Prayer

O ALMIGHTY and merciful father, who have been pleased to manifest Thyself to Your sinful creatures, as a man, by assuming a humility here below, and afterwards glorifying it, or making it one with Thyself, for the purpose of giving Your creatures continual access to You, we desire to praise and glorify Your holy name for this Your gracious condescension, and most adorable manifestation of Thyself. We implore at the same time the aid of Your holy spirit, to open our eyes to a right and edifying view of the wondrous works, which You were pleased to perform, during Your sojournings here below, for the benefit and instruction of Your church. Enable us thus to see that all the miracles worked by You on the bodies of men, for the removal of bodily disease and infirmity, were striking representative figures of the infinitely more important miracles which You are ever disposed to work in our souls or spirits. And may this consideration lead us ever to apply to You in Your glorified humanity, for Thy divine and healing virtue, under every pressure of our manifold spiritual infirmities and disorders. Be You our restorer from blindness to sight; from our natural deafness to the faculty of hearing; from our natural dumbness to the faculty of speaking; from the leprosy of polluted and perverted affections, to purity and rectitude; from the palsy of obstructed spiritual life, to its free circulation; from the death and grave of our natural evils and errors, to resurrection-life and ascension-glory, through the communication of Your most adorable love and wisdom! May we thus be taught humbly and gratefully to acknowledge Thee, not only as our best friend, but as our most skilful physician, and not only as the primary cause and source of original life, but as the divine repairer of all its breaches, as our redeemer from sin, and as the divine parent of new and heavenly life in us!

Enable us thus to see and to perceive, that of Yours infinite love and mercy You are ever disposed to perform the same works at this day in every individual mind, which You were pleased to perform in Your church, in the days of Your divine ministration here below, by instructing, healing, feeding, strengthening, purifying it, and finally, by raising it from the death of sin to an eternal conjunction with You in the love and the life of righteousness. And may this consideration lead us ever to attend to Your divine presence and operation, and not only so, but also to co-operate with You in all Your mighty works , from a full conviction that such co-operation can alone qualify us either to discern Your works, or to be made sensible of the inestimable blessings involved in them. Thus may we humbly hope to become of the happy number of those of whom You have been pleased to declare, He that believes in Me, the works that I do shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do, because I go to the Father: And thus too being successively taught, and led, and healed, and nourished, and raised from the dead by Your mercy and omnipotence, we will give You thanks for ever, and will show forth Your praise from generation to generation. amen.

Our Father, which art in heaven, etc.