PRAYER.

ALMIGHTY GOD, who can find out the meaning of thy word? It is exceeding broad. Thy word is quick and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword; it hurts us whilst we read it, but it kills that it may make alive again. Thy word is full of gentleness, though so severe. If thou hast torn us, thou wilt heal us; if thou hast rent us, thou wilt bind us up again: in a day or two all will be well: the wound will be healed and the pain will be forgotten. Thou dost give life: thou art the God of immortality; thou healest disease; thou hast written thy condemnation upon death; thou lovest health and life and growth and, all beauty and fruitfulness;towards the creation of these all thy ministries tend: we would be found within the sphere of their operation; we would obediently submit ourselves unto their requirements and laws, that, being brought into the harmony of thy movement, we might respond to thy word with delight and turn thy statutes into songs. But who can do this for us? Is not Jesus Christ thy Son able to work even this miracle? We now pray that the miracle may be accomplished. Lord, that we might see! Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make us clean! Jesus Christ, Son of David, have mercy on us! Other men have passed by and paid no heed to us: they could not touch our inmost complaint; but thou art almighty: the key of the house of David is upon thy shoulder: thou hast all power and all grace, and thy love will accomplish our redemption. We bless thee that there is no case beyond thy reach. Thou knowest altogether what we are and what we need, and fulness of provision has been made in the Gospel: the Cross of Christ healeth the diseases of the soul. We return to the Saviour. We have gone after other leaders, and they have led us into the ditch, for we were both blind; but now we come to Jesus Christ again and again, and he is gracious enough to forgive our wanderings and receive us home. We would that thy word might be made plain to us, that we might see somewhat at least of its meaning and feel its unction and acknowledge its power. Thy word is truth. Truth will touch our life at every point, granting unto our necessity an answer of fulness, to our pain an answer of ease, to our desire an answer of contentment. Lead us into all truth-the infinite palace of God, the inner universe towards which all other things point in wonder and with delight. Pity us in our weaknesses, and count them not against us in the judgment. Thou wilt not pity our sin, but thou wilt pity the sinner; and as for our sin, what is it compared with thy grace? Where sin aboundeth grace much more aboundeth, pouring itself in ocean fulness over all the marks of the wrong-doer. Help us to live our few remaining days well: we will be gone to-morrow, and the day after is the judgment; we walk along the brink over which we must presently slip: we are seen a moment, yet in a little while we are not seen-but with the eyes of recollection.

May we work while it is called day, for the night cometh wherein no man can work. We are not needful to thee. Thou dost take us away, and behold the world is not aware that we have been removed. Thou dost so teach us not to rely upon one another, but to live and move and have our being in thyself. Thou art the same, and thy years fail not: amid all rising, flourishing, and dying thou lookest on in eternal youth. Regard our loved ones; if they will not make prayers for themselves, Jesus, our Intercessor, will surely pray for them, and they will receive replies without having offered requests. Thou doest exceeding abundantly above not only what we ask but what we think: our thought is left below, and the fountains of thy grace are opened in the skies, and great rains of blessing are poured out upon the thirst of life. Hear us in these things. Hear us for the land we love, for the throne to which we are bound, for all the institutions that represent the highest thought and best ambition of life; and overrule all things to the inbringing of the kingdom which is all purity and sunshine and music. Amen.

Deut. xix.

"When the Lord thy God hath cut off the nations, whose land the Lord thy God giveth thee, and thou succeedest them, and dwellest in their cities, and in their houses; thou shalt separate three cities for thee in the midst of thy land, which the Lord thy God giveth thee to possess it " (vv. 1, 2).

DIVINELY-PROVIDED REFUGE.

W

HEN a blessing has been conferred a duty is to follow.

This would seem to be the method of the divine kingdom. That kingdom does not consist wholly of blessing, sentiment, ease, and honour; the kingdom of God is a kingdom of duty and discipline, calling upon its possessors to be faithful and gracious, to obey certain commandments, and to hold the kingdom feudally, —not as of right, but as from the Lord, to whom an account must be rendered. Whenever the Lord gives us cities we have a work of separation to do. The cities are not given to us wholly : they are only given to us partially. The Lord still maintains his position upon earth, though he is throned in heaven; he has cities upon the earth that are peculiarly his own. Whatever city

is given to us must have part of it set aside as God's, for God's use, and concerning which an account must be rendered to God. Had the message been all upon one side, how subtle and tre. mendous would have been the temptation addressed to human vanity and ambition !—the Lord will give you cities; he will cast out the heathen and the stranger before you; you shall enter into the palaces of their kings and enjoy the riches of all their

