Epistle.
St. James i. 22-27.

Dearly beloved:
Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if a man be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he shall be compared to a man beholding his natural countenance in a glass. For he beheld himself, and went his way, and presently forgot what manner of man he was. But he that hath looked into the perfect law of liberty, and hath continued in it, not becoming a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work: this man shall be blessed in his deed. And if any man think himself to be religious, not bridling his tongue, but deceiving his own heart, this man's religion is vain. Religion pure and unspotted with God and the Father, is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their tribulation; and to keep one's self undefiled from this world.

Gospel.
St. John xvi. 23-30.

At that time:
Jesus said to his disciples: Amen, amen I say to you, if you ask the Father anything in my name, he will give it you. Hitherto you have not asked anything in my name. Ask, and you shall receive: that your joy may be full. These things have I spoken to you in proverbs. The hour cometh when I will no more speak to you in proverbs, but will show you plainly of the Father. In that day you shall ask in my name: and I say not to you, that I will ask the Father for you. For the Father himself loveth you, because you have loved me, and have believed that I came forth from God. I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world; again I leave the world, and I go to the Father. His disciples say to him: Behold now thou speakest plainly, and speakest no proverb. Now we know that thou knowest all things, and that for thee it is not needful that any man ask thee. In this we believe that thou camest forth from God.

Sermon LXXIII.

Amen, amen I say to you,
if you ask the Father anything in my name,
he will give it you.
—St. John xvi. 23.

What a wonderful promise this is—that everything we ask of Almighty God, who is the Father of mercies, shall be granted to us, if we ask it in the name of his only-begotten Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ! Does our Lord really mean all he says? Do people get all they pray for? Does it not seem to us sometimes that we pray in vain—that God seems to shut his ears against our cry, and has no regard to our tears and supplications? Yes, it does often seem so, but it is not really so. God's ways are not always our ways to reach the end we desire. And our own experience will tell us that it is very seldom it would be the best for us if God took us at our word. The real reason why we do not obtain the answer we wish to many of our prayers is, first, because we do not ask, as we ought, in the name of Jesus Christ. What is it to ask in his name? It is to ask in the name of Him who came on earth, not to do his own will, but the will of his Divine Father. Oh! how seldom we pray for favors and blessings according to the will of God. Our blessed Lord, on the night before he was crucified, foreseeing his death, and bowed to the earth in his agony, ended his prayer with the words. "Not as I will, but as thou wilt." That is not our way. When we are in sorrow and trouble we think God should will as we will, and we are disappointed and discouraged because we do not get well of our sickness, or that calamity we feared comes, or poverty sticks to us, or the conversion of those we pray for is denied, or we do not obtain the employment we seek, or we have to give up hope of getting that farm we set our heart upon. Who is the judge, after all, about granting prayers? Who else but God, who not only has the power to grant or refuse them, as he chooses, but also has the perfect knowledge whether it would be best for us to receive a favorable answer or not? He who prays in the name of Jesus, prays with implicit trust in God's goodness and wisdom, and if he has not mistaken his own will for the will of God, will feel and should feel just as contented, no matter which way God answers his prayer.

The second reason why we do not always get what we pray for is because we are constantly asking for things which we dare not presume to ask in the name of Jesus Christ. We know in our heart of hearts that it is a petition he would not offer to his Divine Father for us. If we had to write that petition down we would neither begin nor end it with the words, "In the name of Jesus." It is our pride that is praying, our worldly ambition, our lusts and our selfish desires. We do not put the name of Jesus to our prayer, because the spirit of Jesus is not in it. Charity is wanting. We want to be happy, even if others are suffering. We want money, even if our brethren starve. We desire high places and the success of our undertakings, even if our neighbor and his interests go to the wall. Alas! it is self that prays the loudest and the oftenest and makes the greatest show.

Now, dear brethren, let us learn to bring all our prayers up to the right standard. No matter what we ask for, let it be always according to the will of God, and that alone. Then our prayer will surely be granted, for the will of God, no longer opposed and hindered by our will, accomplishes just what is best for us. If we do not get just what we think best, it is because God, in his divine generosity, chooses to give us something better, or takes a wiser way to do it than we knew of.

If I were to advise you how to always pray in the name of Jesus, I would say, Add always these words to every prayer you make: "So may God grant it, if my salvation be in it." God grants no prayer that does not have that end in view. His divine love for us constantly regards that, even if we forget it. Pray, then, with confidence and perseverance, but have a care to pray always with and for the will of God. Then in heaven we shall see, if not here, how not a single true prayer we ever made was left unanswered.

Amen, amen I say to you,
if you ask the Father anything in my name,
He will give it you.
—St. John xvi. 23.

These are the words of Christ, taken from the Gospel of to-day; we cannot doubt them for a moment. They are the words of him who is the infallible Truth, who can neither deceive nor be deceived.

And yet how seldom do we act as if we really believed them! How seldom do you, my brethren, ask anything of the Father in the name of Christ with real confidence that you will receive what you ask for.

Many people say prayers, but few really pray. That is, many say over certain forms of prayer which they know by heart or read out of their prayer-books; many even feel bound to say some particular set of prayers every day, for the scapular which they wear, or for some other reason; but if you should ask them what they are praying for, what particular thing they wish to obtain from God when they say these prayers, few would be able to tell you, unless, indeed, they happened to be making a novena for some special object.

