Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. THE ORATORY GATE. " It is certain," says Robert Leighton, " that the greater part of men, as they babble out vain, languid, and inefficacious prayers, most unworthy of the ear of the blessed God, so they seem, in some degree, to set a just estimate upon them, neither hoping for any success from them, nor indeed seeming to be at all solicitous about it, but committing them to the wind as vain words, which in truth they are." It is indeed a serious thing when prayer is thus abused ; but the abuse is committed in the face of very plain lessons in the word of God. No reader of that word need ignorantly degrade this most solemn and sublime act of a human soul. Such a lesson is this Psalm. It is a prayer itself; and while the subject-matter of the prayer is of great interest, the Psalm is peculiar in setting forth the characteristics of prayer in general. In this aspect let us study it. We have, in the first place, in the first and second verses, a suggestion of the variety of prayer—" Give ear to my word : "formal prayer. " Consider my meditation:" unexpressed prayer. " Hearken unto my cry: " ejaculatory prayer. Prayer is a provision for a universal need, and must therefore be capable of a large variety of adaptations.It is for the dumb no less than for him who speaks ; foi sudden emergencies no less than for stated occasions; for the closet, but also for the crowd. If a man is to pray without ceasing, he must pray under an endless variety of circumstances. Thus we have here suggested a season when prayer can be deliberately uttered. When one's desires can frame themselves into words; when he can follow the periods of carefully worded liturgies, or pour out a free heart in spontaneous speech. Then we have that which is equally prayer, denoted by the word meditation ... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.