves in time cut into the cliff, which, yielding to the incessant action of a weaker element, some day bows its proud head, and, precipitating itself forwards, falls into the sea, which swallowing it up, sweeps over it with jubilant, triumphant waves, so the persistence. of the widow overcomes the resistance of the judge. Diamond cuts diamond. She conquers by importunity: yielding to her request, he says, ‘‘ Because this widow troubleth me, I will pee her, lest by her constant coming she weary me.’

THE CONCLUSION,

Which our Lord draws, as expressed in the question, ‘“‘ Hear what the unjust judge saith; and shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them?”’

There are points of resemblance between God’s people and this widow. In Satan, have not we also an adversary to be avenged on?’ Are not we also poor and needy? She had known happy days; and so also had man. By death she had lost her husband; and by sin we have lost our God. Poor and friendless, she had no means of avenging, of righting herself; no

more have we — we were without help when Christ died for the ungodly. “The sons of Zoruiah,” cried David, ‘are too many for me;’’ and so are sin and its corruptions, the world and its temptations, the devil and his wiles, for us.

There are likewise some points of resemblance between God and this unjust judge. Long had he stood by and, without one effort on her behalf, seen this poor woman spurned and oppressed; and long also God seemed to stand by when his people were ground to the dust in Egypt; in old Pagan and in more modern Popish times, when their cruel enemies shed the blood of his saints like water, and, immured in dungeons, bleeding on scaffolds, hiding in the caves of our mountains, his elect cried to him day and night, and the Church, helpless as a widow, implored him, saying,

Avenge me of mine adversary! And this is true also of his dealings with individual believers. How long in their corruptions are the messengers of Satan left to buffet them? Weary of the struggle with some besetting sin, and hating it as a slave his cruel tyrant, they ery, *‘ How long, O Lord, how long?”’ How often, all but despairing, are they ready to exclaim with Paul, ‘Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” But there are important points of disparity between this judge and our God: and in these I find assurance of final victory, and the highest encouragements to instant, constant, urgent, prayer. A bad man, with a heart cold as ice and hard as iron, was he moved by importunity to redress the wrongs of one for whom he felt no regard, whose happiness or misery was nothing to him ? — how much more will God be importuned to grant our prayers! Just, and more than just, he is merciful and gracious, long-suffering and slow to wrath, abundant in goodness and in truth. He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked — he is willing that all should come to him and live — he waits to be gracious. Let his people trust in him, and wait on him. He may hide his face from them; it is but for a little. The dead, the widow’s husband, never loved like the living God. Her wrongs did not disturb him in his grave; but ours move Jehovah in the heavens. Above the anthems of the celestial choir, he hears our feeblest cry; and amid the glories of the upper sanctuary, Christ’s eye turns less on the glittering crowns his redeemed ones cast at his feet than on his people here — fighting in this field of battle, weeping in this vale of tears. Therefore let us pray on, nor cease praying till we cease living. He may address us as he did his mother,

saying, Woman, my hour is not yet come; but come it shall. Rest assured that no prayer is lost; and let this help them that wait on the Lord to renew their strength, and in the hour of devotion to mount up with wings as eagles! If he spared not his own Son, shall he not with him also freely give us all things — and fulfill, at his own time and in his own way, these his own gracious words, ‘‘ For the oppression of the poor and for the sighing of the needy, now will I arise, saith the Lord 2?”

When night fell on Jerusalem, and the tide and hum of business had ceased, and one after another the lights were extinguished, and all fires quenched in the sleeping city, one was kept alive — the fire that burned on God’s holy altar. ‘It shall not be put out,”’ said the Lord, ‘the fire shall ever be burning on the altar, it shall never go out.”” Fed by such logs as blazed on the hearths and roared in the chimneys of olden times, yet this had not been kindled by man’s hands or blown into flame by his breath. Like God’s love on a lost world, or his wrath on the head of his dying Son, it had descended from the skies. ‘‘ There came,”’ it is said, when Aaron and his sons were offering their first sacrifice, ‘‘ fire out from before the Lord, and consumed the burnt-offering and the fat, which when the people saw, they shouted and fell on their face.”” Whether slumbering in its ashes or flaming with the fat of sacrifices, this fire burned by night and day on the altar; nor was it till after the lapse of nearly a thousand years that it went out — quenched, hissing in the blood of priests who fell in defence of the temple at the first captivity. Now in that old altar on which the sacred fire was always burning, but where sacrifices were not always offering, we see the heart of a devout believer. He is not always praying; but within his bosom there is a heaven-kindled love, fires of desire, fervent longings, which make him always ready to pray and often engage him in prayer. And thus he who engages in devout meditations and holds communion with God through his word and also through his works, may, in respect of his habitual, prevailing frame of mind, as well as of his frequent prayers, be said to “pray without ceasing,’ ‘always to pray;” he is like an Adolian harp, on whose strings, by night or day, the wind has but to breathe to wake up sweet and plaintive music.

