A SCHOOLBOY SUPPLICANT.

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a point, that he might kill the bird. As this was not always done, and as sometimes there would occur false points, the boy's heart got bewildered. He began to doubt sometimes the efficacy of prayer, sometimes the lawfulness of field sports. He further recalls a memory of being taken up with nine other boys at school, to be unjustly punished, and praying to escape the shame; and how the master, previously to flogging all the others, said to him, to the great perplexity of the whole school —“Little boy, I excuse you; I have particular reasons for it,” -and in fact he never was flogged during the three years he spent at that school. The incident made a marked impression upon him; but in mature age he expressed a doubt whether it did him any good, for prayer became a charm, and he fancied himself the favourite of the Invisible, and knew that he carried about a talisman unknown to others, which would save him from all harm. It did not make him better, he says, but simply gave him security, as the Jew felt safe in being the descendant of Abraham, or went into battle under the protection of the ark, sinning no less all the time. Prayer was to Simon Magus of the nature of a charm-certain cabalistic words, of the secret of making which efficacious Peter was in possession. Mr. Robertson insists on the great difference between Simon's praying for himself, and asking another to pray for him. The prayer in Ovid of a fradulent tradesman to Mercury, for grace to make a good profit by his tricks of trade, and for a good flow of words wherewith to wheedle his customers, Da modo lucra mihi, et face ut emptori verba dedisse juvet, is but a heathen counterpart of the strain of Holy Willie's Prayer, "wi' mercies temp'ral and divine, that he for gear and grace may shine, excell'd by nane Amen, Amen."

Not the least noticeable among the Incidents in the Life of Edward Wright, is his finding a pipe in the New Cut, and sitting down in his garden to smoke it, and his wife thereupon praying "that God would cause the pipe to turn his stomach, that he might be disgusted with it," whereupon "poor Ned," who had not smoked for a month, did in fact feel qualmish

to a turn.

and queasy inside, and took the sickness as an answer to the prayer. Fungoso's supplication has perhaps almost its parallel in the same "Ned Wright's" prayer for a new topcoat, to replace a beloved one of semi-clerical cut, which was one day torn beyond his wife's capacity of mending. Next day there came by post, we are told, an anonymous letter to this effect: "Dear Ned, if you will take the enclosed note to Messrs. N, they will show you an assortment of overcoats. Please yourself with one, and return thanks to God for it." It seems that Ned suspected this to be a hoax, or a "trick of Satan's ;” whereas his wife, who had joined in the previous day's prayer, if not instigated it, was certain "the hand of God was in the matter;" and Ned found Messrs. N- ready for him after all. These are but parallel passages with the often-repeated story of Huntingdon, S.S., praying earnestly for a pair of leathern breeches, and receiving them next day, per carrier; or with that other worthy who "sought the Lord for a leg of mutton," and was soon supplied with a fine one, ready roasted It has been said, that what makes prayer good or bad, religious or irreligious, is the sort of character with which the worshipper invests God at the moment of his prayers. His estimate of God may be a worthy or an unworthy one; and according to it, his special prayer is good or bad. What makes bad and irreligious such prayers as that of the schoolboy for a good innings at cricket, or of the Italian brigand for success on the road, or of the Cornish wrecker for a good west wind on a lee shore, or of the terribly-in-earnest gamester for red to come up at rouge et noir? Obviously, not the lack of faith and sincerity in those who offer them; for it is allowed that they do realize most vividly the sense of a personal Divinity and the interference of a special Providence. But these prayers are to be condemned, "not because they are not offered in faith, but because they are founded on a gross, carnal, and degraded idea of God. The God who would help a schoolboy at cricket, is in attributes not to be distinguished from a God who would deliver a traveller into the hands of a devout and prayerful Fra Diavolo." It is quite possible, we are not

TRIVIAL PETITIONS.

437

impertinently reminded, to believe in God, and quite possible to believe in prayer, even though we may say that certain prayers are dishonouring to the object of prayer, and mean and contemptible in the worshipper.

