you sought, but yourselves; it would not be eternal riches, but vain and fleeting consolations; it would not be the remedies of faith, but the supports of your self-love.
Thus, be whom you may who now listen to me, imitate the woman of Canaan; be faithful to prayer, and, in the fulfilment of this duty, you will find all the rest sustained and rendered easy. If a sinner, pray: it was through prayer alone that the publican and the sinful woman of the gospel obtained feelings of compunction and the grace of a thorough penitence; and prayer is the only source and the only path of righteousness. If righteous, still pray: perseverance in faith and in piety is promised only to prayer; and by that it was that Job, that David, that Tobias, persevered to the end. If you live amid sinners, and your duty does not permit you to withdraw yourself from the sight of their irregularities and examples, pray: the greater the dangers, the more necessary does prayer become; and the three children in the flames, and Jonah in the belly of a monster, found safety only through prayer. If the engagements of your birth, or of your station, attach you to the court of kings, pray: Esther, in the court of Ahasuerus, Daniel in that of Darius, the prophets in the palaces of the kings of Israel, were solely indebted to prayer for their life and salvation. If you live in retirement, pray: solitude itself becomes a rock, if a continual intercourse with God does not defend us against ourselves; and Judith, in the secrecy of her house, and the widow Anna in the temple, and the Anthonies in the desert, found the fruit and the security of their retreat in prayer alone. If established in the church for the instruction of the people, pray: all the power and all the success of your ministry must depend upon your prayers; and the apostles converted the universe solely because they had appropriated nothing to themselves but prayer and the preaching of the gospel. Lastly, be whom you may, I again repeat it, in prosperity or in indigence, in joy or in affliction, in trouble or in peace, in fervency or in despondency, in lust or in the ways of righteousness, advanced in virtue, or still in the first steps of penitence, pray. Prayer is the safety of all stations, the consolation of all sorrows, the duty of all conditions, the soul of piety, the support of faith, the grand foundation of religion, and all religion itself. O my God! shed, then, upon us that spirit of grace and of prayer which was to be the distinguishing mark of thy church, and the portion of a new people; and purify our hearts and our lips, that we may be enabled to offer up to thee pure homages, fervent sighs, and prayers worthy of the eternal riches which thou hast so often promised to those who shall have well entreated them.