In considering more particularly the lessons regarding prayer which our Lord told this parable to teach, T remark that

IT DOES NOT TEACH US TO PRAY.

There is no need it should; or that the Bible should — any more than it should prove, what it always assumes, the being of a God. Such a monster as an atheist, who denies that, it does not suppose to exist; nor any one, man or woman, who does not acknowledge, whether they practise it or not, the duty and necessity of prayer. Nor this without reason. Like the belief in a God, the moral sense of right and wrong, the hope of immortality, the expectation of a judgment, prayer seems as much an instinct of the soul as breathing,

eating, drinking are instinctive actions of the body which we need neither to be told, nor to learn, to do. No doubt, men who would be “wise above what is written,’’” — prying into the secret things of God, and, like one who attempts to close his fingers on this big globe, attempting to grasp the infinite with finite minds, — have started objections to prayer. They ask, does God need to be told what we need? is man vain enough to suppose that his prayers can change the divine purposes? that creatures so feeble and insignificant as we can move the hand that moves the universe? or that our will can be of the smallest consequence to him who does everything according to the counsel and purpose of his own? It is not needful to answer such objections. Ihave read how a great poet, who was a sceptic, when he and Byron in a storm at sea expected every moment to be their last, dropt on his knees on the watery deck, and, beating his breast, cried passionately to God — the tempest blowing away, like cobwebs, his flimsy objections to prayer. In such hours Nature, rising in her might and majesty, asserts her supremacy; and the instinct of prayer bears a man over all these difficulties as on the crest of a mountain wave. With these, simple Christians give themselves no trouble; they are like an infant who knows nothing of the philcosophy of sucking, nor waits to know it, but, so soon as put to a mother’s breast, fastens on it. And it ‘seems as natural for man to pray as for babes to suck — in his distress and danger to cry to God, as on falling into the water to make instinctive efforts to reach the rock for footing, or rise to the surface for breath.

Prayer belongs to a man as much as speech: for, as there was never a nation found, the rudest, most savage, in their habits and homes the nearest to the brutes, which did not speak; there never was a nation found, the rudest, most savage, in their homes and habits the least raised above the brutes, which did not pray.

IT TEACHES US HOW TO PRAY.

This subject, dividing itself like a tree into many branches, embraces the spring of prayer, which les in our sense of need — the spirit of prayer, which consists in devout sincerity, — the object of prayer, which is our Father in heaven — the channel of prayer, which is his Son Jesus Christ, the mediator of the new Covenant. Important as these subjects are, this parable directs our attention to a matter belonging to prayer, not less important. The point here, is the fervor and frequency, the constancy and perseverance, or what has been called, in one word, the «mportunity of prayer. ‘‘ He spake a parable unto them,” says the Evangelist, “to this end, that men ought always to pray and not to faint ’ — to pray on, nor give up praying till they get the thing prayed for. This implies at least on our part,

STATED DAILY PRAYER.

It is in the morning and evening that Nature, who gives her nights to sleep and her days to work, pays, if I may so say, her worship to God, At dewy morn and eve, from their golden and silver censers, the flowers offer the incense of their fragrance, and skies and woods which were mute during the heat of the day and darkness of the night, break out into a melodious burst of song. The bird that, leaving God to care for it, sleeps with its head beneath its wing in the darkness, and spends the busy day gathering its food or catering for its young, drops at even from the skies, singing, into its grassy nest; and mounts thence at rosy dawn to praise God by the gate of heaven ere it begins the labors of the day. And so, in a way, does every man and woman who has the least pretension to a Christian’s character — morning and evening find them on their knees before God. What day closes without many mercies to be grateful for, and many sins to be confessed and pardoned? and what day is entered on that has not burdens to be borne, and battles to be fought, ‘to which it behoves us to go forth guided by the counsel, guarded by the power, strengthened by the grace, and defended, like a mail-clad warrior, from head to heel, by the whole armor of God? To omit prayer, is to go to battle having left our weapons behind us, in the tent; is to go to our daily labor without the strength imparted by a morning meal; is to attempt the bar where breakers roar and rocks hide their rugged heads without taking our pilot on board. If from a sense of weakness Moses, on Sinai’s thundering, flashing, quaking, mount, exclaimed, “If thy presence go not with me, let us not go up,’’ well may we say of the world, with its daily trials and temptations, works and warfare, Unless thy presence go with us, let us not go town. ‘Therefore ought men, unless in very rare circumstances, always, morning and evening, to pray.

