s to search for it with
earnest endeavor. If you want to see a certain man in New York, and
there is a matter of $10,000 connected with your seeing him, and you
can not at first find him, you do not give up the search. You look in
the directory, but can not find the name; you go in circles where you
think, perhaps, he may mingle, and, having found the part of the city
where he lives, but perhaps not knowing the street, you go through
street after street, and from block to block, and you keep on
searching for weeks and for months.

You say: "It is a matter of $10,000 whether I see him or not." Oh,
that men were as persistent in seeking for Christ! Had you one half
that persistence you would long ago have found Him who is the joy of
the forgiven spirit. We may pay our debts, we may attend church, we
may relieve the poor, we may be public benefactors, and yet all our
life disobey the text, never seek God, never gain heaven. Oh, that the
Spirit of God would help this morning while I try to show you, in
carrying out the idea of my text, first, how to seek the Lord, and in
the next place, when to seek Him. "Seek ye the Lord while He may be
found."

I remark, in the first place, you are to seek the Lord through earnest
and believing prayer. God is not an autocrat or a despot seated on a
throne, with His arms resting on brazen lions, and a sentinel pacing
up and down at the foot of the throne. God is a father seated in a
bower, waiting for His children to come and climb on His knee, and get
His kiss and His benediction. Prayer is the cup with which we go to
the "fountain of living water," and dip up refreshment for our
thirsty soul. Grace does not come to the heart as we set a cask at the
corner of the house to catch the rain in the shower. It is a pulley
fastened to the throne of God, which we pull, bringing the blessing.

I do not care so much what posture you take in prayer, nor how large
an amount of voice you use. You might get down on your face before
God, if you did not pray right inwardly, and there would be no
response. You might cry at the top of your voice, and unless you had a
believing spirit within, your cry would not go further up than the
shout of a plow-boy to his oxen. Prayer must be believing, earnest,
loving. You are in your house some summer day, and a shower comes up,
and a bird, affrighted, darts into the window, and wheels about the
room. You seize it. You smooth its ruffled plumage. You feel its
flu