Page:The rock of wisdom.djvu/32

 reasonable spiritual sacrifice acceptable unto God through Jesus Christ by saying: Our father who art in heaven, we should always begin our prayer with proper thoughts of God's will concerning us, and what thought of him is so proper as those suggested by these words, namely his goodness and his greatness, as a father he is good as a heavenly father he is great and glorious, thus we are taught to approach him both with confidence and with reverence as the great creator of all men, that God may in a general sense be called the father of all, but it is in a high and more endearing sense that he is called a father being reconciled to believing sinners through the blood of Jesus Christ, God is angry with the wicked every day he doth not look down upon them with approbation, nor do they look up to him with confidence and love, therefore this prayer is not fit for the use of a mail who lives in sin, whosoever is carnal minded is an enemy to God, and how dare the swearer, the liar, the drunkard, the fornicator and all that abominable crew, to call God a father, God will not own the relation of such men's prayer; might they not rather cry to their father who dwelleth in hell fire, the Devil, for Christ said to such persons ye are of your father the Devil, and the Just of your father ye will do, John 8 c. 44 v. he was a murderer from the beginning, for he is a liar and the father of it, and tell me what intelligent gentleman or lady ought to have communion with such a being as that, and an evil spirit as called, I often thought to myself if the Europeans had that inveteracy against the Devil, winch they have against the sons of Ethiopia, they would all depart from iniquity and get safe into the kingdom of eternal bliss, I have often wondered in my mind to see the union that did exist between the Indians and the Europeans, although for many years they have been a scalping of them, the Ethiopians have been here all the time laboring for them, and what they did not give in meal they gave in malt, and they hold us all to be aliens in body, but we by the grace of God feel ourselves to be citizens in heart, God will hear our groans and cries by night and day and dark as our skins be, our oath will stand on a square with him so that we can part on the level and view the sun that high meredian I suppose, this is something like the the prodigal son, gone away from home, the