Thus, like soldiers on the morning of the conflict, we grind our swords for battle with the world, the devil, and the flesh; and thus, when the day’s combat is over, retiring to pray, we apply a healing ointment, the balm of Gilead, to the wounds of conscience; and thus, as a begrimed workman on coming home repairs at even-tide to bathe in flowing river or swelling sea, we resort to prayer to wash away sin’s daily, omlty stains in the fountain of Jesus’ blood.

Judge Hale, one of the greatest ornaments of the English church and the English bench, in expressing the value he set on the Sabbath as a day, not of. business or worldly recreation, but of holy rest, said that he found the work of the week go well according as the Sabbath had been kept well. For as I have seen one stroke of an eagle’s wings send her, without further effort, sailing a long way on through the fields of.air, the impulse which a well-spent sabbath gave him was sensibly felt throughout all the,running week. As much may be said for daily prayers — the morning, elsewhere than in the skies, settling, for good or evil, for conquest or defeat, for progress or backsliding, the character of the coming day. Therefore ought men always to pray, morning and evening, day by day.

Are our bodies so constituted that the food of one day suffices for the wants of the next? Do even occasional banauets dispense with the necessity of daily bread? Are the arrangements of nature such that one bright day each week is enough — suflicient to melt the snows of winter, to turn the naked forests into a sea of foliage, or cover our fields in autumn with sheaves of golden corn? No; the body needs daily bread; fields for the ripening of their fruits, and gardens for the beauty of their flowers, need daily sunlight, if not sunshine. And the soul cannot thrive, nor its graces grow and ripen, without daily prayer to God and frequent communion with the skies. I say, therefore, we ought always to pray morning and evening at the least; so much oftener, so much the better — and the result, if it is devout, earnest, believing prayer, will be to maintain our spiritual life under what appears the most unfavorable circumstances. On the rocks by the sea-shore I have seen marine creatures living when the tide was out; not in the briny pools it leaves, but on the dry and naked rock — in the withering air — in the burning, broiling sun. They lived because, when twice each day the foaming tide came in, and rising, covered the rocky shelves they clung to, they opened their shut and shelly mouths to drink in water enough to last them when the tide went out, and till the next tide came in. Even so, twice a day also at the least, are we to replenish our thirsty souls, — fill our emptiness from the ocean of grace and mercy that flows, free and full in Christ, to the least of saints and chief of sinners. In Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.

IT TEACHES PERSEVERING PRAYER.

What would be thought of a man who was ashamed to own his country, nor would take up even speech in her defence among strangers, in a foreign land? It is when broad seas part us from our native shores that the love of country burns strongest. Her songs sound sweetest in the exile’s ear. Those faults of hers we lay bare at home, we conceal abroad; and, like dutiful sons, try to cast a mantle on her shame — hiding it from the eyes of aliens. We are not ashamed of our country; yet, alas! how many seem ashamed of their religion and their God? Some could hardly blush more to be caught stealing than they would do to be caught praying — starting from their knees like men engaged in some guilty thing. And how many young men and women, abandoning the praying habits of their early life and a pious home, have been lost through this false and coward shame? Insult their country, they will resent the offence — the poorest Highlander standing up for the honor of clan and chief, nor consenting, without a bleeding heart, to be torn from the barren and stormy rocks to which his affections cling. Would God our piety were as fervent and brave as our patriotism! But, thrown into the company of strangers, perhaps of the ungodly, shrinking lest these should wonder at them or make them butts for ridicule, some steal to bed and leave it without bending the knees in prayer. ‘This is to repeat the crime of Peter, and say, amid scenes where Christ is insulted by his enemies and should be boldly honored by his friends, I know not the man.

If it is right for men, as an old heathen says, to learn from an enemy, it is right for Christians to learn from such as are ignorant of their faith, or hostile to it. And how might it bring a blush to a coward’s cheek to see the poor Mahometan — in company as in solitude, on the mart of commerce or on the muddy street, on

the slippery deck or on the sandy desert, wherever he is and before whomsoever he is, beggar or king, pagan or Christian — drop on his knees at sundown to offer his devotions, ready rather to die than miss them; like a wise man, counting them, not his shame, but glory. If, boasting of their villanies, of their feats of dissipation and debauchery, of their triumphs over simple innocence, unsuspecting virtue, the flowers they have vilely plucked to cast on the streets when their bloom was gone, bad men glory in their shame, shall Christians be ashamed of their glory? God forbid! Show the world your colors — fling out the blood-dyed, time-honored banner, saying —

“Tm not ashamed to own my Lord,
Or to defend his cause,
Maintain the glory of his cross,
And honor all his laws.”

