SERVANT OF ALL.

XXIX.

PRAYER.

ALMIGHTY GOD, we bless thee that thou hast sent thy Son to our broken-heartedness, our mourning, our unutterable distress and fear. Thou didst not send him to our greatness and power, but to our littleness and weakness and utter insufficiency. The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost-we bless thee for this, for in that word "lost" we find our own true state. All we like sheep have gone astray : we have turned every one to his own way, there is no man to stand up before thee and challenge thy righteousness—each of us puts his hand upon his mouth and his mouth in the dust, and says, “Unclean, unprofitable, unworthy.' We see Jesus Christ, the Man we need, the Angel of the covenant, the Minister of light and hope, the Priest who offers his blood. Thou dost no longer require at the hands of man the cedar wood and the scarlet and the hyssop-there is a fountain opened in the house of David for sin and for uncleanness, and to that fountain we now repair. Lord, meet us every one, and give us cleansing of heart, sanctification of thought and will and purpose and hope, and make us without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, complete in thine own holiness, beautiful with thine own light.

Thou hast been with us in the days that are gone, thou hast given us indeed to see the grave, but the tomb has been in a garden: we would look at the garden rather than at the grave, for all that sleep in Christ are roots that shall blossom and come to great fruitfulness in thine own heavenly harvest. O thou, who dost sow the earth with the dead, thou wilt surely put in thy sickle and reap, and the harvest shall live for ever.

Thou hast smitten us sorely, and thou hast mingled some of our cups so bitterly that we shrink from tasting them, for surely they are full of what men call death-but thou hast strengthened us to drink those cups even to the dregs, and in the drinking of them there has been health. Thou hast led the blind by a way that they knew not; thou hast holden our eyes sometimes that we might not know thee, that we might accost thee as a stranger, and tell thee our complaint, in the bitter tone of despair. Thou hast dealt wondrously with us, our hearts have been ungrateful, our eyes have been quick to see the disadvantages of life, but

our vision has been slow to discern the beauty of the divine presence, and the certainty of the divine way. We will fill our mouth with mourning because our heart is full of accusation, and each of us will say, "God be merciful unto me a sinner," for every breath is evil and there is a taint even in our prayers. Keep us evermore at the Cross, bind us to the sacrifice offered thereupon; other hope we have none, out of that great darkness there streams a startling light, and out of that infinite woe there comes infinite reconciliation. Help us to find in the Son of God, God the Son, and all that our hearts ever need.

Do thou undertake for us all the remainder of our days. What are they but a handful? We are as a hireling whose day is dying: the Lord help us to count with miserly care all the remaining moments, and may each of them be spent in thy sight and fear. Our grave is already dug, death is waiting for us, behold his sword is lifted up in the air and it awaits thy bidding that it may fal!. Spare us yet a little longer, that we may serve thee with a more glowing love, with a more faithful diligence, and with a more joyous success. The Lord help us in all things to be true, honourable, and good, pure and wise-the Lord set his seal upon us that we may be claimed by none other. In the day when the wind is strong, do thou shelter us with thine own hand, in the time when the road is steep and difficult, do thou surround us with thy defences and encourage us by all thy tender promises, and under all circumstances may thy will be our joy, in thy purposes may we find our souls rest, and hiding ourselves in the sanctuary of thy wisdom and goodness, may grace, mercy, and peace fill our hearts with a holy calm.

Pity those who have no pity upon themselves, whose life is a daily selflaceration and self-loss speak to the man who is far away from the light and house of God, and bring him near by the gracious compulsion of love. Send messages to our sick ones, and bid the most timid hope again. Thou knowest what messages to breathe in the ear that is closing to the voices of time, thou knowest what gospel will fall most gently on the failing and sinking heart of man. We commit all our loved ones to thy tender care -whom thou watchest are well watched, thou shepherdly, fatherly, motherly God.

Have in Thy holy keeping all for whom we ought to pray the bereaved and the desolated, those who are spending their first Sabbath as widows and orphans and lonely ones, who are feeling the cold of a great emptiness, the bitterness of all that death can bring to bear upon our poor trembling life. Let thy consolations abound where afflictions have had their way, and let all thy tenderest solaces spread themselves over the lives that have been desolated and blackened by severe bereavement.

The Lord speak comfortably to every heart, bring back the old man's youth, speak to those who are in trouble, saying that afflictions do not spring out of the dust. Hear the glad song of human thankfulness, listen to the bitter reproaches of self accusation, and hear thou in Heaven thy dwelling-place, and when thou hearest, Lord, forgive. Amen.

Matthew viii. 1-4.

1. When he was come down from the mountain great multitudes followed him.

2. And behold there came a leper (Lev. xiii, xiv.) and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean (the disease was not contagious).

3. And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean. And immediately* his leprosy was cleansed.

4. And Jesus saith unto him, See thou tell no man: but go thy way, show thyself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them.

