hearts. Do wc ourselves never check our friends from giving us good advice, by our moroseness and irritability of temper .? Have wc never obliged others to hold their l^eace and say nothing, by our pride and impatient con- tempt of counsel ? Have we never turned against our kind advisers, and silenced them by our violence and passion ? Alas ! we may well fear that we have erred in this matter.
The last lesson contained in this passage is the duty of prayer, and the rich encouragements there are to pray.
There is a beautiful connection between this lesson and that which goes before it. Would we know when to be " silent," and when to " speak," — when to bring forward " holy " things, and produce our " pearls ?" We must pray. This is a subject to which the Lord Jesus evidently attaches great importance. The language that He uses is a plain proof of this. He employs three different words to express the idea of praj^er. " Ask." " Seek." " Knock." He holds out the broadest, fullest promise to those who pray. "Every one that asketh receiveth." He illustrates God's readiness to hear our prayers, by an argument drawn from the notorious practice of parents on earth. '^ Evil" and selfish as they are by nature, they do not neglect the wants of their children according to the flesh. Much more will a God of love and mercy attend to the cries of those who are His children by grace.
Let us take special notice of these words of our Lord about prayer. Few of His sayings, perhaps, are so well known and so often repeated as this. The poorest and most unlearned can tell you, that "if we do not seek we