being, and rolled the stars along? But when we look up to him and say, "Lord, I believe," it fills his very soul with joy. He keeps back nothing from faith, he says if we had faith as a grain of mustard seed, the mountains would be at our bidding and the earth would be our slave.

What can we say now but "Lord, increase our faith"? We are full of questioning and speculation, and cleverness and metaphysics, and we are keen at suggesting difficulties, and clever in the creation and piling of obstacles. I would God I could say always right in the devil's very face when he is grinding at my weakness most, "Lord, I believe."

PRAYER.

ALMIGHTY GOD, we are all sick do thou heal our sicknesses and take our infirmities, and make us well with the health of heaven. We are sick in body, or we are sick in heart: the whole life is crooked and in pain, our very breathing is a cry of distress, and every pulse of our heart is a confession of weakness. Behold our life is a poverty, and our existence is a sigh. The whole head is sick and the whole heart is faint, and there is in us no health. We come to the great Healer, to the Physician that is in Gilead, and to the balm that is there. Others have healed our hurt slightly they have said, "Peace, peace," where there is no peace-now do we come to God our Father, that we may be healed in our heart and made clean in our whole being. Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make us clean. Yet why should we challenge thee thus when thy whole ministry is a welcome to thy love and an utterance of thine infinite gospel? Thou dost shut the door on none, thou hast said, 'Seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you." The grace is upon thy side more than the pleading is upon ours. Thine answer is greater than our prayer; the healing of God is greater than the distress of man. Thou dost pardon with pardons; thy forgiveness is as the waves of the sea, not to be numbered; great and mighty are they, and they come with all the force of thy tender heart. We confess our sins before thee with an open mouth, and with a heart that has no reservation; we cry, “Unclean, unclean, unprofitable, unprofitable, lepers are we all, and cankered in the very heart -God be merciful unto us sinners." The blood of Jesus Christ thy Son cleanseth from all sin; we would now feel its gracious power and answer its cleansing ministry. It is at the cross we find the laver of regeneration, it is on Calvary we are forgiven; the pardons of thine heart are signed with the blood of Christ.

Thou hast given unto us a few days, and we spend them as the fool spends his small heritage. We know not when our breath may be taken from us, yet behold we tell lies and do many deceitful things, and work . before God as if we could claim the residue of our time. Show us that our breath is in our nostrils, that our grave is already dug, and that we are hastening with every breath we draw to the great judgment; and whilst this reflection makes us solemn, may all thy promises be as singing angels in our hearts, making them glad with the encouragements which come of thy grace and approbation. Help us to work with both hands

diligently; may there be no half-heartedness in our industry; may our life be the toil of a slave, because having in it the love which constrains the heart, and we shall call no time or power our own. We would be the slaves of the Lord Jesus; we would be bound to him by every energy and every passion; would call nothing our own; to him would we give ourselves and all we have. Let this be a time of consecration, individual and universal; may every heart call nothing it has its own, but give itself and its possessions to the great Saviour of the race.

Upon the old and the young let thy sunlight fall; upon the venerable trees that have grown many years, and upon the little flowers that gleam at their roots, a few days old, and soon to be cut down and withered. The Lord look upon us in all the relations of our life; let our houses be homes, let our homes be Churches, and let the Church at home be the sweetest place on earth.

Give guidance to those who are in perplexity; put the right key into the hand of the man who is opening the gate that bars his honourable way; speak comfortably unto Jerusalem, and say with thine own voice that her welfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned. Upon all Churches, upon all Christian institutions, upon all schools and universities, upon all men who are in any wise endeavouring to do good, let the blessing of God be poured out to-day in an impartial and refreshing rain. Amen.

Matthew viii. 14-17.

14. And when Jesus was come into Peter's house, he saw his wife's mother laid, and sick of a fever.

15. And he touched her hand, and the fever left her and she arose, and ministered unto them.

16. When the even was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils: and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick :

17. That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses.

"A

WORKING ALL DAY.

The cen

ND when Jesus was come into Peter's house. turion would not hear of the Lord Jesus Christ going to his house it was beneath so great a worker and teacher: it was a humiliation not to be permitted by the sense which the centurion had of Roman dignity and Roman majesty. Said he, “Speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed." Jesus Christ ap

24

CHRIST ENTERS THE HOUSE.

peared to the centurion to be in his right place when he was upon the mountain, when he was upon the sea, when the great blue sky was the only roof over his head. It did not enter into his mind that Jesus Christ could enter a little human habitation. Do not let us make the Lord Jesus Christ too dignified in our social and conventional sense there is more in Christ than what we should limit by the word dignity. I am afraid that some of us keep a long way from God, because his dignity, as we falsely and vainly interpret it, keeps us at a cold distance. We must get to an appreciation of his mind by such words as love, grace, sympathy, condescension, pity. It is in that region that our imagination and our love must move if they would realise all the higher blessings and all the tenderer benedictions which are associated with the Divine name.

"When Jesus was come into the house.' We have been with him at the river-there he was baptized; we have been with him in the wilderness-there he was tempted: we have been with him as he walked by the seaside-there he called disciples to become fishers of men: we have been with him on the mountain-there in soft and musical thunder he addressed the ages. He came into Capernaum, the city; he is getting nearer. To-day he enters the house, and thus completes his relation to all points of human life and human need. He would come into your house if you would let him he would come nearer still, he would come into your heart if you were willing. "Behold I stand at the door and knock if any man hear my voice and will open the door I will come in." He cannot force his way into your heart-house-he could take the slates off your roof, pour down his rain upon your little fire until it was quenched, but he cannot force a child's love the feeblest life can mock him with bitter taunting and keep him outside. Know thy power it is a mischievous strength, but know, O man, that it lies within thy power to smite God in the face and to mock him with every throb of thine heart. Know thy power, realise thy strange weird majesty-that thou art almost God!

When he was come into the house, he found a shadow there. There is a shadow in every house, there is a fever in every family.

"There is no flock, however watched or tended,

But one dead lamb is there;

There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended,

But has one vacant chair."

If we could find a house in which there was no fever, no death, no pain, no sorrow, no poverty, we should all want to live in it.

But Peter was a disciple, he was an incipient apostle, he was the senior disciple; great honours were in store for his name in the ages, and yet the shadow was in his house. You would think that God would send all the shadows upon the atheist, and would pile night on him so thickly as to make him mad with darkness. Yet it is not so in the Divine government. Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye, endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons, for what son is there whom the father chasteneth not? If ye be without chastening then are ye bastards and not sons. Doubt your sonship if the chastening be little and infrequent.

Who would not have spared the senior disciple-who would not have made him the focal point on which should have converged all the rays of the Divine approbation, so that he might have been like a light seen afar, blazing forth the excellence and the wondrousness of the Divine election. The thief that lived next door had less fever in his house than Peter had. Sometimes the bad man's ground brings forth plentifully, sometimes the pampered and overfed Dives has wealth upon wealth, while the praying soul is outside with dogs for his companions and crumbs as his portion. All this cannot be reconciled within the narrow limits of time. We want more field: the line that appears to be straight is only apparently straight, because of the limited points within which it is drawn. Extend the line and it partakes of the shape of the world upon whose surface it is drawn. So within these narrow points of time, the rocking cradle and the deep tomb, there is not scope enough to reconcile all the divine purposes and actions and mysteries; we need more field, an ampler horizon. We shall get it by-and-by, and then we shall know how God has been dealing with us in forcing rivers out of our eyes and in making our heads a burning pain. O child of God, much praying man, wearied almost with crying at heaven's gate, proceed, persevere, the sigh of thy weakness shall be mightier far than the