This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1882 edition. Excerpt: ... XII. THE CONCLUSION. The prayer of faith, when really understood and exercised, will be confessed to be the very highest attainment of the Christian life. And yet it is an attainment which comes from unlearning rather than from learning; from self-abnegation rather than from self-culture; from decrease towards spiritual childhood rather than from increase towards the stature of intellectual manhood. The same condition holds for opening the kingdom of heaven for others as for entering it ourselves, viz., that we "become as little children." To reach down and grasp the secret of simplicity of faith and implicitness of confidence is far more difficult than to reach up and lay hold of the key of knowledge. Hence, how significant it is that in the Scriptures children are made the heroes of faith. "This is the victory that overcometh the world even our faith." And who then are the overcomers? Who are they that have laid hold of the mighty secret of this spiritual conquest ?" Ye are of God little children, and have overcome them." And why?" Because greater is he that is in you than he that is in them." Yes; and just in proportion as we are emptied of self, and schooled back into that second childhood which should follow the second birth, will God be in us most fully and act through us most powerfully. There is a passage in the life of an eminent Christian philosopher which is well worth pondering deeply and seriously in this age of superficial praying. A friend of Coleridge says that standing by his bedside not long before his death he was commenting on the Lord's prayer, when he suddenly broke out: "Oh my dear friend, to pray, to pray as God would have us; to pray with all the heart and strength; with the reason and the will, to believe...