and our wisdom is not to be discouraged if we find, upon close Self-examination, as we shall assuredly find, that much which looks well before men is hollow and defective when tried by the touchstone of God's Word. Suffice it, if with trembling confidence we are able tʊ make out, that we are under the lead of Grace, and following that lead. Motives more defecated from the dregs of natnre, more purely and exclusively gracious, will come, if we press towards the mark, with a greater measure of spiritual attainment. If our conscience should affirm upon the whole the presence in us of earnest secret prayer, that is a great point for humble thankfulness; because it is hard to see how secret prayer can be prompted by any but a religious motive, or how it can fail to be due to the supernatural Grace of God.

But we must hasten to bring these thoughts to a close. And let the close of a Chapter, whose great scope has been to render the reader dissatisfied with himself, be devoted to assure him that this dissatisfaction will avail him nothing, except as it leads him to a perfect, joyful, and loving satisfaction with his Saviour. To have probed their own wounds, and pored over their own inflamed and envenomed frames, would have availed the poisoned Israelites nothing, unless, after such a survey of their misery, they had lifted their eyes to the brazen serpent. "Look unto Him," therefore, "and be ye healed." Judged by the criterion of the highest motive, nothing can be more miserably defective that the best righteousness of the best man. It flows indeed from the Holy Spirit within him; but even the influences of the Spirit derive an adınixture of infirmity from flowing through the tainted channels of the human will and affections. It

was not so with the Lord Jesus. The nature which He took of the pure Virgin was subject to all the physical, but none of the moral, infirmities of our nature. His heart always beat true to God's glory and man's salvation;-a magnetic needle ever pointing to that great pole, not shaken even for a moment from its stedfastness by the vacillation of lower and less perfect motives. And His singleness of aim, His piety and benevolence of conduct is ours,-God be praised,-not only to copy, but also to appropriate. Take it, Chris tian; it is thine. Delight in it, as God delights in it, and thou shalt be agreed with God, and shalt stand before Him at the last day in the white robe, pure as driven snow; not having thine own righteousness which is of the law, but that which is by the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.

CHAPTER V.

OF INTERCESSORY PRAYER.

"< They made the breastplate:

and they set in it four rows of stones: And the stones were according to the names of the children of Israel, twelve, according to their names, like the engravings of a signet, every one with his name according to the twelve tribes."-Exod. xxxix. 9, 10, 14.

THE Spouse in the Canticles, who represents the Church, cries to the heavenly Bridegroom, "Set me as a seal upon thine heart." Christ answers this prayer by interceding for each of His people in Heaven, by bearing upon His heart the wants, trials, troubles, sins of each, and by pleading for each the merits of his

most precious Death and Passion. In the seventeenth chapter of St. John's Gospel, which contains the great high-priestly prayer of Our Lord, we find Him commencing this office of Intercession. "I pray for them," says He of His disciples. The Intercession then com-* menced; but it has been continuing ever since; it is prolonged through all time; it embraces not the Apostles only, but every soul of the redeemed. Of this Intercession the breastplate of the Jewish high priest supplies a beautiful figure. In the breastplate there were twelve precious stones, arranged in four rows of three, upon each of which was written the name of one of the twelve tribes. The breastplate, of course, when worn, would rest upon the priest's heart,—would rise and sink with every palpitation of the breast. When he appeared before God in his full sacerdotal attire, there would be the twelve names upon his heart, indicative of his love and care for the whole people of Israel. Names! the names of those with whom we are well acquainted, how much they imply! how true to nature is that Scripture idiom, or phraseology, which makes the name stand for the whole character! Let but the name of a person familiar to us be mentioned in our hearing, and what an instantaneous rush takes place into the mind of the personality of the man,—of his temperament, manners, features, way of thinking and acting, in short of all his physical and mental peculiarities! The names upon the high priest's breastplate betoken the individuality of Christ's Intercession for his people. Not a sparrow is forgotten before God. And not a single want or woe of a single soul is forgotten by the God-man, when He intercedes.

It was observed, in a recent Chapter, that every Christian is in a certain important sense a priest, con

secrated in Baptism and Confirmation to offer up spiritual sacrifices to God. Accordingly every Christian must intercede, because Intercession is one of the priestly functions. The Intercession of the great High Priest for the whole Church is ever rising, like a cloud of fragrant incense, to the Throne of Grace. And it should be our ambition to throw, each one for himself, our little grain of incense into His censer. The prayer, which is offered by the Head in Heaven for the whole Body, should be re-echoed by the members here on earth.

The consideration of Intercessory Prayer properly follows that of Self-examination. They are at the opposite poles of the Christian's devotional exercises. Self-examination is the most interior, as Intercession is the most exterior, of those exercises. The one is a retiring into oneself and shutting out the whole world; the other is a going forth in sympathy and love towards other men, an association of oneself with their wants, wishes, and trials. Hence these exercises are very necessary to keep one another in check. The healthy action of the mind requires that both shall continually be practised. By undue and overstrained self-inspection the mind is apt to become morbid and depressed, and to breed scruples, which tease and harass without producing any real fruit. The man becomes a valetudinarian in religion, full of himself, his symptoms, his ailments, the delicacy of his moral health; and valetudinarians are always a plague, not only to themselves, but to every body connected with them. One tonic adapted to remedy this desponding, timid, nervous state of mind, is an active sympathy, such as comes out in Intercessory Prayer, with the wants and trials of others, a sympathy based upon that precept of the holy

Apostle's, "Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others."

Observe, first, the great importance attached to this duty in Holy Scripture, and in that which is a faithful uninspired echo of Holy Scripture, the Prayer Book In the Old Testament you find Abraham winning by Intercession the preservation of the cities of the plain on condition-a condition, alas! not fulfilled-that ten righteous were found therein. In the New Testament you find the early Church winning by Intercessory Prayer the preservation of the life of St. Peter from the sword of Herod, on which life was suspended, humanly speaking, the existence of the infant community. But let us come at once to the Lord's Prayer, as containing by implication the most striking of all precepts on the subject. If the Lord's Prayer is to be the great model of Prayer, as it surely is, how much Intercession ought not our Prayers to contain! This extraordinary Prayer is so constructed, that it is impossible to use it, without praying for all other Christians as well as ourselves. Intercession, instead of being a clause added on to it, is woven into its very texture. Break off the minutest fragment you please, and you will find intercession in it. Oil and water will not coalesce; pour them together, and the one will remain on the surface of the other. But wine and water interpenetrate one another; in every drop of the mixed liquid there are both elements. When we pray for others, we usually add some paragraphs at the close of our ordinary prayers, distinct from them, as oil, though placed upon water, remains distinct. But in the Lord's own model Prayer, the Intercession and the petitions for self inter penetrate one another; the petitioner, who uses it verbatim et literatim, never employs the singular number.