salvation irrecoverably, as to forfeit that earthly good which is the prize of well-doing here, with this infinite difference, that the last forfeit is not only irretrievable, but fatal; it can no more be made up for, than it can be regained.  Here, then, your present condition is a type of the complete truth of the text:  but there are other points, to which I alluded before, in which it is more than a type; it is the very truth itself, although, happily, only in an imperfect measure.  That unanswered prayer, of which I spoke, those broken resolutions,—­are they not actually a calling on God, without his hearing us; a seeking him, without finding him?  We remember who it was that could say with truth to his Father, “I know that thou nearest me always.”  We know what it is that hinders God from hearing us always; because we are not thoroughly one in his Son Christ Jesus.  But this unanswered prayer is not properly the State of Christ’s redeemed:  it is an enemy that hath brought us to this; the same enemy who will, in time, make all our prayers to be unanswered, as some are now; who will cause God, not only to be slow to listen, but to refuse to listen for ever.  Now we are not heard at once, we must repeat our prayers, with more and more earnestness, that God, at last, may hear, and may bless us.  But if, instead of repeating them the more, we do the very contrary, and repeat them the less; if, because we have no comfort, and no seeming good from them, we give them up altogether; then the time will surely come when all prayer will be but the hopeless prayer of Esau, because it will be only the prayer of fear; because it will be only the dread of destruction that will, or can, move us:—­the love of good will have gone beyond recall.  Such prayer does but ask for pardon without repentance; and this never is, or can be, granted.

So then, in conclusion, that very feeling of coldness, and unwillingness to pray, because we have often prayed in vain, is surely working in us that perfect death, which is the full truth of the words of the text.  Of all of us, those who the least like to pray, who have prayed with the least benefit, have the most need to pray again.  If they have sought God, without finding him, let them take heed that this be not their case for ever; that the truth, of which the seed is even now in them, may not be ripened to their everlasting destruction, when all their seeking, and all their prayer, will be as rejected by God, as, in part, it has been already.

LECTURE XIII.

* * * * *

MARK xii. 34.

Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.

Whoever has gone up any hill of more than common height, may remember the very different impression which the self-same point, whether bush, or stone, or cliff, has made upon him as he viewed it from below and from above.  In going up it seemed so high, that we fancied, if we were once arrived at it, we should be at the summit of our ascent; while, when we had got beyond it, and looked down upon it, it seemed almost sunk to the level of the common plain; and we wondered that it could ever have appeared high to us.