Romans 12:11-12

CRITICAL NOTES

Romans 12:11.—In your haste be not idle, in your business be not lazy. As to your zeal, being not indolent; fervent in spirit, taking advantage of opportunity. The Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic versions, and all the Greek scholiasts, read “serving the Lord.” The other reading, “serving the time,” mentioned by Ambrose, St. Jerome, and Ruffinus, seems to have had its rise from the abbreviation of the word in the manuscripts. Though it may have a good sense “by accommodating yourselves to present things, if tolerance be not unlawful.”

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Romans 12:11

Fervent in spirit.—As to zeal, being not indolent; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord, or taking advantage of opportunity. The Epistle to the Romans is a doctrinal book, and at the same time eminently practical. There is no book which contains passages more practical than those in these concluding Chapter s. So long as we read these practical teachings, so well adapted to all times, we are indifferent to the utterance of those who say that the Bible is a worn-out book. The Bible is no worn-out book for the true and the good. Its teachings adapted to all. Its soothing tones are welcome to the weary, worn, troubled, and distressed. Its stimulating utterances move to energy and to fervency of spirit.

I. A work to be done.—The work is that of serving the Lord in every department of life, and it is thus that in the best possible manner we take advantage of opportunity. It seems more reasonable to suppose that St. Paul should write “serving the Lord” than “serving the time.” The former includes the latter. Serving the Lord is the best way of serving the time. The man who serves the Lord faithfully is the one to take a wise and holy advantage of every opportunity. There can be no sublimer work than that of serving the Creator. This is the work to call forth man’s noblest energies. Other service calls forth only part of man’s nature, but this claims every power and faculty. Other service is only for a short period, and short as is the period the service palls upon the taste; but this service is for life, and for a life beyond this life; and it never loses its attractiveness to the spiritual man. It will ever show new beauties, expand fresh powers, and introduce varied pleasures to the soul. We are all called to this service. The command is to all, “Son, go work to-day in My vineyard.”

II. The manner in which the work is to be done.—By “fervent in spirit” is meant the active and energetic exercise of all those powers which distinguish man as an intellectual and a moral creature. It does not imply confusion or agitation. There must not be half-heartedness in this service. Fervency of spirit is not compatible with double service. It implies unity of heart. “Unite my heart to fear Thy name, to serve the Lord.” This fervency of spirit is illustrated by St. Paul himself when he says, “This one thing I do.” When a man is fervent in spirit about the accomplishment of any work, he becomes a man of one idea. Have we this fervency? Are our souls possessed of one idea? Let us seek to serve the Lord, and thus to serve our time to the best of our ability.

III. Fervency of spirit is enjoined upon us by:

1. Positive precept.—“Hear, O Israel, The Lord our God is one Lord; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength.” Fervency of spirit is required from him who is to serve God by the combination of every power and faculty of the nature. “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.” This fear and trembling does not lead to depression and paralysis of the powers, but to energy, to fervency of spirit. The kingdom of God is a strife and a battle, and the fervent in spirit overcomes in the conflict.

2. By implied directions. We are enjoined to be zealous of good works—zealously affected in a good thing. The zealous man is fervent in spirit, ardent in the pursuit of an object. How ardent should the Christian be who is pressing forward to apprehend that for which he is apprehended in Christ Jesus! The man who feels within himself the consuming force of a great principle is ardent, is fervent in spirit. The Christian should be a man on fire. The light glows within and radiates the circle he fills. Let us be more concerned about being ardent than about showing ourselves ardent. Let the ambition be, not to blaze, but to give light and heat—though the blazing man gains the world’s applause, while the true light-giving man treads the obscure pathway to heaven’s immortality.

3. By illustrious examples. We have the examples of Paul, of John, and of Peter. Consuming energy possessed their souls. In the whole range of the world’s history there are not found men so wonderfully earnest and fervent. Their intense zeal was such that we declare they were superhumanly endowed. The very reading of their lives stirs to greater fervency of spirit. Jesus left us an example that in all things we should follow His steps. His earthly life was marked by fervency of spirit. It was so great that He could say, “The zeal of Thine house hath eaten Me up.” Here was intense zeal in the pursuit of God’s glory which became a consuming fire. The strong nature of Jesus was being eaten up by His zeal. My little nature is scarcely warmed by the feeble spark of my zeal. This was so strong in Jesus that He forgot to take necessary food. Sublime forgetfulness! Divine memory of divine service producing consuming ardency!

