from these distinguished privileges if we neglect to pray. How many Christians there are, who often wish they had a Luther for their minister, because they feel dissatisfied with their spiritual progress under him to whose charge they may have been entrusted by the great Head of the church! And yet the cause of this may be traced to their own want of constant and of earnest prayer. Prayer is the key that unlocks the holy place where Jesus meets his people at the mercy-seat, to dispense the gifts which have been purchased by his precious blood. And when the united petitions of ministers and people ascend in an unceasing stream of sacred incense to a throne of grace, blessings may be expected to descend in rich abundance on the church. But perhaps it may be considered that we have digressed from our subject. We return, then, to the circumstance which more immediately claims our attention. We are informed that Jesus was praying when he was transfigured; nay, it is remarkable that St. Luke represents his special object of ascending the mountain to have been in order to devote himself to this sacred engagement. "It came to pass about an eight days after these sayings, he took Peter, and John, and James, and went up into a mountain to pray." Prayer was as much the Saviour's duty, as it is the duty of any of his people. He had been expressly commanded by his Father to ask of him to give him the heathen for his inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession. All his works, whilst he was tabernacling in the flesh, were accompanied with prayer; and his present exaltation at the right hand of his heavenly Father, instead of suspending, rather imparts a more sublime intensity of fervour to his petitions. In vain had he shed his blood without this; for his prayers are as essential for the salvation of sinners, as his sufferings on the cross for their redemption; and therefore the apostle, in the twenty-fifth verse of the seventh chapter of the epistle to the Hebrews, connects the unlimited ability of Jesus to save, not only with his having offered himself as a sacrifice, but also with his ever living to make intercession for us. O! how welcome and delightful must be the accents of supplication to the ears of the Lord God of Sabaoth, when he withholds blessings, even from his well-beloved Son, until he ask for them! And how necessary is prayer, when Jesus cannot obtain blessings without it! There is a reserve manifested by the Holy Spirit in this, as in other instances, as to the contents of our Saviour's petitions. Most probably they had some reference to that splendid scene in his earthly history, into which he was about to enter. We may imagine him to have addressed his heavenly Father in language somewhat similar to that which he employed when he was about to devote himself as a spotless victim on the cross: "Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee.