It should be our ambition to bring the worship of the Church Militant into as close a resemblance with that of the Church Triumphant as our circumstances will admit. To this great result each one may contribute something by bringing to Church a thoughtful and prepared mind, a devout heart, and a humble voice. Let but a few worshippers do this, and oftener than we think we shall seem to intercept an echo of that sinless and perfect Worship which is ever carried on above.

We have spoken of the agreement of the members of Christ's Body as that which gives its character to Public Worship. But what are the members without the Head? Only so many bricks of an arch without a key-stone. There can be no agreement without the Head: for it is the Head which holds the members together, not in unity only, but in existence. Not therefore without a very profound connexion of thought does Our Lord thus complete the passage, upon which we have been founding our remarks: "If two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of My Father which is in Heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in My Name, there am I in the midst of them."

There is great significance in the "For." He would have us to understand that it is His Presence in the midst of the two or three gathered together in His Name, which lends all the efficacy to their petitions. The High Priest, He would say, is in the midst of the worshippers, whose functions of Atonement and Intercession are the alone procuring cause of the acceptance of their prayers. Then our last practical recommendation shall be that, as in Private Prayer our thoughts are turned to that God who seeth in secret, so in Public Worship we should seek to realize a rather more definite conception of the Presence of the Incarnate God. The human presence visibly around us in the Church is the pledge, the token, the Sacrament of His. He is among them in all the sympathies of His Humanity, in all the glories of His Divinity, in all the precious

virtues of His Mediatorial Work. And it will be found useful, before the commencement of the Service, and at any of the necessary breaks which occur in the course of it, to occupy the mind with the thought of His Presence. The apprehension of it, and nothing short of the apprehension of it, will impart to Public Worship a mingled sweetness and solemnity, which will constrain us to exclaim with the Psalmist: "How amiable are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts! My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord. Blessed are they that dwell in Thy house: they will be still praising Thee."

CHAPTER XI.

ON SELF-RECOLLECTEDNESS AND EJACULATORY

PRAYER.

"Pray without ceasing."-1 THESS. v. 13.

THE Apostle bids us "pray without ceasing." Yet of our Blessed Lord, the great model, as of every other virtue, so also of Prayer, it is expressly said by the Evangelist St. Luke that, "as He was praying in a certain place, He ceased." The precept and the Example are capable of an easy reconciliation. When it is said that Christ ceased from prayer, it is meant that He ceased from stated prayer, from prayer offered probably upon His knees. When St. Paul exhorts us to " pray without ceasing," he means that we should maintain unbroken the soul's communion with God.

Prayer is to be regarded not only as a distinct exercise of Religion, for which its own time must be set apart, but as a process woven into the texture of the Christian's mind, and extending through the length and breadth of his life. Like the golden thread in a tissue, it frequently disappears beneath the common threads. It disappears, and is hidden from the

eye; yet nevertheless, it is substantially there, like a stream running underground for a certain period of its course. Suddenly, the thread emerges into sight again on the upper surface of the tissue, and suddenly again disappears; and thus it penetrates the whole texture, although occasionally hidden. This is a very just illustration of the matter in hand. Look from without upon the Christian's life, and you will see divers occupations and employments, many of which, it may be, call for the exercise of his mind. But beneath the mind's surface there is an undercurrent, a golden thread of Prayer, always there, though often latent, and frequently rising up to view not only in stated acts of worship, but in holy ejaculations. We are now passing from the consideration of the devotional life of the Christian to that of his practical life, and we make Ejaculatory Prayer the bridge to the latter part of our great subject, because it is the exercise by which business and devotion are interlaced one with another.

Prayer has been truly called the Christian's breath of life. The image applies to Prayer in that broad sense of the word in which the Apostle bids us pray without ceasing, and we cannot gain a better insight into the meaning of the precept, than by developing it a little.

Let us consider, then, the process of natural life. It is carried on by an unintermitted series of inhalations and exhalations. The air is drawn inwards first, and fills the lungs, and then thrown out again, that fresh may be taken in.

