"This couplet has helped many a one to die easy." Oh, yes, it has, but it has encouraged too many to live easy--to live entirely too easy--so easy that they did not need to gain intelligence, to practice morality and pay their honest debts. "Between the saddle and the ground Was mercy asked and pardon found." A salvation so extemporaneously performed, I fear could not endure; it resembles too closely the winter revivals whose fruits have all disappeared before the summer's harvest is over. "Nothing, either great or small, Nothing, sinner, no! Jesus did, did it all Long, long ago. Weary, working, burdened one, Wherefore toil you so? Cease your doing, all was done Long, long ago. Till to Jesus' work you cling By a simple faith, Doing is a deadly thing, Doing ends in death. Cast your deadly doing down, Down at Jesus' feet, Rise in him, in him alone, Gloriously complete." Where are those who have risen in him gloriously complete? Show us just one. Prayer is Immoral. It is immoral because it seeks to accomplish certain ends without using the proper means, or it tries to do what reason teaches us cannot be done. When some years ago we had yellow fever at Memphis the praying people all over this country united in supplicating the unknown to remove the plague; but notwithstanding their united petitions to a throne of grace and to "a prayer-answering God," they utterly failed. The yellow fever remained until the angel of frost came and touched the air with its white wings of health. Fred Douglass said he prayed for freedom twenty years, but received no answer until he prayed with his legs. "Give us this day our daily bread," is a childish superstition. What millions of poor women have starved to death with this prayer on their lips. Jesus made a prayer in the garden of Gethsemane which was not answered. Now if the son of God may pray and receive no answer, what can the common rank and file sinner expect? When the native African sees an eclipse, he fancies some huge monster is attempting to devour the sun, or the moon, as the case may be. He resorts to his tom-tom, by which he hopes to frighten away the fearful monster. After the eclipse has passed away he turns to his skeptical brethren and says, "I told you so," just as his more civilized brother who prays for rain, and after it comes, no matter whether it is a day or a month afterward, turns upon his incredulous friends, and asks them triumphantly, "Didn't I tell you so?" The tom-tom business in Africa and Christian prayers for rain, are on a dead level with each other. Sinner.--Is God infinite in his wisdom? Parson.--He is. Sinner.--Does he at all times know just what ought to be done? Parson.--He does.