An hour will come, says He, when the true adorers shall adore the Father in spirit and truth. For God is a Spirit, and accordingly requires His adorers to be such. John 4:23-24 We are the true adorers and the true priests, who, praying in spirit, sacrifice, in spirit, prayer — a victim proper and acceptable to God, which assuredly He has required, which He has looked forward to for Himself! This victim, devoted from the whole heart, fed on faith, tended by truth, entire in innocence, pure in chastity, garlanded with love, we ought to escort with the pomp of good works, amid psalms and hymns, unto God's altar, to obtain for us all things from God. For what has God, who exacts it ever denied to prayer coming from spirit and truth? How mighty specimens of its efficacy do we read, and hear, and believe! Old-world prayer, indeed, used to free from fires, Daniel 3 and from beasts, Daniel 6 and from famine; and yet it had not (then) received its form from Christ. But how far more amply operative is Christian prayer! It does not station the angel of dew in mid-fires, nor muzzle lions, nor transfer to the hungry the rustics' bread; 2 Kings 4:42-44 it has no delegated grace to avert any sense of suffering; but it supplies the suffering, and the feeling, and the grieving, with endurance: it amplifies grace by virtue, that faith may know what she obtains from the Lord, understanding what — for God's name's sake — she suffers. every creature prays; cattle and wild beasts pray and bend their knees; and when they issue from their layers and lairs, they look up heavenward with no idle mouth, making their breath vibrate after their own manner. Nay, the birds too, rising out of the nest, upraise themselves heavenward, and, instead of hands, expand the cross of their wings, and say somewhat to seem like prayer. What more then, touching the office of prayer? Even the Lord Himself prayed; to whom be honour and virtue unto the ages of the ages!