The Spirit of Prayer Author:Hannah More Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 16 CHAP. III. PRAYER. ITS DEFINITION. Prayer is the application of want to Him who alone can relieve it, the voice of sin to Him who alone can pardon it... more ». It is the urgency of poverty, the prostration of humility, the fervency of penitence, the confidence of trust. It is not eloquence, but earnestness; not figures of speech, but compunction of soul. It is the " Lord, save us, we perish," of drowning Peter ; the cry of faith to the ear of mercy. Adoration is the noblest employment of created beings ; confession, the natural language of guilty creatures; praise, the spontaneous expression of pardoned sinners. Prayer is desire ; the abasement of contrition ; the energy of gratitude. It is not a mere conception of the mind, nor an effort of the intellect, nor an act of thememory; but an elevation of the soul towards its Maker. It is the devout breathing of a creature struck with a sense of its own misery, and of the infinite holiness of Him whom it is addressing, experimentally convinced of its own emptiness, and of the abundant fulness of God; of his readiness to hear, of his power to help, of his willingness to save. It is not an emotion produced in the senses, nor an eifect wrought by the imagination ; but a determination of the will, an effusion of the heart. Prayer is the guide to self-knowledge, by prompting us to look after our sins, in order to pray against them : it is a motive to vigilance, by teaching us to guard against those sins which, through self-examination, we have been enabled to detect. Prayer is an act both of the understanding and of the heart. The understanding must apply itself to the knowledge of the Divine perfections, or the heart will not be led to the adoration of them. It would not be a reasonable service, if the mind was excluded. It mus...« less