Morning Star

PRAYER.

I had rather be deprived of all the solaces of this life, yea, and all the ordinances that tend to a better, than be debarred of recourse to my God by prayer. Next to Christ it is man's mediator to reinstate in the favor of an offended Deity. 'Tis the Moses that opens the rock and brings Israel floods in the wilderness. 'Tis the sun that gives Jeremy light in the dungeon. It puts a muzzle on the lion's jaw, that else would tear a Daniel. 'Tis the angel that walking with the children in the furnace, keeps them from so much as singeing in the midst of the fiercest flames. It attacks the sun's swift steeds, and like a sentinel commands them to stand in the speed of their full career. With reverence be it spoken, 'tis a charm cast upon the Almighty, so powerfully that it prevails upon omnipotency, and makes God that we sue unto, to become a suitor unto us. Let me alone (as if He were held), was begged of Moses when Moses importuned Him. Certainly because God saw it so absolutely necessary for His children. He would not leave in the power of man to take it from them. Rome's Empire, in all her ten persecutions, could not take it from Christians. This they could make use of in the dark without a tongue, and in the midst of all their enemies, while their tormentors stood and watched them. Load a man with chains, let him lie upon the rack; leave him but a live heart, and Prayer will dwell there out of the tyrant's reach, and comfort him. And doubtless then it speaks God's heaviest judgment, when men are seared up by a spirit that cannot pray. Who can apprehend anything more miserable than a Judas-shut out from prayer? It deprives the soul of hope, and then is despair let in, with that immortal worm, the terrors of eternal guilt. He gives himself up to perdition, that neglects to give himself to prayer. Man was never so great an independent, but every minute he must need his God: and if he makes himself a stranger, can he expect to be heard as a friend? Other sacrifices of the law have sometimes met with a check; but this from a sincere heart is an offering that is ever pleasing, and importunity doth not give offence. If it prevailed upon the unjust judge, will not the most righteous God be gained upon? And, indeed, what can send us away empty but our own sins? For if it carry us not safely through all the roads of danger, the fault is in ourselves, not it. Like a faithful companion, when friends, health, wealth, honor, and life, are leaving us, this holds us by the hand that leads us to overlook the shades of death. When speech is gone, it lifts up hands and eyes, and instead of language, groans.

Owen Feltham.