n
the strict sense of the word preposterous in a Christian. With the
Christian the first question is, What is the truth? What is revealed?
What has God promised? What has He taught man to hope for? What has He
commanded man to do? By his own words, by the words and by the example
of his inspired messengers, by the doctrine and practice of his Church,
the witness and interpreter of the truth, how has He directed us to sue
for his mercy and all its blessings? On what foundation, sure and
certain, can we build our hopes that "He will favourably with mercy hear
our prayers?" For in this matter, a matter of spiritual life and death,
we can anchor our hope on no other rock than his sure word of promise.

That sure word of promise, if I am a faithful believer, I have; but it
is exclusive of any invocation by me of saint, or angel, or virgin. The
pledge of heaven is most solemnly and repeatedly given; God, who cannot
lie, has, in language so plain, that he may run who readeth it, assured
me that if I come to HIMSELF by HIS SON, my prayer shall not be cast
out, my suit shall {397} not be denied, I shall not be sent empty away.
In every variety of form which language can assume, this assurance is
ratified and confirmed. His own revealed will directs me to pray for my
fellow-creatures, and to expect a beneficial effect from the prayers of
the faithful upon earth in my behalf. To pray for them, therefore, and
to seek their prayers, and to wait patiently for an answer to both, are
acts of faith and of duty. And were it also appointed by God's will to
be an act of faith and duty in a Christian to seek the prayers, and aid,
and assistance, of saints and angels by supplicatingly invoking them,
surely the same word of truth would have revealed that also. Whereas the
reverse shows itself under every diversified state of things, from the
opening of the sacred book to its very last page. The subtle distinction
of religious worship into latria, dulia, and hyperdulia, the refined
classification of prayer under the two heads of direct, absolute, final,
sovereign, on the one hand, and of oblique, relative, transitory,
subaltern, on the other, swell indeed many elaborate works of casuistry,
but are not discoverable in the remains of primitive Christians, nor in
the writings of God's word have they any place. I cannot find in the
inspired Apostles any reference to the necessity, the duty, the
lawfulness, the expediency of our seeking by prayer th