[This is plainly declared in the passage before us, and therefore it may certainly be expected. But here it will be proper to mark the different limitations with which the subject must be understood. If these be not carefully noted, I grant that much error may prevail in relation to it ; but if these be kept in view, we may take to ourselves all the comfort which this subject is calculated to convey.
First, then, the text itself limits our petitions, and supposes them to be in accordance with the will of God : " If we ask any thing according to his will" It were absurd to imagine that we could, by any request of ours, pi-evail on the Deity to do any thing which was contrary to his will. This limit, there- fore, must be admitted of course. Besides, our prayers must be offered in the name of Jesus Christ. He is our Mediator ; nor is there any access to God for us, except through him. Hence he himself, in order to the acceptance of our prayers, requires that they be offered in his named. They must also be offered up in faith. A man that doubts and " wavers in his petitions must not expect to receive any thing from the Lorde." Our Lord therefore declares this to be essential ; " Whatsoever ye ask in prayer, believing, ye shall received" And peculiarly strong is his declaration in another place, where he says, " What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have themg." Our prayers, too, must be presented with a pure and holy end; not for the gratification of any unhallowed feeling of our own, but with a view to the honour of our Godh.
Moreover as proper limits must be assigned to our prayers, so a proper latitude must be conceded to God for his answers to them. He is not bound in relation to the time when he shall answer them, or the manner in which he shall answer them. He may suffer us to wait long before he answers us ; that so we may feel the deeper need of his mercy, and be better pre- pared to receive it, and be led more devoutly to praise him when he has answered. In answering us, too, it must be left to him to grant what, in his infinite wisdom, he may judge most conducive to our welfare. " He heard his dear Son always ;" yet he did not take the bitter cup out of his hands ; but enabled him to drink it1, and for his sake took it out of the hands of a dying world. He did not extract the thorn from the flesh of his servant Paul ; but he made use of it, to prevent the risings of pride, which would have been an infinitely sorer plague ; and enabled him to rejoice and glory in it, as the means of honouring more abundantly his Lord and Saviour
d John xiv. 13, 14. and xvi. 23, 26. e Jam. i. 5 — 7.
f Matt. xxi. 22. s Mark xi. 24. h Jam. iv. 3.
i Matt. xxvi. 39.