4. By the difficulties of the course. Vigorous plants only can survive severe winters; vigorous Christians only can survive the rigours of time. Fervency of spirit will be a protection against the withering blasts of earth’s winters. There must be fervency of spirit if we are to outlive those unfavourable influences by which we are often surrounded.

5. By the blessings on the way and to follow. Great are the blessings on the way, and yet there are more to follow. Bright are the Christian’s privileges on the way, and yet there are brighter to follow. Gladsome are the songs which the Christian can sing on the way, and yet there are gladder to follow. Sweet are the viands which the Christian finds on the way, and yet there are sweeter to follow. Rich are the prospects on the way, and yet there are richer to follow. Dazzling crowns on the way, but a crown of unsullied and imperishable beauty to follow. The thoughts of present bestowals and of future glory should produce fervency of spirit.

The Christian spirit in business.—Christians must give themselves up to God, body and soul. To listen to doctrine is both good and necessary; but the listening is of no avail unless that doctrine and all the preaching about it lead to something practical. Men are but shabby specimens of the Christian life unless they prove experimentally how far they give themselves up to the perfect will of God. St. Paul sets forth many exhortations to godliness—e.g., a Christian must have genuine humility, or rather a right estimate of himself. He must also love truly; he must also abhor evil, have it in moral detestation. Like ivy clinging to the wall, he must cleave to the good; and so on. But a Christian also must be not slothful in business. A better rendering of this is: not so much in business, but in diligence, in zeal, in earnestness, we are not to be slothful. The whole verse suggests that the Christian life has two sides—the sacred and the secular. Some men are so thoroughly one-sided that they miss the very mark at which they aim. They need to learn that the Christian life has two sides, and that Christ demands of every Christian diligence in both.

I. Whence shall we get the true measure of a Christian’s life in this world?—From the Founder of Christianity. “The whole lesson of Christ’s life, the whole burden of His teaching, was that the common concerns of this life—its buying and its selling, its gaining and its losing, its working and its rest—shall be in like manner, by the unchanging purpose of a pure Christian spirit, a true son of God, ennobled with the essential qualities that make a heaven of heaven.” Public life got its guinea-stamp from Jesus. Cæsar must have his due. In all Christ’s teaching it was a question of right things in right places—e.g., commerce: bad in God’s house; commendable in the world.

II. The question of worldly duty.—The most secular duties may be performed in a way that is pleasing to God. Men have often gone wrong on the question of worldly duty. Too much discrimination between godliness and worldliness. Consequently we have too narrow standards. The extreme notions that are held are hard to reconcile with Christ’s words to Christians: “Ye are the salt of the earth,” “the light of the world.” Worldly men, on the other hand, have narrow notions of religion. It is a mistake to say that business, and all kinds of world-life and energy, have ever been pronounced as opposed to godliness.

III. The great secret of true world-life depends on the motive that lies behind it.—There may be business, backed by good motive, and it may be more acceptable in God’s sight than a religion splendid to look upon, but having no special motive, or a very bad one. Business done on godly principles—though curtailed thereby—far better than great gains made by questionable practices. What we want is to have our lives set squarely upon a sound basis. Christ gave us the standard for daily living, and therein we find that purity of spirit is one of its leading features.

IV. The sound basis of all worldly occupation is Christ.—Base every method of your lives upon Him who became man, not only to go through that final agony that won the world’s redemption, but also that He might show us how to live. A man who copies Him is the Lord’s freeman. If we would live aright, we must seek to be in right relations or harmony with all truths, all facts, and all realities in this world, as well as the world to come—otherwise there is no possibility of hearing the “Well done.”—Albert Lee.

Religion and business.—It is said of the divine Founder of our religion that He knew what was in man, and no better proof of the assertion could be furnished than is supplied by the religion itself. For it addresses itself to man as he is—that is, not as a spiritual being merely, not as a perfect being at all, nor yet as a being who has got into some wrong world, and who should be only too anxious to get out of it again; but it rather addresses itself to him as one who has work in the world to do, and duties towards the world to discharge, and faculties, both of body, soul, and spirit, which in the world are to find their proper employment and exercise.