generations. Had the message run in that line it would have been an evil. There is nothing really in the very soul of it good that does not involve the element of discipline. Regard it as a fact established by all history and approved by all the philosophy that is founded upon experience, that at some point man must bow the knee, and acknowledge lordship and divine right and claim; and wherever he thus bows the knee man sets up an altar. Human will must be broken. This is a doctrine which benevolent but foolish parents endeavour to evade : they bring up their children with an unbroken will, and call it graciousness and good-nature ;-it is baseness, selfishness, cruelty: it is leaving that to be done by a stranger which ought to have been done by the spirit of home and the genius of love. We are called upon to acknowledge God in all our possessions, to have our will broken in the sense of rejecting the idea of sole proprietorship or absolute claim, and in the sense of saying concerning many a fair city,-This is God's, not mine ;-concerning many a wedge of gold,This is the Lord's, not mine. When the human spirit has been brought to that concession, and can make the surrender graciously, lovingly, and thankfully, the miracle of grace has been accomplished in the reluctant or obdurate heart. Israel could keep the cities, and include the three that ought to have been separated in the bill of ownership; but the Lord could have withheld the rain, and no city could live without the clouds: the Lord could have shifted the wind into the quarter whence cometh blight, cold, and desolation; no city can live without the southwest wind. We may claim all, but we cannot keep all. To put the three cities into our bag and lodge them with the usurer is not to outwit God: the Sovereign will take out his claim in health, or wealth, or peace: but his claim must be recognised and satisfied. Listen not to the sophism which says that all cities are God's: there is a morality which is too grandiloquent; reject the suggestion that all days are God's: there is a liberality that gives nothing. God has always secured three of the cities or more, part of every harvest-field, a few grapes at least out of every vineyard, one day in the week; the claim has not been great in extent in relation to the territory which has been covered, but the making of it is the assertion of sovereign right, and the satisfaction of it is an expression of human obedience.

"Thou shalt prepare thee a way, and divide the coasts of thy land, which the Lord thy God giveth thee to inherit, into three parts, that every slayer may flee thither " (v. 3).

There was to be public proclamation of the existence of the cities of refuge. The picture is a very striking one. There were signs put up along the road leading to the cities of refuge, and on the signs was written the word "miklot"-refuge. What a sign to come upon in the hour of despair and oppressed weakness! The man who was fleeing, having shed innocent blood, looked anxiously around that he might observe the standard bearing the magic word miklot; seeing that word, he fled along the road which was indicated by the gracious term. Fix the mind upon the picture until the picture itself glows into a beauteous gospel. A man has done wrong: he knows the consequences of his wrong-doing, even though the wrong was a misadventure: instantly he flees for refuge; he did not make the city of refuge: he may not know in what direction the city of refuge lies; but here and there and again the standard is lifted up and on it written-refuge. The man does not run the other way, or ask who wrote the miklot, or enter into discussion as to the form of the letters and the right of those letters to be where they are; nor does he ask the age of the standard, or why it is not on the other side of the road: the man is in earnest: the avenger is behind him he has no time for questions or controversy about the refuge;-Where lies the city ?-and seeing an indication of its position he "flees for refuge" to the city that is set before him. Our public roads should have no lack of standards of a higher and nobler kind: the wrong-doer should have no doubt left upon his mind as to what direction to take in the time of self-accusation and self-despair. Every Christian should be a stranger, having written upon him "miklot"refuge; every church should be an open door, opened towards heaven, pardon, and peace. We must not be afraid to say that all our Christianity exists in the first instance for the purpose of saving the wrong-doer who wishes to be saved. That is the primary purpose of the Church; other purposes are no doubt included, but the one initial, all-commanding object of the Church is to be a city of refuge, a place where the lamp of hope burns brightly, a sanctuary where the gospel words are spoken with

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gospel fervour and unction. The Church of the living God should resound with the cry:-Flee for refuge, to the hope set before you in the Gospel. The enormous-the incalculable— difficulty is that men do not recognise themselves as in need of refuge. We must have destroyed within us the sophism that we are fit to be at large. So long as we walk up and down the city complacently approving ourselves and quoting instances of our own wisdom and virtue, any standard bearing the word miklot -refuge is an offence to us. The Gospel was never meant for any man who can take care of himself: it is a city of refuge; and men only ask for refuge when they hear the pursuit of the avenger, or know themselves to be objects deserving punishment. Where do we find the refugees in the church? Men are not there as refugees: they are there as upon equal terms with the Lord of the sanctuary; they patronise that Lord: they subscribe to his reputation upon the earth: they light his lamps for him, and they expect to be rewarded for their loyalty;—whereas men ought to be in the church in a state of breathlessness, then in a state of thankfulness for security; then, sometimes, as if hearing just outside the stroke of the avenger, they should pray more mightily and sing their praises more fervently, knowing that the avenger may smite the wall and hurt himself, but can never reach those who are hidden in the place of refuge-"Jesus, Refuge of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly." We should realise this conception of the Church, and doing so we shall not be slow to put up in the city the sign-post and the index-finger; nor shall we scruple to use the word "refuge," or the word "salvation," for we shall speak the word with the emphasis and the unction of personal gratitude.

"And this is the case of the slayer, which shall flee thither, that he may live: Whoso killeth his neighbour ignorantly, whom he hated not in time past as when a man goeth into the wood with his neighbour to hew wood, and his hand fetcheth a stroke with the axe to cut down the tree, and the head slippeth from the helve, and lighteth upon his neighbour, that he die; he shall flee unto one of those cities, and live: lest the avenger of the blood pursue the slayer, while his heart is hot, and overtake him, because the way is long, and slay him; whereas he was not worthy of death, inasmuch as he hated him not in time past" (vv. 4-6).

Here is the principle that actions as between man and man are to be discriminated. Everything depends upon motive. The