vessel is by prayer carried to the full fountain.

SOLITARY PRAYER

'Enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to
thy Father which is in secret,'--MATT. vi. 6.

An old heathen who had come to a certain extent under the influence of
Christ, called prayer 'the flight of the solitary to the Solitary.'
There is a deep truth in that, though not all the truth.

Prayer is not only the most intensely individual act that a man can
perform, but it is also the highest social act. Christ came not to carry
solitary souls by a solitary pathway to heaven, but to set the solitary
in families and to rear up a church. Of that church the highest function
is united worship.

No one is likely to fall into the mistake of supposing that this passage
before us condemns praying in the synagogues, or even, if need were, at
the street corners. It does not, of course, interdict social public
prayer, though it enjoins solitary secret communion with the solitary,
secret God.

I. What is the practice here enjoined?

Since 'that they may be seen of men' constitutes the evil, we may fairly
say that Christ is not here prescribing the place where, but the spirit
in which, we ought to pray; that what He condemns is not the fact of
praying where we can be seen, but of picking out the place in order that
we may be seen; that, in a word, the contrast here is between
ostentation and sincerity. A man that has sidelong looks at the
passers-by in his devotions has not much devotion.

But then, as a material help to this, we need solitude and secrecy; they
are not indispensable, but almost so. And in that solitude what is to be
our occupation? One word answers the question--Communion. We are to be
alone that we may more fully and thrillingly feel that we are with God.
That communion will have an intellectual element in which we try to rise
to perception of the high truths as to God, or in meditation gaze on
Him, and a petitionary element in which we ask for the communication of
His grace according to our needs.

II. What is the special worth of such a habit?

1. The truths that we profess to believe are in their nature such as can
only be vividly realised by such an exercise. They are all matters of
faith, not of sense. God is a spirit, and is felt near by none but still
and waiting spirits. Our religion has to do with the Unseen, the Solemn,
the Profound, the Remote. These are not to be fully felt hastily. They
are lik