I. In the command that we are to be “not slothful in business” we seem to have a recognition of the principle that a life of ardent labour is an almost universal necessity belonging to our present state.—And it is so; it is part of our fallen heritage. The wisdom of the appointment is seen in many ways. Continued employment keeps the soul from much evil. Active engagements give a healthy tone to the mind; they strengthen the moral energy of the will; they prevent a good deal of the listlessness and inconstancy and utter feebleness of character, so often found in those who, having no stated occupation, and having nothing to compel prompt action, will do and undo, resolve and alter their resolve, continually a prey to the first ascendant influence, the sport of every wind that blows.

II. There is nothing in the business of life, as such, which is incompatible with the claim of godliness.—There is to be no room for the charge against us of slothfulness in business, and yet it is to be rightly said of us that we are serving the Lord. Religion consists, not so much in the superaddition of certain acts of worship to the duties of common life, as in leavening the duties of common life with the spirit of religious worship. It is worship in the husbandman when he tills the ground with a thankful heart; it is worship in the merchant when for all successes he gives God the glory; the servant who in all good fidelity discharges the duties of his trust is offering unto God a continual sacrifice; and to walk humbly and obediently in the calling to which He hath called us is to be “fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.”

III. So far from the active duties of life presenting any barrier to our proficiency in personal religion, they are the very field in which its highest graces are to be exercised and its noblest triumphs achieved. The hindrance to our spiritual proficiency is not in our occupation, but in ourselves.—D. Moore.

SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Romans 12:11

“Secular and spiritual.”—There is no such thing as “secular and sacred” in the whole realm of a good man’s life. The “secular” is “spiritual” when a “spiritual” man touches it; the “spiritual” is “secular” when the “secular” man seizes it. All good work well done is sacred. The counting-house ought to be as holy as the pulpit—and often is. Professor Stuart is right: “Religion is not a thing of the stars, it is a thing of the streets.”—Aked.

Business needful.—In the light of all I know of Jesus, I am constrained to lay down this axiom, that business is a good thing. Jesus never gainsays that. It is said of Him, that the light is too rich and clear upon the life of Christ to-day for any man to tell us that in order to be holy we must go away in dens and caves, and avoid the emporiums of the world, and not live the world’s life. That is not true. “It was not the world, but its spirit, that Christ hated. He forswore not men, not markets, not commerce. No; but the spirit which filled men as they engaged in all these. It was not the world’s work, the world’s ambitions, that He hated. I say it was the spirit in which these were realised that Christ utterly abjured. He did not condemn money-changing and merchandise; but He burned with the still fires of unimpassioned anger when men did these things in His Father’s house. The spirit was base, not the act; the purpose was ignoble, not the thing.”

The most secular duties may be performed in a way that is pleasing to God. And by duties I mean those which radiate in all directions—God-ward, manward, heavenward, earthward. Duty merges in heaven and earth. It is like the middle point of day; one knows not whether it belongs more to daybreak or to sunset. As a rule men have discriminated between heaven and earth, godliness and worldliness; but they have never caught the idea that God has joined the two, and that it is wrong to divorce them.
Dr. Parker says that he infers from Christ’s treatment of the scribes and Pharisees that it is possible for men to deceive themselves on religious methods—to suppose that they are in the kingdom of God when they are thousands of miles away from it. Is it possible that any of us can have fallen under the power of that delusion? I fear it may be so! What is your Christianity? A letter, a written creed, a small placard that can be published, containing a few so called fundamental points and lines? Is it an affair of words and phrases and sentences following one another in regulated and approved succession? If so, it is a little intellectual conceit. Christianity is life, love, nobleness,—it is sympathy with God.—Albert Lee.

MAIN HOMILETIC S OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Romans 12:12

Three needful mental conditions.—A book which is to be a guide for all must not be of such an elaborate character as to task the energies of its readers. A sailor’s chart must not be a scientific, geographical, and historical work. The Bible is a book for mankind, and must be both brief and comprehensive. If a man truly desire to live right, he will have no practical difficulty. In this twelfth chapter are rules of life precise and yet sufficiently comprehensive. Here are three rules: in hope be joyful; in sufferings be steadfast; in prayer be unwearied. Here are three states in which the Christian may be found, and three conditions proper to those states. It is a wise conception to place tribulation between hope and prayer. Tribulation is calculated to depress, but hope energises and gives courage. Tribulation drives to prayer, and finds in the exercise sustaining power. The man supported in tribulation on two sides, by hope and prayer, will come off conqueror in every trial.

