The position and circumstances of "Christ's Church militant here in earth" must always be such as, to render her necessities for the most part the same; a truth which must therefore hold good with regard to the nature of the supply; and so must extend to the form in which the necessity is expressed, and the supply sought. The first "prayer of faith" that was ever set before God as incense, that occasioned a new and peculiar "joy in heaven," and "in the presence of the angels of God," would be appropriate to the faith of to-day, and until time shall be no longer. The material sacrifice of Abel, to which God had respect, is more than a type-it is the germ of all the spiritual sacrifices of all believers, which on the same grounds, and embodying the same truth, will always be acceptable to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. The prayer of the publican is only an echo, and a clear and distinct though a long-distant one, of Abel's expressive offering; and the silent but significant eloquence of the copious tears that washed the feet of Jesus, as He sat at meat in Simon's house, what is it but the forcible appeal, inaudible to all but God, of the broken and contrite

heart of to-day-the sacrifice which He will not and cannot ever despise ?

It is unnecessary to follow out further this train of thought, to show that they whom the Father seeketh to worship Him," who worship Him in "spirit and in truth," cannot fail to find their case stated, and claims interpreted, in the prayers and supplications recorded in that Scripture which is "all given by inspiration of God." It may be almost needless to say, that these observations are not meant to imply that prayer need be restricted to the forms or the terms in which the Church offered her prayers and praises thousands of years ago. What has been said is only to be understood as proof that the devotions of the child of God in this "accepted time," must embody the same feeling, and therefore may not inaptly, or rather may be most appropriately and effectually, couched in the language prescribed and furnished by God Himself.

The student of the Psalms can hardly fail to perceive, that the aspect of the devotional department is for the most part a mournful one. It could scarcely be other

wise at a mature stage of either worldly or spiritual experience. Outside the relations which exist between the Creator and the creature, the Saviour and the saved, lie those earthly ties of whose uncertain tenure daily instances surround us, and of which broken and lost links in one's own immediate and innermost circle so acutely

and painfully remind us. And again, looking within, however strong and solid the conviction, "By the grace of God I am what I am;" nevertheless the more tender the conscience, and the more vivid the perception of what the heart and conscience condemn, the more must the soul feel" cast down and disquieted," coming so far short of the standard it desired to reach. There are, no doubt, natures and temperaments occupying an undoubted position in the household of God, who can present a rougher surface, and make more successful resistance to attack or pressure from without; and who from a blunter sensibility to the peculiarities of the "inner man," appear to be able pass their time as it were continually on the sunny side of Christian life. It may be questioned, however, whether such was the case with the authors of the Psalms. They seem for the

most part to lie under the influence of the refined sensitiveness so visible in Him, who, as "a Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief," presents an experience as exactly fitted and moulded to the designation, as clay turned to the seal."

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While thoroughly subscribing to the sentiment so happily expressed by a late eminent and Christian physician, Dr. Cheyne, that there is "no melancholy in religion, nor religion in melancholy," still it is easy to understand, at least some find it so, what gave rise to the expression-"How I mourn in my prayer !" and why this should be the prevailing shade throughout this portion of Holy Writ.

This would further appear to be recognised in the peculiar characteristic ascribed by St. Paul to the intercession of the Holy Spirit. It is with "groanings which cannot be uttered"—the emotion being too intense, or lying, as it were, too deep for words that the Spirit interprets and introduces the prayers of His children to the ear of God.

It should be remembered, too, that those outpourings and earnest pleadings of the

soul in prayer in the Messianic Psalms, are, if it may be so said, the prophetic experience of Jesus Himself. And to what are we to trace the plaintive, the sorrowful, and deprecatory tone and language of this so long anticipated grief and pain, and may we not say, the passionate expression of it when "the hour was come," if not to the fact, that though the sin was not His own which the Lamb of God, "without blemish and without spot," was manifested to put away; still beholding sin as a holy God must needs behold it, and feeling the consequences of imputed guilt, as wherever sin is the truth and justice of God must impute them, the supplications of the Son of Man were tinged and imbued, of necessity, with the contents of the cup which he asked, if it were possible, to be removed.

It is said that the agitation of the sea in a storm is scarcely more than superficial compared with the vast body of waters which lie undisturbed beneath. This may serve for an illustration of that friendly and gracious warning and assurance— "These things I have spoken unto you that in me ye might have peace. In the