GREAT ELOQUENCE SUPPORTED BY GREAT

BENEFICENCE.

HEN he was come down from the mountain."

"WHE

The

great speech had been made, the grand propagation of new ideas had begun, a wondrous intellectual apocalypse had been opened, charming and dazzling the inner vision with all its mystery of separate yet blended colours, and now the great action is commenced. Herein you have the hemispheres of Christianity : it is a great speech, and it is also a great healing it is an eloquent word and it is an eloquent practice. It requires the mountain from which to project its great deliverances of an intellectual and spiritual kind it does not exhaust itself by that exercise, it has not only strength enough left to come down the mountain, but having descended from the mountain and entered into the city, it has strength, sympathy, patience, tenderness, and every other requisite for the healing and the redemption of man.

Wonderful is that word in the sixty-first chapter of Isaiah, wherein Christ, forecasting the ages, says, "The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because he hath sent me to preach the gospel to the meek, he hath sent me to the broken-hearted, to them that mourn, and to those that are in captivity." Jesus Christ did not come to the Scribes and to the Pharisees, the Son

* "Our Lord performed his first miracles immediately, that he might not appear to have had any difficulty in performing them but after he had established his authority, he frequently interposed a delay salutary to men."-Bengel.

6

THE LEPER'S APPEARANCE.

of man did not come to our intellectual capacity and self-contented sufficiency; he came to the meek and lowly and broken-hearted and mourning and captive, and unless we be in one or other of these conditions the Son of God will speak to us an unknown tongue; we shall not recognise one syllable in all his gospel; it will shoot over our heads as a light not meant for our darkness. But if we be in the condition described in the words given in the prophecy of Isaiah, then every word he speaks will be a word to us, the very word we need, the only word as it would seem that the heart could possibly understand. We determine by our moral condition what the gospel is to be to us. Given a right state of heart, and every hymn will lift you to heaven, every petition in the prayer will broaden and gladden your life, but given a wrong state of the heart, proud, seif-sufficient, self-contained, unconscious of guilt, wanting in contrition and compunction, and God's own word would be to you an idle tale, ill-pronounced and pointless.

"When he was come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed him, and behold there came a leper." What is the meaning of this startling distinction? Why not have included the leper in the multitudes? Why this broad plural and this sharp singular together? It is always so: both these relations to Christ are right; man never knows himself really and truly till he has been both part of a multitude and set aside in his absolute and untouched personality. You say you can read the Bible at home and therefore need not come to church. No. There is a church-reading, and you cannot have it at home. There is in you

a multitudinous element which can only be recognised and satisfied in the great congregation. There is also another side to your nature: you must separate yourself from the multitude and be nobody but yourself, frightened of yourself, so much yourself as to be a fear and a terror and a distress, because of the pressure of your want and the infinite hideousness of your personal transgression. It is good sometimes to be in the religious crowd; we are then dispossessed of some littlenesses that cling to the best of us. The mere friction, the subtle sympathy, the feeling that man is larger than any single individual-these have a peculiar influence upon the rightly-constituted mind, giving it solemnity, nobility, dignity, setting it in its right relation and perspective and colour.

"Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together as the manner of some is."

Yet there came a leper. The leper always makes room for himself. There are some men that cannot be pluralised, they have a whole corner to themselves. It is marvellous into what little bulk even a great multitude can shrink when a leper comes near. You thought there was no room before; let a leper come, and the space on which the multitude can stand is much lessened. Every one of us is a leper, but not yet known to be such. You would not be allowed to sit where you are now if your real character was known. Every man must feel his own leprosy and go with his own prayer, and pierce the multitude, and get through it to have his own interview with the Son of God. We are not saved in great swelling crowds; we must go one by one, and each state his own case in his own words to the only healer of human life. I need not teach you a prayer: lepers are mighty in prayer. Leprosy kindles wit, leprosy sharpens a man's tongue into a keen accent, leprosy teaches brief speech, but ringing and telling, without one waste word, ear-piercing and making God himself hear. Leprosy batters upon heaven's door with a violence that God never neglects.

A sweet prayer, a full, tender prayer is the leper's-" Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean." Go and stand beside the publican, that other leper, and hear his prayer-“ God be merciful unto me, a sinner." Go beside that cross where the better thief dies, and hear his prayer-"Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. A prayer in a sentence you have in each case; not a long argument, and yet you could sooner add a beam to the sun than you could add one touch of beauty to this prayer. The leper was no literary man; he was not skilled in phrase-cutting, and in word-setting; he was no clever lapidary, cunning in giving facets to words, that they might catch the light and throw it back again most beautifully-his only teacher was his heart. When will men listen to that great teacher, the hot heart, wild in misery, mad with despair, almost in hell because of selfcompunction? There are times when our life does not sharpen itself into this most leprous necessity, and at those times we need longer prayers. Then we may need the help of our friends to