Šimilarly, Mental Prayer consists of two processes; recollecting or gathering up the mind, and breathing it out towards God. The first is to enter into the closet of the heart, and shut the door upon all but God. The second is to pray to our Father, which is in secret.

1. To recollect or gather up the mind, is to summon it in from its wanderings (as a shepherd drives home to the fold a stray sheep), and to place it consciously in God's Presence. God, though present every where, has His special residence, as being a pure Spirit, in our

minds. "In Him we live, and move, and have our being." He is somewhere in the recesses of the soul, in the springs of our existence, in that mysterious, dark, cavernous region of our nature, where the wishes, feelings, thoughts, emotions, take their earliest rise. I say, it is a dark region this spirit of ours, or rather this depth of our spirit; even as the Holy of Holies, the heart of the Temple, was perfectly dark, and not lighted by a single window. Yet was there the majesty of the Divine Presence in that small dark chamber, between the outspread wings of the Cherubim. And, similarly, the mind is a sanctuary, in the centre of which the Lord sits enthroned, the lamp of the consciousness burning before Him. All this is the case with our minds, whether we turn our thoughts to it or not. That we should turn our thoughts to it,—that the mind should ever and anon, both amid business and recreation, be called home for a second or two to the Presence of God dwelling in its dark recesses; this is the meaning of recollectedness of spirit. In days of hard and drudging work, in days of boisterous merriment, in days of excitement and anticipation, it is wonderfully refreshing thus to recollect the mind, and place it consciously under the eye of the Divine Majesty. It is like a breath of sweet air coming across us in a foul and crowded alley; or a strain of sweet music stealing up to our window, amid the din and discord of a populous city. Pleasant it is upon the mountains to hear the horn blow, as a signal to the lowing and bleating cattle to withdraw from pasture, and be safely folded for the night. We associate repose and security with that strange wild blare of the rudely manufactured trumpet; and the association is most fascinating. And when the Good Shepherd, by the inward whispers of His Voice, calls us to come back from the wanderings of our thoughts and the excitements of our passions, into our own spirits, there to be alone with God, and consciously under His eye, can there fail of being repose and a halcyon calm in that call?

2. The second process in the maintenance of animal

life is exhalation; the throwing out of the breath which has been inhaled.

This corresponds in nature to what divines have called Ejaculatory Prayer in the spiritual world. Ejaculatory Prayer is Prayer darted up from the heart to God, not at stated intervals, but in the course of our daily occupations and amusements. The word "ejaculatory" is derived from the Latin word for a dart or arrow, and there is an idea in it which one would be loath indeed to forfeit. Imagine an English archer, strolling through a forest in the old times of Crecy and Agincourt, when the yeomen of this island were trained to deliver their arrows with the same unfailing precision as a left-handed Gibeonite" discharging a stone bullet from his sling. A bird rises in the brushwood under his feet, a bird of gorgeous plumage or savoury flesh. He takes an arrow from his quiver, draws his bow to its full stretch, and sends the shaft after the bird with the speed of lightning. Scarcely an instant elapses before his prey is at his feet. It has been struck with unerring aim in the critical part, and drops on the instant. Very similar in the spiritual world is the force of what is called Ejaculatory Prayer. The Christian catches suddenly a glimpse of some blessing, deliverance, relief, a longing after which is induced by the circumstances into which he is thrown. Presently it shall be his. As the archer first draws the bow in towards himself, so the Christian retires, by a momentary act of recollection, into his own mind, and there realizes the Presence of God. Then he launches one short, fervent petition into the ear of that Awful Presence, throwing his whole soul into the request. And, lo, it is done! The blessing descends, prosecuted, overtaken, pierced, fetched down from the vault of Heaven by the winged arrow of Prayer. Do you require Scriptural proof that such immediate answers are occasionally vouchsafed, even as regards mere earthly blessings, to "the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man ?" The proof is ready to our hand. Nehemiah, the cup-bearer, stood with a sad countenance before Artaxerxes the king. The king

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