As to the point especially in hand — persevering prayer — the very heathens seem, more than many professing Christians, to appreciate its power and value. A traveller, for instance, who was lately exploring some of the loftiest valleys of the Himalayas, found a tribe close by the regions of eternal snow, whose religion had a feature that struck him with great surprise. Indeed, he sneers at it; though no man’s faith should be turned to ridicule, or even lightly assailed, unless care is taken to substitute something better im its place. It may be a false hope; yet it is his all. It may be a dream; yet it is.a happy one — soothing the sorrows of life, and scattering some beautiful, though fading flowers along the margin of its rugged path. Then what is the crime of those who in these days recklessly cast doubts on the Christian faith, and start difficulties in the minds of simple, unlearned ones, which I can answer, but they cannot? How cruel to disturb their peace who were quietly, and usefully, and hopefully, and happily, holding on their course to heaven? It is no light thing to shake a man’s confidence in what he believes to be the Word of God — in a book which he clasps to his bosom as life’s greatest treasure, and will lay below his head as death’s softest pillow. It requires no great ability to do this wrong. The puniest buzzing insect may annoy us by its tiny sting; and many a man’s peace may be disturbed by objections by which, thank God, it cannot be destroyed.

What excited both the surprise and sneers of the traveller in the religion of these Indian mountains, was the practice the people followed of praying by machinery. Certain prayers were placed on revolving cylinders; and as the wheel went round, and the prayer came up, each time its face turned to heaven, God was supposed to read it. It was as good as spoken by living lips. While engaged in his work, or passing the cylinder at intervals, the worshiper from time to time gave it a turn so as to keep it almost constantly spinning on its axis. Others more devout and still more ingenious, improving on that, set the cylinder in the run of a stream, that, as it turned like a mill-wheel, prayer might be ‘offered day and night continually. Well, though it may be a bold thing to say, I would rather, in that rude way, “‘pray without ceasing,” than like some, never pray at all — in other words, I would rather live and die a devout pagan than an undevout Christian. No doubt the mind of the Indian who trusts to such prayers may be dark as his tawny skin; and,¢ not proceeding from the heart, they may leave it cold as the snows, and hard as the rocks among which, remote from the Christian world, he holds his mountain fastness. But, not to say that the prayers of our lips may be as formal and lifeless as those of the Buddhist’s wheel, rude as is the method of his worship, and dark as may be the mind of the worshiper, there is a glimmering here of these truths — ‘‘instant in prayer,” “pray without Spee mal men ought always to pray, and not to faint.””

It is hard, fainting work, praying. It is aveiae work to pray than preach; since for one who could pray well, I will get you a hundred who could preach well a whole hour. How much easier for the sailor to watch the night through on the rolling deck, the sentinel on the beleaguered wall, than, with John Welsh in Ayr’s old church, alone, in the darkness, with the town sleeping in their houses, and the dead around sleeping in their graves, to pass a whole night on our knees?

We ask, and receive not. Why? Because, says the Apostle, we ask amiss. We do not believe what we profess; nor feel what we say; nor wish what we ask — or, if we do, we do not take the right way of getting it. And how can we expect God to answer prayer when he sees, what we ourselves might see, that we are not earnest? If we were, we would be urgent — praying in the house, by the way, on our beds, at our business — prayer, sounding or silent, a constant flowing stream. By constant dropping, the water wears a hole in the hardest stone. By constant growing, the treeroot rends the hardest rocks asunder. And who, as he sat on a jutting crag amid the spray of the roaring, flashing cataract, has not marked how by her constant flow the river has polished its rugged sides, and worn out smooth runnels for its streams? With such a feeble power, through the force of continued action, how great the results? That rock, indeed, is no more a symbol of the kind heart of God than this unjust judge is, in character, a type of Him who is, I repeat it, not unjust, but just; nor merely just, but merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and slow to wrath, abundant in goodness and in truth. Yet, as it is only perseverance in grace that can carry us up to heaven, it is only perseverance in prayer that can bring its blessings down. Such is the plan of redemption, the ordinance of God — The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.”’

s j Ad yi Rey

o/s
Sah

rie LANA

‘hia

uae Ie ale’ Giuiey: