PRAYER.

UNTO thee, O Lord, is our prayer directed; hear thou in heaven thy dwelling-place, and when thou hearest, Lord, forgive. It is a prayer from the heart which thou thyself hast given us to pray. We pray to know thee more clearly, to follow thee more steadfastly, to serve thee more obediently. This is the Lord's prayer; this is no prayer of our own selfishness; this also cometh forth from the Lord of hosts, bearing upon its every letter the sign that God did teach it to our hearts. We pray this prayer, as all others, that are true and honest, at the Cross, the great altar, the blessed mercy-seat; there prayer is its own answer, prayer is turned into praise; the intercession of Christ magnifies our requests, and assures their fulfilment, according to the wisdom and tenderness of God. If we ask aught amiss thou dost not call it prayer, and thou wilt not answer our ignorance; if we ask aught aright it is of thy teaching; if we ask it at the Cross we have it whilst we are yet pleading for it. This is the mystery of thy love; this is the wonder and the miracle of prayer. Lord, hear us when we ask to be forgiven: the load of yesterday is too heavy for our strength, the shadow of our iniquity plunges us into sevenfold night; but where sin abounds, doth not grace much more abound? Can any black billows of iniquity overtop the Cross? Doth it not rise high above all oceans of wickedness? Is it not a sign that the mercy of the Lord endureth for ever? Truly men have wandered far from thee, but thou canst find them in their lost estate, and bring them back with rejoicing. This is the purpose of the Gospel, this is the one object of the Son of God-he came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance; they that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. He came to seek and to save the lost; Lord, he came therefore to seek and to save us. All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way; there is none righteous, no, not one. Thou hast come after us, thou Son of man, thou Son of God; seek us until thou dost find us, and restore us to the household we have left. Be with us all the day; give insight, strength, wisdom, force of character; give us sensitiveness, that we may feel the life that is round about us. Create within us Christly sympathies, that we may answer all the need and distress that mark the days through which we pass, and give us the living, holy, eternal Spirit, that our bodies may become his temples, and our minds his dwelling-place. These are great requests, but they touch not the boundlessness of thy love; in so far as they are pure and wise thou wilt give us the answer ere we say Amen,

WE

Chapters iv., v.

THE GLORY OF THE CHURCH.

E cut up our time into days and years, little spaces and periods, and we magnify them exceedingly by the trifling incidents which occur within them; but to the prophetic gaze the whole question of time was divided into two-the first ' days, and the last days; the days before Christ, and the days after Christ. As to all that went between, it was matter of detail and necessary progress, and sequential development. How much we lose by frittering away our time by a frivolous division into parts, and minor parts, and major parts! Thus we are vexed by detail, exceedingly tormented, and our minds are clouded, and the horizon is shut out, and we are the victims of little views and small conceptions and narrow prejudices. Why do we live in the valley when we might live on the hilltop? The higher we ascend the more distant is the view. There is poetry in distance, there is music in the horizon; but who can find anything in smoke and cloud and fog but depression and fear, and loss of those higher enthusiasms that ought to rule our life. Arise, awake! Climb any hill that you can get your feet upon; it is good to be much in the upper air. Politically and socially, we are always beginning and ending; we are in a circle of elections and depositions and reconstructions, but in the spirit of our Lord we are seated with himself upon the circle of eternity, and oh, how small everything appears far away yonder! Yet what trouble the inhabitants are in! how they are voting and canvassing and knocking at each other's doors, and exciting one another in momentary fury about nothing! Yet if all this inferior and temporary business must be done it can be best done in the spirit of eternity. It is when we have been most in heaven that we can most effectually and successfully handle the affairs of time. All depends upon the point of approach: if we approach the work from below it will be all uphill toil; if we descend upon it from communion with God we shall bring the whole stress of our strength to bear upon it, and a touch will have in it the force of a battering-ram. Why all this toiling, and upheaving, and struggling, and strenuous endeavour, when life might be

made a joy; when life might be made to grow the flower of peace and the fruit of plenty, and the whole action might be a movement of triumph? Men will not be right until they are geometrically right; they must have the right point of origin; they must put themselves into proper figure; they must accept something that was in the universe before they came consciously into it; they must receive, and adore, and obey the will of God. The prophets looked forward to Christ, and we do just the same. We talk about ancient prophets-there is nothing in the world but prophecy. Yet we have in our transient wisdom classified men into major prophets and minor prophets, and we go to the Old Testament for prophets of all sorts and qualities, forgetting that Jesus Christ is the greatest Prophet of all, and that Christians are still in the region of prophecy, and that if we could get out of the region of prophecy, we should soon get into the region of monotony, and the region of monotony lies close to the region of despair. It is hope that saves us; it is prophecy that gives us all our music and higher cheer and nobler enthusiasm ; it is the beyond that holds our home, and it will be the beyond eternities hence. To see the invisible is to live; to lay hold of the eternal is to be safe for evermore.

"But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established " (iv. 1).

There is a word wanting there; at least, the word is wanting in the English. The word was in the language of the prophet and in the tone of the prophet. The word "established" may be accepted as conveying a sense of only temporary security. We speak of our establishments, we speak of an established institution; but in so using the term we are aware that the establishment is regulated by certain unwritten and necessary laws, which govern the rise, the flourishing, and the decay of empire and institution. Micah used a word which means abidingly established, for ever firm, eternally secure. Not established even as a mountain is established, for mountains were planted that they might be torn up. Below the mountain there is a fire mightier than they, and that gleesome, grim, playful fire makes toys of the mountains, shapes them and reshapes them, lifts them up and tears them down; and yet

we speak of the everlasting hills. Micah is now speaking of an eternal settlement, a position that never can be disturbed, part and parcel of the duration, because part and parcel of the quality of God. Where shall the mountain of the Lord's house be established ?-on "the top of the mountains." Whatever is on the top of the mountain is higher than the mountain. A child standing on the Andes, or Teneriffe, or Himalayan glories, is higher than they all. The little child looks down upon the mountain it stands upon; the mountain was never so high as that child is. Here is the mountain of the house of the Lord; it is a mountain upon a mountain. The house of the Lord itself is spoken of under the figure of a mountain, and the mountains of the earth have to carry the mountain of God. They are all his; he made the staircase as well as the temple; he made the vestibule as well as the palace; he made the earth first, and then he built upon it; he made the mountain first, and then he set his Church on the top of it. The meaning is, that the Church is to be the uppermost institution, the sanctuary of God is to be at the top of things, and out of it is to come law; out of it also is to come the spirit of righteousness, and out of it, day by day, is to come the spirit of peace, the spirit of benediction. We must be right at the top, or we never can be right otherwhere. Given a proper sovereignty, a rule of righteousness, truth, beauty, love, music, honour, and we shall have a world at peace. Who is on the throne? is the uppermost question. Who reigns? What governs ?-for the "what" in that case is larger than the "who." Say righteousness is on the throne, and the earth may be at peace; say the highest interests of humanity as a whole are represented by the throne, and no misfortune can befall that symbol of majesty. Every Church that is selfish must be torn down; nay, may we change the phrase, and say, Why tear it down? Tume is against it; the ages coming and going are against it; the spirit of liberty is against it; Providence is against it. Distress not thyself, therefore, with any tearing down violence, for all bad institutions, political, ecclesiastical, theological, social, will fall, and no man shall care to look into their dishonoured graves.

What a wonderful forecast was this on the part of the villager

Micah! The prophecies of these men seem to my own mind not only to suggest, but to confirm their inspiration. This is not only talk. Here are men that shoot out above us all, miles and miles beyond. They are in the heavens, whilst we are on the earth. Yet they were unlearned men-they were rustics, they were villagers; they laid down their credentials, and in those credentials there is nothing of so-called ancestral and hereditary glory. But how they lived! They sat down as guests at the banqueting-table of the ages. Micah, the villager, comes and sits down at the latter-day feast; he is a guest of the Lord, and takes part in the song of festival. We might have more joys if we understood that all things are ours. All time belongs to the children of light. We are not bounded by the little grey dewy morning of the present; we have all the mornings that ever grew in the garden of the horizon. We are only poor because we are faithless. If we had faith we should have all time, all strength, all confidence, and all peace. Lord, increase our faith.

What does Micah see? Whole nations coming to the Lord, and saying to one another,

"Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem" (iv. 2).

Here is a popular sentiment; here is, indeed, a universal sentiment. At present our ideal Christian life is represented by a one-man ministry. If you close your eyes, and look upon the ideal Church of to-day, it is that there shall be a congregation, and one man shall be addressing it; and that one man shall sustain the position of exhorter, and in high, poignant, hortatory tones he shall call men, and warn men, and bless men. Micah saw a much larger ministry; he said, The time will come when the people will exhort one another; when all the congregations shall mutually excite one another to higher enthusiasm and nobler endeavour. Wherever you meet a man he will say, Come to the mountain of the house of the Lord; wherever you see an assembly of men they shall, with one concurrent and dominating voice, say, Come! and their call will be to festival, to banqueting,