I. The state of hope and the joyful mental condition.—Hope is a great sustainer. The human mind is ever forecasting the to-morrows. Man never is but always to be blest. The darkest day, live till to-morrow, will have passed away. The schoolboy, the apprentice, the business man, all hope. A dreary world if hope were banished from hearts and homes. When old age creeps on apace, when the bright visions of time have vanished, when the backward glance is disappointing and the onward earthly look is darkening, it is sweet to look by hope to the bright sphere where all true hopes will be realised. “Christ in you the hope of glory.” Faith in Christ the foundation of hope which will not disappoint. He is both the giver and sustainer of hope. It is a blessed thing to possess a good hope through grace. The man who possesses this hope can rejoice more than one who has found great spoil. He goes rejoicing all the day, and he can even sing songs in the night-time of his earthly pilgrimage. “Rejoicing in hope.” He encourages great joy, for he has great expectations.

II. The state of tribulation and the patient mental condition.—Tribulation is a process through which the Christian must pass. We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God. It is the narrow doorway and the rugged pathway to every high throne. No kingship here or hereafter without tribulation. No royalty of nature without suffering. No nobility of character without the tribulation. A Straitened way, a compressed course, for the sons moved by high ambitions. One in his parable describes the way to instruction much in the same way as our Lord describes the way to heaven. “Do you not see,” says the old man, “a little door, and beyond the door a way which is not much crowded, but very few are going along it, as seemingly difficult of ascent, rough and stony?” “Yes,” answers the stranger. “And does there not seem,” continues the old man, “to be a high hill, and a road up it very narrow, with precipices on each side? That is the way leading to true instruction.” “Strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth to life, and few there be that find it.” The way to all heavens is the way of tribulation. It separates the chaff from the wheat in character. It prepares for divine uses. It fits for noble employments and for highest positions. Patience is the needful mental condition, the enduring power of great souls. The patience of God’s heroic saints is marvellous. What do I see in my vision? A long cloud of witnesses pressing through the highways of life whose patience is crowned by the inheritance of the promises.

III. The state of prayer and the unwearied mental condition.—“Continuing instant in prayer.” We still repeat the old questions, What is the Almighty that we should serve Him? and what profit shall we have if we pray unto Him? God anticipated the modern sceptic. Is there anything new under the sun? We question, but we continue to pray. In tribulation the soul of man rises up above its scepticism and gives itself to prayer. How strange that prayer cannot be banished from the world! Philosophy cannot hush the voice of prayer. Strange, yet not strange, for prayer is the upward look of humanity, and the human must look to the divine, as the flowers seek the sun, as the climbing plant stretches out for support. Let us show what profit continuing instant in prayer will produce:

1. Continuing instant in prayer is the way to gain strength. If it be true that prayer is the life of the Christian, if by this exercise we gain supplies from heaven, then it must be by prayer that we put on strength. There is a method of invigoration at the believer’s disposal. “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” The promise is definite. Though science so called tries to reason us away from the exercise, though scepticism hurls its shafts of ridicule, and though many hurry past to try other means of gaining strength, we will wait upon the Lord until weakness departs and the strength of moral manhood is obtained—until with eagles’ pinions we may soar above the earth, mists, and clouds, where undisturbed we may catch the many voices that sound their sublime anthems across the heavenly plains—until running in the Christian course does not weary, and we can walk with those mighty men of old who had power to walk with God on earth, and then were translated to walk unabashed amid angels and archangels, with cherubim and seraphim, and all those who walk in the light ineffable. The praying man must be strong, for thus he moves into the life-giving sunlight. “The Lord God is a sun and shield: the Lord will give grace and glory”—the grace to overcome weakness and to grow in strength, the glory of a mighty warrior who triumphs over every foe. We must place ourselves in the sunlight by prayer. God promises, “I will be as the dew unto Israel.” By this figure is denoted the genial influences, vigour, and strength which God will impart unto His people. There must be certain conditions of the plant in relation to the surrounding atmosphere if the pearly dewdrop is to be formed on its surface and is to exert its reviving force. The certain conditions which God requires for the fulfilment of His gracious promise are a heart open to receive, a spirit of prayer and of supplication. The man becomes strong into whose soul God distils the dew of His reviving influences. By prayer we must go to the Fountain of living waters, and be refreshed; by prayer and meditation we must feed upon the Bread of life, and thus put on strength. We need the baptism of a praying spirit. We have all kinds of men—scientific, scholarly, rhetorical, oratorical, energetic. We have men of business-like capacity, men great in books and mighty in speech; but have we a sufficient number of the men of prayer, who plead earnestly in their closets, who by intercessory prayer put the God of Jacob to the test? Oh for prayers the expression of hearts inhabited by the eternal Spirit,—prayers that witness to an overflowing plenitude of spiritual life; prayers manifesting themselves in nobleness of character, in kindness of nature, in benevolence of disposition, and in a cheering beneficence as its outcome! If we had this true prayer, what spiritual vigour would pervade the Church, and how she would move on in a career of ever-expanding conquest!