So, I say, it does not seem as if we Christians believed what our Lord tells us in these words. For surely, if we did, almost all our prayers would be petitions for some particular thing which we wanted, instead of mere devotional exercises. And why? Because we are always in want of something, and we must certainly believe that Almighty God has the power to give us what we want; should we not, then, be always praying for what we want, did we fully believe that he has the will to give it to us?

Is it, then, really true that God will give us all good things which we ask in prayer? Yes, it certainly is; that is exactly the meaning of these words of Christ. All good things, I say; for it is only good things which we can ask in his name. And if God would give us bad things which we should ask for, our Saviour's promise would be a curse, not a blessing as it really is.

No; God will not answer bad prayers—that is, prayers for what is bad. People sometimes make such prayers and expect him to answer them. They pray for vengeance on those who have injured them; they pray that others may suffer as much as they have made them suffer, and the like. Or they pray for something which seems to them good, but really is not so—that they may get rich, for instance, when riches will only be an occasion of sin to them. The prayer seems to them good, but it is not; perhaps even those prayers for vengeance may seem so. But God knows better, and will not, as he says in the Gospel of to-morrow, give us a stone when we ask for what seems to be bread. If anything, he will give better, instead of worse, than what we ask.

But really most things that Christians would think of praying for are not bad; but you do not pray for them, because you think that if they are good for you, you will get them, if you try, whether you pray or not. Now, that is the great mistake which our Lord wishes to correct. When he says, "If you ask the Father anything in my name, he will give it you," that means, also, that if you do not ask he will not, or at least not in such abundance.

Try, then, to bring this truth home to yourselves and make it practical: that if you want anything the way to get it is to ask it from God, not forgetting, of course, to work for it as well as to pray; for no one prays in earnest who does not do that. And the way not to get it is not to ask for it.

Pray, then, for what you want; and of course, before praying, find out what you do want. You want, for instance, to be kept from sin; but what sin? What is the one you are most inclined to? Examine your conscience and find out. Then your prayer will really mean something, especially if it be accompanied by good and strong resolutions against your besetting vices.

If you know what you want, and pray for it in Christ's name and in earnest, using all other means to get it, it shall, if it be good, be yours. That is the lesson of our Lord's words in the Gospel of to-day.

Sermon LXXV.

Amen, amen I say to you,
if you ask the Father anything in my name,
He will give it you.
St. John xvi. 23.

These words must be true, my brethren, for it is the Eternal Truth who has spoken them. And yet I dare say you cannot see how they are. You have often, perhaps, asked God for something which you wanted, and put our Lord's name to your prayers, and yet you have not got the thing on which your heart was set.

Well, let us see what is the matter; why it is that our experience seems to contradict our faith. It may be that, though the words seem plain, we do not understand them aright.

Perhaps we are under a mistake as to what is meant by asking in the name of Christ. Let us consider what is really the common and natural sense of asking for anything in somebody else's name. What should we ourselves mean by it?

Suppose I say to one of you: "If you ask Mr. So-and so for such a position or employment in my name you will get it," what do I mean? I mean that his regard for me is such that, if you have my name to support you, he will give it to you for my sake.

Well, now, this is, as it seems to me, what our Lord means by his promise. The sense of it is: "The Father loves me so much that if you have my name to support your prayers—that is, if I wish that you should have what you ask for—he will give it to you for my sake."

What it comes to, then, is this: If we ask the Father for anything really in the name of Christ—that is, if our Lord really endorses our prayer—we shall have it.

"Well," perhaps you may say, "it seems to me that does not amount to much. Will not God give us what our Lord approves of, any way, whether we ask it or not? I don't see what we gain by praying, if that is all."

There, my friends, you labor under a great mistake. The Father wants Christ's name, but he wants your prayer, too. Some things, it is true, you have got without praying; but there are many which you have not got, but which you might have had if you had added your own prayer to the name of our Lord.

I do not believe, for instance, that you ever asked in his name to be rich. And yet it is quite possible that you might have done so. If he knew that it would be good for yourself and others for you to have money, if he knew that you would make a good use of it, he would have put his name to your request. So you might, perhaps, have been much richer than you are; perhaps it was only the prayer for it on your part that was wanting. If it could have been made in the name of Christ—that is, with his approval—it would have been effectual.

It is very likely that he would, for good reasons, have refused to give his name to such a prayer. Still it would be worth while to try. It is always worth while to try praying for anything that is not in itself bad; we may be able to get Christ's name for it, who knows? And if we do not pray for what we want we will not be nearly so likely to get it.

There are some things, though, that we can be sure to have his name for, and which are besides much better than worldly goods. Those are the virtues with which our souls ought to be adorned—our true riches, the riches of the soul. Pray for these, then, with full confidence that he will endorse your prayer.

But when you pray for them work for them too. He will not give you either spiritual or temporal riches if you sit still and fold your hands, and wait for them to drop into your lap. A prayer which is not in earnest is no prayer at all; and no prayer is in earnest if the one who makes it is not trying to get what he wants in every way open to him.

Now, I hope you see that our Lord's promise is a real and true one; for by it we can get many, very many things which otherwise we never can have. And I hope you see that it is a most generous one; for by it we can have everything that is really good. Could you possibly ask anything more?