You will regard it as the brightest and best of all the seven-the model-day, to which all other days are to be made as like as they can be. Certainly it is the day that will help you most in spiritual things; and which will, if you use it rightly, make its influence felt throughout the week. No one can expect to thrive as a Christian who neglects, or in any way misuses, the Lord's Day.

Now you will come to the services as remembering that it is a great privilege to be allowed to meet God in the sanctuary. "I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord." David did not think attendance at the Lord's house a trouble, or at best an uninteresting duty; but it was with real pleasure, with true delight, with the expectation too of obtaining a blessing, that he prepared to join himself to the companies of people who were moving in that direction. "I was glad." Mark those words!

Value both the prayers

mon.

When you are at church, you will not make the mistake of those who regard the and the sersermon as the most important part of the service, and who slight the prayers; or the other mistake of those who attach so much

Join audibly

in the Church service.

The sermon

may gain from it.

importance to the prayers that they consider the sermon not worth listening to. You will put both the prayers and the sermon in their proper places. Both are important. Both are appointed by God. The purpose of preaching is to prepare people for praying, and where preaching is not attended to, prayer, sooner or later, is sure to go down.

Our Church service is very beautiful: try to understand and appreciate it as it deserves. Notice how much variety there is in it; how admirably contrived is the mingling of prayer and praise, and intercession and thanksgiving, of reading with singing, of Scripture with hymns. Notice, too, how much of the Bible there is in it: what with the Psalms, and Lessons, and Epistles, and Gospels. And notice, also, how much there is for you to do, if you will only do it. The clergyman has only half of the service in his hands: you have the other half.

And now the sermon! Here you have, in all and what you probability, the production of a man who has been carefully thinking over in his study, all the week long, what he shall say to you on the Sunday, and asking God to enable him to say it to your profit. Do you not

think that if you listen attentively, especially if you have asked God for a blessing before you came to church, you will get some instruction? Surely you will. Some of your difficulties will be solved. Some new light about a passage of Scripture will be given. you. Perhaps just the word will be spoken that you want to warn you, or to guide you; for God often puts a message in the mouths of His servants, of the destination of which they are perfectly unconscious; or, at all events, you will be the better, somehow or other, for what you hear; you will be strengthened in your good resolutions, or comforted in trouble.

Always come

of God in the

of a blessing.

This, then, I say: Always come to church, asking and expecting to receive a blessing of to the house some kind from the sermon. The preacher expectation has taken pains to preach, and asked God to help him; you have taken pains to hear, and asked God to help you,-is it likely that God will send you empty away?

You

But then you must not lose the blessing by gossiping at the church-door. must do your best to go quietly and thoughtfully away to your home; you must speak, if you can, only with those whose thoughts

E

with Chris

run in the right direction, and whose words. would tend to deepen, not to efface, any good impression produced upon you.

Conference IV. I have yet a word to say on another tian friends. subject, suggested by the last sentence: intercourse with Christian friends. I suppose I

must not call it a means of grace." Yet it is a most important assistance in spiritual matters. You will not wish to parade your feelings, I know, and yet it will be well to speak sometimes about religion, and about the inner life, to some dear friend whom you can trust, or to some older adviser, or to some person of established Christian character, or to your own clergyman. Such confidence will help you greatly, at times. As to your clergyman, he will not, I am sure, want to be your "father-confessor,”—at least, not if he thinks as I do on such matters,— but he will be thankful to be your adviser and your friend. And there is no reason why he should not be, for did he not prepare you for Confirmation?

I must keep to the next chapter what I wish to say about the Holy Communion.

VI.

THE LORD'S SUPPER.

WHEN you have been confirmed, it is ex- You are ex

pected when

confirmed to

become a communi

pected that you will come before long to the
Lord's Table. You will find it far better not
to delay, for delay generally ends in not cant.
coming at all, but you will look upon it as
your duty and your privilege, for it is both,
to partake of the Holy Cominunion; and
prepare yourself at once for a regular at-
tendance.

You remember, of course, that on the night of His betrayal, our blessed Lord instituted the solemn rite which we are accustomed to call "The Lord's Supper." The disciples who were present on the occasion were the representatives of Christ's people, and, as such, He bade them all partake of the bread and the wine which He had previously