2. Continuing instant in prayer is the way to experience its efficacy. What would be St. Paul’s answer to those who talk about the folly of supposing that the order of nature is to be disturbed by the force of prayer, that inevitable law is to give place to the cries and necessities of an insignificant creature, that the movements of worlds are to be checked by the voice of one who is but as an atom and whose removal would soon be forgotten? His answer is continuance in prayer. Let gnostics and agnostics, let scientists and evolutionists, let sceptics and philosophers, write, reason, and refute, but we will give ourselves to prayer. The workings of natural laws may be guessed at; but the workings of God’s spiritual laws are along high pathways which no scientist knoweth and which the keenest eye has not yet seen. However, we will give ourselves to prayer, for we have felt its power and preciousness, and so felt as not to be disturbed by clever opponents. When confined to prison, prayer is our only support and comfort; prayer only can give us songs in the night.

3. Continuing instant in prayer is the way to surmount temptation. Introspection is not always productive of peaceful results even when good men carry on the process. Looking inward may ofttimes fail, but looking upward and Godward should never fail. God looks to the heart, and He will not fail to help His suffering sons. Faith in God, continuing instant in prayer, will strike the good old song, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present and an ever-present help in trouble.” The face of the dying Stephen was glorified because he saw a divine Helper in heaven; the stoned was far happier than the stoners. The mighty God helped and cheered. Prayer endows with patience in tribulation, gives songs in the prison cell, turns the dreary dungeon into a palace beautiful, transforms the sluggish streams of earth into the fashion of the river of bliss that flows o’er Elysian flowers hard by the throne of God, through landscapes of perpetual beauty. Prayer paints the rainbow of hope on the tears of tribulation; prayer brings the sunlight of heaven behind our darkest clouds, and makes them glorious with their exquisite tinting and drapery of purple and of gold; prayer shapes the lava which the volcano of earthly disaster has sent forth in molten streams into beautiful and glorified forms. Out of the ashes of our earth fires arise eternal riches. If men be not made spiritually strong by prayer, there is no other known method by which strength can be obtained. But they have been and may be so again. Joyfulness in hope, patience in tribulation, have been the result of continuing instant in prayer. Let us still pray in faith and in constancy, and we shall find that prayer has power, that prayer has beneficial influences, that prayer has wondrous results.

Pray on, and pray fervently.—“Continuing instant in prayer.” Prayer takes for granted that God is full, and we are empty. The creature is finite, alike in evil and in good. Our poverty and want must ever be a mere nothing in comparison with the fulness of Him who filleth all in all. Prayer takes for granted that there is a connection between this fulness and our emptiness. The fulness is not inaccessible. It is not too high for us to reach, or for it to stoop. Prayer takes for granted that we are entitled to use this channel, this medium; and that, in using it, there will be a sure inflow of the fulness into us. “Every one that asketh receiveth.” Prayer takes for granted expectation on our part. If, then, we examine our prayers, and strip them of all that is not prayer, how little remains! Let us mark such things as the following in reference to this kind of prayer:

1. The irksomeness of non-expecting prayer. Sometimes there may be such an amount of natural feeling as may make what is called “devotion” pleasant. But in the long run it becomes irksome, if not accompanied with expectation, sure expectation.

2. The uselessness of non-expecting prayer. It bears no fruit; it brings no answer; it draws down no blessing.

3. The sinfulness of non-expecting prayer. The utterance of petitions is nothing to God; it does not recommend the petitioner.—H. Bonar.

SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Romans 12:12

Constant prayer.—Cornelius prayed to God alway. The stated devotions were not wanting, but the life itself was a prayer in action. He was a man seeking God not in words only, but in all that he did. And in our busy, practical times we can only hope to pray to God always in that sense. Pressing duties encroach on meditation; their urgency engenders habits foreign to meditation. Too fast for our sight flash the thousand wheels of the great social machine, on which we are whirled round as a small part. Those constrained faces knit with anxiety that haunt you in the streets, those lips whispering busily to themselves in the crowded thoroughfare—those thousand vehicles locked in confusion at the confluence of streets, with all the occupants goaded to impatience by the words “too late”—they all remind us of the impetuous age in which we live. Who can pray to God always amidst such dire confusion? Do not despair even of that. Amidst the money-changers’ tables you cannot pray as in the precincts of the temple. But there is a kind of work that becomes a prayer: Laborare est orare. From the most active life in this great city may be daily floating up, for aught we know, to the throne of the Most High an incense of worship more pure than any that issues from the quiet chamber of the pious recluse. I do not speak of acts of mercy and almsgiving only; that there is a prayer in these all would admit. They are an imitation of, and therefore a longing after, the loving Son of God, who is our example. For amongst men, and in aiding men, or in striving with them, do we, the disciples, find our education, as our Master made the scene of His ministry in the midst of the men whom He would serve. The soul in retirement has often grown sickly with over-consciousness of itself, and invented needs and called for help against phantoms of its own creation. But the trials that surround us in our daily duties are those which God has made for us; and to Him we turn for strength to surmount them. Turn, then, to Him; make frequent approaches to His throne, at any time, in any place; ask His help for any undertaking; and if it be one which you dare not bring before Him, abandon it. Such a practice, to use the words of Bishop Taylor, “reconciles Martha’s employment with Mary’s devotion, charity, and religion—reconciles the necessities of our calling and the employments of devotion. For thus in the midst of business you may retire into your chapel—your heart—and converse with God by frequent addresses and returns.” And the fruits of this practice will be justice and uprightness in action, forbearance towards others, kindness towards the helpless, love towards all.

ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 12

Romans 12:11. Prescott’s perseverance.—Some years ago a student in college lost one of his eyes by a missile thrown by a classmate. His other eye became so affected by sympathy that its sight was endangered. The best oculists could not relieve him. He was sent to Europe for medical treatment and change of climate, and tarried there three years, when he returned with only part of an eye, just enough vision to serve him in travelling about, but too little for reading. His father was an eminent jurist, and designed his son for the bar, but this calamity quenched his aspirations in that direction. He resolved to devote himself to authorship in the department of historical literature. He spent tea years in laborious systematic study of the standard authors before he even selected his theme. Then he spent another ten years in searching archives, exploring masses of manuscripts, official documents and correspondence, consulting old chronicles, reading quantities of miscellaneous books, and taking notes—all through the eyes of others—before his first work was ready for the press—Ferdinand and Isabella. Prescott was forty years of age when he gave this remarkable history to the public. Then followed his Mexico, Peru, and Philip the Second, works that have earned for him the reputation of a profound historian on both sides of the Atlantic. Noble work for any man with two good eyes! Noble work for a man with none!

Romans 12:12. Prayer, a necessity of Christian life.—There is a class of animals, neither fish nor sea-fowl, that inhabit the deep. It is their home; they never leave it for the shore; yet, though swimming beneath its waves and sounding its darkest depths, they have ever and anon to rise to the surface that they may breathe the air. Without that those monarchs of the deep could not live in that dense element in which they move and have their being. And something like what they do through a physical necessity the Christian has to do by a spiritual one. It is by ever and anon ascending to God, by soaring up in prayer into a loftier, purer region for supplies of grace, that he maintains his spiritual life. Prevent these animals from rising to the surface, and they die for want of breath prevent him from rising to God, and he dies for want of prayer.—Dr. Guthrie.

Romans 12:12. Spirit of prayer.—During the blizzard a few years ago in America, many of the telegraph wires were prostrated, and messages were sent to Chicago by the way of Liverpool, England; and the answer, after a while, came round by another circuit. And so the prayer we offer may come back in a way we never imagined; and if we ask to have our faith increased, although it may come by a widely different process to that which we expected, our confidence will surely be augmented.