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OUR RELATION TO THE DEITY.

[Part I.

controverted sentiments as possible. Scriptural ideas, scripturalsentiments, subjects, and even expressions, or such as are close-ly analogous to them, should be principally, if not exclusivelyused. The style of prayer and thanksgiving should be calm,solemn, dignified, earnest, and pathetic. Every thing light, andespecially all quaintness, affectation, smartness, and prettiness ofexpression, are inconsistent with every part of divine worship,and most of all with prayer and thanksgiving.*

Among the subjects of prayer, we are encouraged in Scrip-ture to pray for national blessings, to intercede for others, to re-peat unsuccessful prayer, &ic. ; — but we are most particularlyencouraged and enjoined to pray for the Holy Spirit, to the in-fluences of whom “ all holy desires, all good counsels, and all justworks ” are ascribed.f The fruit of the Spirit, for which weare taught to pray, is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness,goodness, faith, meekness, temperance, in all righteousness andtruth.j

It would be absurd to deny the operations of the Holy Spiritbecause we are not sensible of them, and do not know how Godinfluences the soul.§ We ought rather to reason thus; weknow that we have been holden up by God ever since we wereborn ; yet we have not an intimate consciousness and feeling ofthat influence by which he sustains us, or any knowledge how heupholds our existence ; — in the same manner, we prove fromScripture, that he conveys his grace to us, but are strangers tothe manner in which he dispenses it. We are as much depend-ent on the assistance of God for our spiritual life, as we are forour natural life ; and the manner in which this assistance is com-municated is as much unknown in the one case as in the other.It is no objection to this doctrine, that the powers of nature andthe influences of grace are so blended within us that we cannoteasily distinguish them. For, no more can we, in all cases, dis-tinguish our foreign acquirements from the fruits of our own ge-nius. We can no more exactly determine, in every particular,

* Paley, Moral and Political Philosophy, pp. 210-214.t Luke xi. 13; John xiv. 26; Acts vi. 3 ; Rom. v. 5.t Gal. v. 22; Eph. v. 9. § John iii. 8.