Scripture: "But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost,"--Jude 20
"Our Saviour, though He had all wisdom, yet gives but a small number of moral teachings to mankind. It is because He knew that our whole malady lies in this, that the will of our mind, the lust of our life, is turned into this world; and that nothing can set us right but the turning the will of our mind, and the desire of our hearts to God and that heaven which we had lost. And hence it is that He calls us to nothing but a total denial of ourselves and the life of this world, and to a faith in Him as the worker of a new birth and a new life in us. He teaches us every reason for renouncing ourselves and loving the whole nature of our redemption as the greatest joy and desire of our heart.
"We see thus that our will and our heart is all; that nothing either finds or loses God; and that all our religion is only the religion of the heart. We see with open eyes that as a spirit of longing after the life of this world made Adam and us to be the poor pilgrims on earth that we are, so the Spirit of prayer, or the longing desire of the heart after Christ and God and heaven, breaks all our bonds asunder and raises us out of the miseries of time into the riches of eternity. Thus seeing and knowing our first and our present state, everything calls us to prayer; and the desire of our heart becomes the spirit of prayer. When the spirit of prayer is born in us, then prayer is no longer considered as only the business of this or that hour, but is the continual breathing of the heart after God. The spirit of prayer, --a state of the heart becomes the governing principle of the soul's life.
"An honest man may prove his honesty by acts. At other times there is no special call to show his honesty. But it is all the same the inward living principle of his heart. Just so the Spirit of prayer may possess the heart without interruption, and yet at other times may have its hours of prayer. But its own life and spirit is vastly superior to, independent of, and stays for no particular hours or forms of work.
It would be worth while making a study of the place that, according to Law, the word "continual" ought to have in our life. First there is the continual streaming forth of the infinite love of God toward, men. Then the continual unalterable dependence upon God every hour of our life. Then the continual receiving of goodness and happiness from God alone. Then comes the continual mortification of our evil nature; then again the con¬tinual and immediate inspiration of the Holy Spirit maintaining the life of Christ in us. Then the continual breathing of the heart after God in prayer. And then the continual loving of Him with our whole heart.
