ions to
heaven; that is telling God what He ought to do. That is not the kind of
prayer that may be offered 'without doubting.' It might, indeed, be
offered, if offered at all, with the certainty that it will not be
answered. For this is the assurance on which we are to rest--and some of
us may think it is a very poor one--'we know that, if we ask anything
_according to His will_, He heareth us.' To get what we want would often
be our ruin. God loves His children a great deal too well to give them
serpents when they ask for them, thinking they are fish, or to give them
stones when they beseech Him for them, believing them to be bread. He
will never hand you a scorpion when you ask Him to give it you, because,
with its legs and its sting tucked under its body, it is like an egg.

We make mistakes in our naming of things and in our desires after
things, and it is only when we have learned to say 'Not my will but
Thine be done,' that we have the right to pray, 'without doubting.' If
we do so pray, certainly we receive. But a tremulous faith brings little
blessing, and small answer. An unsteady hand cannot hold the cup still
for Him to pour in the wine of His grace, but as the hand shakes, the
cup moves, and the precious gift is spilled. The still, submissive soul
will be filled, and the answer to its prayer will be, 'Whatsoever things
ye desire believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.'

SPIRITUAL ATHLETICS

'Exercise thyself unto Godliness.'--1 TIM. iv. 7.

Timothy seems to have been not a very strong character: sensitive,
easily discouraged, and perhaps with a constitutional tendency to
indolence. At all events, it is very touching to notice how the old
Apostle--a prisoner, soon to be a martyr--forgot all about his own
anxieties and burdens, and, through both of his letters to his young
helper, gives himself to the task of bracing him up. Thus he says to
him, in my text, amongst other trumpet-tongued exhortations, 'Exercise
thyself unto godliness.'

If I were preaching to ministers, I should have a good deal to say about
the necessity of this precept for them, and to remind them that it was
first spoken, not to a private member of the Church, as an injunction
for the Christian life in general, but as having a special bearing on
the temptations and necessities of those who stand in official positions
in the Church. For there is nothing that is more likely to sap a man's
devotion, and to