ead as regards religious obedience.
If left to ourselves we should grow up haters of God, and tend nearer
and nearer, the longer we had existence, to utter spiritual death, that
inward fire of hell torments, maturing in evil through a long eternity.
Such is the course we are beginning to run when born into the world;
and were it not for the gospel promise, what a miserable event would
the birth of children be! Who could take pleasure at the sight of such
poor beings, unconscious as yet of their wretchedness, but containing
in their hearts that fearful root of sin which is sure in the event of
reigning and triumphing unto everlasting woe? But God has given us
all, even the little children, a good promise through Christ; and our
prospects are changed. And He has given not only a promise of future
happiness, but through His Holy Spirit He implants here and at once a
new principle within us, a new spiritual life, a life of the soul, as
it is called. St. Paul tells us, that "God hath quickened us," made us
_live_, "together with Christ, . . . and hath raised us up together"
from the death of sin, "and made us sit together in heavenly places in
Christ Jesus[2]." Now how God quickens our souls we do not know, as
little as how He quickens our bodies. Our spiritual "life" (as St.
Paul says) "is _hid_ with Christ in God[3]." But as our bodily life
discovers itself by its activity, so is the presence of the Holy Spirit
in us discovered by a spiritual activity; and this activity is the
spirit of continual prayer. Prayer is to spiritual life what the
beating of the pulse and the drawing of the breath are to the life of
the body. It would be as absurd to suppose that life could last when
the body was cold and motionless and senseless, as to call a soul alive
which does not pray. The state or habit of spiritual life exerts
itself, consists, in the continual activity of prayer.

Do you ask, where does Scripture say this? Where? In all it tells us
of the connexion between the new birth and faith; for what is prayer
but the expression, the voice, of faith? For instance, St. Paul says
to the Galatians, "The _life_ which I now live in the flesh" (i.e. the
new and spiritual life), "I live by the _faith_ of the Son of God, who
loved me[4]." For what, I say, is faith, but the looking to God and
thinking of Him continually, holding habitual fellowship with Him, that
is, speaking to Him in our hearts all through the day, praying wi