THE PRIVILEGE OF PRAYER.



PRAYER is not a consultation with the highest wisdom, which this world can supply. It is not intercourse with an angel. 

But it is an approach to the living God. It is access to the High and Holy One who inhabiteth eternity. It is detailing in the ear of divine sympathy every sorrow. 

It is consulting with divine wisdom on every difficulty. It is asking from divine resources the supply of every want. And this is not once in a lifetime, or for a few moments on a stated day of each year, but at any moment, at every time of need. 

Whatever be the day of your distress, it is a day when prayer is allowable. Whatever be the time of your calamity, it is a time when prayer is available. However early in the morning you seek the gate of access, you find it already open; and however deep the midnight moment, winged prayer can bring an instant Saviour near. And this, wherever you are. It needs not that you should ascend some special Pisgah or Moriah. It needs not that you should enter some awful shrine, or put off your shoes on some holy ground. Could a memento be reared on every spot from which an accepted prayer has risen, and on which a prompt answer has come down, we should find Jehovah-shammah,—"the Lord hath been here," inscribed on many a cottage hearth and many a dungeon floor. We should find it not only in Jerusalem's proud temple and David's cedar galleries, but in the fisherman's cottage by the brink of Gennesaret, and in the upper chamber where Pentecost began. 




Hamilton.