Tuesday Morning — Week 1

O Thou omnipresent and omniscient Jehovah! Thou art about our path, and our lying down; and Thou art acquainted with all our ways. There is not a word in our tongue, but lo! O Lord, Thou knowest it altogether. Thou understandest our very thoughts afar off! Yea the darkness hideth not from Thee, but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to Thee.

Known therefore to Thee are our sins, with every aggravation; and our necessities, with all their circumstances. Yet Thou requirest us to confess our guilt, and to spread our wants before Thee, in order that we ourselves may be suitably affected with them, and be prepared for the promised displays of thy goodness. Every view we take of ourselves convinces us that we lie entirely at thy mercy, and that it is only because thy compassions fail not we are not consumed. We know not the evil there is in one sin; and our iniquities are more in number than the hairs of our head. Thou art our creator; but of the rock that begat us we have been unmindful, and have forgotten the God that formed us. Thou hast nourished and brought up children; but we have rebelled against Thee. Thou hast given us laws, founded in a regard to our welfare as well as thine own glory; but we have said with our lives, if not with our lips, Who is the Lord, that we should obey his voice? Thou art the perfection of beauty, the centre of excellency, the source of all blessedness; and Thee we ought to have loved supremely: but we have loved and served the creature more than the Creator: we have loved idols, and after them we have gone. Instead of praying, Lord, lift Thou up the light of thy countenance upon us, we have asked with the multitude, Who will show us any good? Departing from Thee, we have made flesh our arm. We have leaned on broken reeds, and though they have disappointed our hopes, and pierced us through with many sorrows, we have often returned to the same wretched dependence. Thou hast raised up for us a Saviour; and the gospel has presented to our view a plan of redemption and renovation which the angels desire to look into. But we have crowned all our guilt, by neglecting so great salvation, and turning away from Him that speaketh from heaven; and we deserve to be forever excluded from all the blessings of the cross.

O deal not with us after our desert, but according to our necessity; and where sin has abounded, may grace much more abound. Over all our unworthiness may grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord. It is thy pleasure that we seek Thee. The desires we feel are of thine own producing. We are willing to be saved in thy own way. We love thy salvation; we love it as it is free, and secures to thyself the undivided glory; and we love it as it is holy, and designed to save us from the power as well as the penalty of sin. O visit us with thy salvation! Shine into our hearts, and give us the light of the knowledge of thy glory in the face of Jesus Christ. Enable us by faith to embrace thy unspeakable gift. May we sit at his feet. May we glory in his cross. May we imbibe his spirit. May we follow his example and whatsoever we do, in word or deed, may we do all in the name of the Lord Jesus.

We extend our wishes beyond the little circle now kneeling in thy presence. We have various absent connexions endeared to our hearts: O place them under thy agency as the God of grace; and keep them under thy care as the God of providence.

We would remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and those that suffer adversity as being ourselves also in the body. Address to the hearts of the afflicted the promise, I will be with thee in trouble; thy shoes shall be iron and brass, and as thy days so shall thy strength be.

Let glory dwell in our land, and upon all the glory may there be a defence. Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion; build Thou the walls of Jerusalem. Make bare thine arm in the sight of all the nations; and let all the ends of the earth see the salvation of our God.

May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with us all, now and for evermore. Amen.