The good minister in Ayrshire, who astonished his people by praying in church that his lame horse might get well, so that he might the more efficiently fulfil his pastoral work by the faithful creature's help, had better, a D.D. compatriot submits, have kept that petition for his closet, where only God could hear him; and might more fitly and properly have presented that petition there. To this naïf order of petitioners belongs the homely household of Cousin Phillis, who, grieved at the sufferings of the old dog, remembered him in the family prayers (and he got better next day).* Miss Yonge thinks that dressmaker must have been a happy woman, who never took home her work without praying that it might fit. Another popular writer tells us of a poor relation, who was governess in a nobleman's family, and obliged to carve at the children's dinner; to which duty she felt herself so unequal,—the poor timid little creature, with scarcely strength or nerve enough to sever a lark's wing from its body,—that dinner-time was to her a season of unutterable tribulation; "and she has told me, often, that she always used to say her prayers before she carved." Young Tom Tulliver, oppressed with the difficulties of elementary mathematics and classics under Mr. Stelling's system of tuition, conceived the hope of getting some help by praying for it; only, as the prayers he said every evening were forms learnt by heart, he rather shrank from the novelty and irregularity of introducing an extempore passage on a topic of petition for which he was not aware of any precedent. But one day, we read, when he had broken down, for the fifth time,

*The late Dr. J. Hamilton cited with applausive sympathy the instance of a little girl not three years old, who "put into her prayers real desires," for, one night before lying down, having "prayed for papa, mamma, and her nurse by name, she prayed with the same solemnity for the new kitten: ‘O God, open little pussy's eyes, and make its tail grow.””—The Pearl of Parables, p. 173.

in the supines of the third conjugation, Tom, more miserable than usual, determined to try his sole resource; and that evening, after his usual form of prayer, he added, in the same low whisper," and please to make me always remember my Latin." He paused a little to consider how he should pray about Euclid, and at last framed his petition thus: “And make Mr. Stelling say, I shan't do Euclid any more. Amen."* Readers of James Montgomery's voluminous Life and Letters may remember the incident at Fulneck, of the classes who drank tea with each other, being on one occasion treated to chocolate; and how, when the repast was ended, one of these Moravian children, kneeling down, offered a prayer, or said grace, after this manner: "O Lord, we thank Thee for what we have received. Oh, bless this good chocolate to us, and give us more of it." Little Saint Zita, as made known to us in M. Alphonse Karr's culinary legend, going to church to "have a good pray," rendered special thanks for all the good dinners she had cooked, and prayed as specially that the repast for that evening should be the very best and most succulent of all. When Hilda, in Hawthorne's Roman story, avows her distress at seeing any human being directing his prayers so much amiss as some that daily met her eye, Kenyon intimates that it is when praying at a saint's shrine that utterance is given to earthly wishes if we pray face to face with the Deity, we shall feel it impious, he contends, to petition for aught that is narrow and selfish. He thinks it is this which makes the Roman Catholics so delight in the worship of saints: they can bring up all their little worldly wants and whims, their individualities, and human weaknesses, not as things to be repented of, but to be humoured by the canonized Humanity to which they pray. "Aveugles et insensés que nous sommes !" exclaims Joseph de

*Southey, in The Doctor, tells us that one of the most distinguished men of the age, who has left a reputation which will be as lasting as it is great, was, when a boy, in constant fear of a very able but unmerciful schoolmaster; and that in the state of mind which that constant fear produced, he fixed upon a great spider for his fetish, and used every day to pray to it that he might not be flogged.

'AS THE MANNER OF SOME IS?

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Maistre; "au lieu de nous plaindre de n'être pas exaucés, tremblons plutôt d'avoir mal demandé, ou d'avoir demandé le mal." The more you examine the thing, he says in another place, the more convinced you will be, that there is nothing so difficult in the wide world as to utter a genuine prayer.

Addison devotes a whole number of the Spectator to a version of Lucian's fable about the prayers put up to Jupiter for worldly commodities and comforts, with never a trace of spirituality to redeem a single one of them. The vanity of men's wishes, which are the natural prayers of the mind, as well as many of those secret devotions which they offer to the Supreme Being, are, in Addison's opinion, efficiently and sufficiently exposed by it. And he adds the remark, as a good Churchman and a tranquil thinker, as well as sedate worshipper who loved to see everything done decently and in order, that, among other reasons for set forms of prayer, he had often thought this a very good one, that the folly and extravagance of men's wishes may by this means be kept within due bounds, and not break out in absurd and ridiculous petitions on so great and solemn an occasion.

FORSAKING THE HOUSE OF PRAYER: "AS THE MANNER OF SOME IS"

IN

HEBREWS X. 5.

N immediate connection with the precept to so consider one another as to provoke to love and good works, is the injunction not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is. The privilege of public worship is distinctly intimated,-that of fellowship in devotion, that of common prayer and common praise.

As the manner of some was then, the manner of many is now, to forsake such assembling of themselves together, neglecting the duty, and forfeiting the privilege. Manners change, but this manner abideth. With vast numbers it is a habit