OF PRAYER. 311 and regular devotions ; that he is infi- nitely above attending to our paltry con- cerns, though God himself anticipated this objection, when he condescended to declare, " He that offereth me thanks and praise, he honoureth me."- One says, he can adore the Author of nature in the. contemplation of his works; that the mountains and the fields are His altar for worship. Another says, that his notion of religion is to deal honestly in his ,commerce with the world ; both insist that they can serve God any where, and. every where. We know they can, and we hope they do ; but our Saviour, who knew the whole make of man, his levity, instability, and unfixedness, and who was yet no friend to the formalist or the superstitious, not only commands,. at the hour of prayer, our entering into the closet, but our shutting the door, -a tacit reproof, perhaps, of the indevotion" of the Sadducean, as well as the pub- licity of -the Pharisaic religion, but cer-
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