fact in the history of our redemption really from God's side. Let us try to realise what we are contemplating when we are rising to the contemplation of that hope for man which was in God antecedent to the atonement, and which the atonement has brought within the reach of our spirits. Let us see the love that man needs as in God before it has come forth in the atonement. Let us see the Fatherly heart as yet unrevealed-waiting to be revealed. Let us contemplate the Son as coming forth to reveal it. Let us distinguish between the purpose to reveal the Father's heart and a purpose to realise any predetermined train of events. Let us see, as that which is to be brought to pass, not certain facts, events, or circumstances thought of merely as such, but a knowledge of the heart of the Father brought within reach of us His offspring,-destroyed by the lack of this knowledge but to whom this knowledge will be salvation. Let us consider in this view the Son of God in humanity bearing upon His spirit our burden, and dealing with the Father concerning it; let us see all our need made visible to us in Christ's feeling of it, and let us listen to the cry of this need as ascending to the Father from Christ addressing itself to what the Father feels in relation to that need, and let us ask ourselves how but as the answer to that cry could that in the Father which answers that cry have been made known, or our need and that in the Father which meets our need have been revealed to us together? It is the cry of the child that reveals the mother's heart. It is the cry of Sonship in humanity bearing the burden of humanity, confessing its sin, asking for it the good of which the capacity still remained to it, which being responded to by the Father has revealed the Father's heart. Without taking the form of that cry the mind that was in Christ would have failed by all its other outgoings to declare the Father's name.

There is nothing scenic or dramatic in this. Were such its nature it would be valueless. It would be nothing, and could reveal nothing. But no feeling in the Son, no desire, no prayer, is other than what is

natural and inevitable to holy love so placed. The response of the Father is in like manner a real response, and therefore the nature and character of the heart that responds is seen in the nature and character of that to which it responds. As that confession of man's sin is justly due, so the demand for it in God is real as well as His acceptance of it is gracious. As that intercession is a natural form of love in Him that intercedes, the response to that intercession is a natural form for the love addressed to take its living and real outcoming. To say that what ascends to God from humanity has come from God, that God has Himself in the person of the Son furnished humanity with the pleading that would prevail with Him, that the life of Sonship is already in humanity antecedent to the atonement which it makes-this in no way affects the truth of the atonement as indeed the due and true expiation for sin, nor the truth of the grounds of the Intercessor's pleading as really the grounds on which the grace of God is extended to men.

We may indeed go further back: we may contemplate the mere capacity of redemption that was in humanity as a cry, a mute cry, but which still entered into the ear and heart of God; we may contemplate the gift of Christ as the divine answer to this cry; but it is not the less true that when Christ under our burden and working out our redemption confesses before the Father the sin of man and presents to the Father His own righteousness as the divine righteousness for man, and the Father in response grants to men remission of sins and eternal life,—that confession which humanity could not have originated but which the Son of God has made in it and for it, and that righteousness which humanity could not itself present, but which the Son of God has presented in it and for it, are the grounds on which God really puts His own acting in the whole history of redemption.

It is the tendency to deal with God as a fate and with the accomplishment of the high designs of His grace for man simply as the coming to pass of predetermined events which is the real source of our difficulty in regard to prayer

as a law and power in the kingdom of God; whether we think of it contemplating its place in the history of our redemption as the intercession of Christ, or as an element in our own life of sonship through Christ. In consequence of that tendency, "asking things according to the will of God," comes to sound like asking God to do what He intended to do,—a manner of prayer for which we have no light, as it is a manner of prayer, indeed, which would be felt to be superseded by that very light as to the future which would make it possible. But God is not revealed to our faith as a fate, neither is His will set before us as a decree of destiny. God is revealed to us as the living God, and His will as the desire and choice of a living heart, which presents to us not the image or picture of a predetermined course of events to the predestined flow of which our prayer is to be an Amen, but a moral and spiritual choice in relation to us His offspring to which our prayer is to respond in what will be in us the cry of a moral and spiritual choice. That knowledge of the Father which the prayer of Christ implied-the knowledge of the Son who dwelleth in the bosom of the Father-was not the knowledge of a certain future, predestined and sure to be accomplished, but was the knowledge of the unchanging will of the Father concerning man, —a will which in all rebellion is resisted, in all obedience of love is fulfilled. If we are able to see and realise this distinction we shall see the dealing of the Son with the Father on our behalf as that response to the mind of the Father in relation to us which in our participation in the spirit of the Son is to be continued and perpetuated in our own prayers. And, it seems to me, that these things mutually illustrate each other to us; mean our own prayers in the spirit of sonship and the great original intercession of the Son on behalf of all humanity which was to spread itself through humanity and which we partake in as a part of the eternal life which we have in the Son of God. For that cry for things according to the Father's will, that cry for holiness, and truth, and love, which is the cry of Christ's

I

spirit in us, and which is not repressed or discouraged by the knowledge that it is according to the will of God, as if therefore it was superfluous, nay, is only quickened and sustained by that knowledge, may throw light to us upon the infinite intensity of that cry as in Christ on behalf of all humanity,-enabling us to understand that in Him it was infinitely intense just because of His perfect oneness of mind with the Father in regard to what He asked, and perfect knowledge of that will of the Father according to which the cry was. While, on the other hand, nothing is such a help against all temptation to deal with the living God as with a fate, and with His will as a decree which we are passively to allow to take its course, instead of putting forth that prayerful trust which is the necessary link between His will for us and its fulfilment in us, as the believing meditation of the place which prayer had in the work of Christ in accomplishing our redemption.

And it is not merely in order that we may not come short in our realisation of the large place which prayer must have in our personal religion, if when we attempt to follow God as dear children we would really walk in the footsteps of the Son of God, that it is so important that we should realise the part which the intercession of Christ has in the atonement. Our doing so is, I would venture to say, even more needed in reference to the nature of our prayers, and that we may be found really praying according to the will of God, according to the light of the gospel,-according to the knowledge that the true worshippers worship in spirit and in truth, for that the Father seeketh such to worship Him. Small as the amount of prayer is, its usual character is a still sadder subject of thought than its small amount. I mean its being so much a dealing with God simply as a Sovereign Lord, a Governor, and Judge, and so little a dealing with Him as the Father of our spirits. There is much feeling that "power belongeth to God alone" combined with the encouraging persuasion that "to Him also belongeth mercy" moving to prayer and sustaining prayer, which

yet is not enlightened and exalted by the knowledge of God as a Father, and the apprehension of our true wellbeing as all embraced in the sonship which we have in Christ. Reader, let me ask you, do you pray as a child of God whose first and nearest relationship is to God your Father, whose most deeply felt interests are bound up in that relation in what lies within the circle of that relation contemplated in itself? Do you pray as one to whom the mind of God towards you and your own mind towards Him are the most important elements of existence, and whose other interests in existence are as outer circles around this central interest, so that you see yourself, and your family, and your friends, and your country, and your race, with the eyes, because with the heart, of one who "loves the Lord his God with all his heart, and mind, and soul, and strength?" Is this at least your ideal for yourself, what you are seeking to realise,—to realise for its own sake, not for any consequences of it in time or eternity? for whatever the blessed consequences of its realisation will be, they shall be far, and for ever, inferior and secondary to itself.