Find men where you may, they all agree in owning that they owe much to the same Instructor: they all agree in owning that they have grown wiser for the teaching of that unflattering Preceptor, who knows no royal road to truth, and in whose stern school you must stumble once, that you may learn to avoid falling again. And truly here is the best way to learn — the way that sinks the deepest, and is remembered the best. And if it be true, as the proverbial saying would have it, that experience teaches the foolish, surely it is true no less that experience makes the wise. And as experience is the teacher that instructs all men. and instructs them unthanked and unasked, so there are many things which no other can teach us: many lessons we never learn, and many matters we never rightly understand, till we have "learned by experience." We shall never know, for example, what our hearts can feel and bear, by the descriptions of other people; no account can make us understand what great sorrow is, or great anxiety, or buoyant gladness, or hearty gratitude, or fixed determination; we must feel in ourselves the quickened pulse of hopefulness, the laden heart of care, the blankness of disappointment and failure; or we shall never know what they mean. Even Jesus Christ, our Maker, gained that consummate sympathy with us which it became our Saviour to have, through actual experience. But there is one class of subjects one great subject which above all others we must know by experience, or we shall not know at all. My brethren, this is a thing that is hard upon mere human reason; this matter of the real power and efficacy of prayer. If there be any truth in what we believe of the power of prayer, it is the mightiest agent — save God Himself — in all the universe: it is stronger than the hurricane that wrecks a navy: stronger than the great ocean to which man's mightiest works are as a plaything. Christian brethren, let us frankly confess what a weak state, what an insecure position we should be in, if we were taking all this on hearsay. Why, it looks such a truly monstrous deal to believe, that positively for your credit as a reasonable man, you would be half ashamed to say you fancied all this. Never concern yourself to unravel the threads the sceptic has twisted; never set yourself to answer by argument the objections he has raised. It can be done, but there is a far better way. Tell him that your Bible bids you pray, and assures you that prayer shall prevail; but tell him more — and God be thanked if you can say so much — tell him that you have put the matter to the proof! — that you were not content to take the thing on the word of others; that you fairly tried, and that you "learned by experience" that prayer is heard and answered! Another thing that we may learn by rote, but that we never shall really believe till we learn it by experience, is the insufficiency of this world to satisfy the soul; the great truth, that "This is not our rest." For experience alone is enough to bring men to the strong belief, that all worldly things, even when possessed in their intensest degree, leave an aching void within the soul — many a stated man of pleasure, many a successful man of ambition, has told us as much as that — but it needs God's Holy Spirit to touch the soul, before it can take the next step — before it can draw the final conclusion — that the right things for the soul to love and seek are beyond the grave, and that the heart's true home and abiding treasure are there. But we shall give the remainder of our time to looking at one great fact which is best learned by experience — I mean the preciousness, the all-sufficiency, the love and grace, of our blessed Saviour. You remember it is written, "Unto you which believe He is precious." Now that seems to mean, that to those who believe, He is more precious than He is to other people; that, in a peculiarly strong sense, His preciousness is a thing that must be learned by experience. So it is. And it is easy to see how it must be. For the value of a thing is understood fully only by those who know how much they want it. And if a man feels that he does not want a thing — that he can do perfectly well without it — why, he will esteem it as of very little value indeed. Now a perfectly worldly and unconverted man feels he needs food, he cannot do without that; and so of course he sets a value on it. He feels he needs a home to dwell in — he cannot do without that; and so of course he sets a value on it. He feels he needs friends — that life would be a poor, heartless thing without them; and so he sets a value on them. But the quite worldly and unconverted man, who brings everything to a quite worldly estimate, does not feel he needs Christ; he never feels any want of Him; he thinks he can do quite well without Him; and of course he sets no value on Him; of course the Saviour is not precious to that man — how can He be? But, brethren, look to the man who has been convinced of his sin and misery by the Spirit of God; and that only our Redeemer can save us from that dismal estate, and see what he thinks of Christ! Yes, that convicted sinner has found his need of the Saviour. He has learnt that food and raiment, and all things men work hardest for and value most, are not the one thing needful — are worth nothing when compared with a saving interest in the blessed Lamb of God. He has "learned by experience I " He has felt a want, felt that the Saviour alone could supply that want; and he knows what Christ is worth, by what Christ has done!

(A. K. H. Boyd, D. D.)