known Thee." From any lips but those of Jesus how presumptuous would these words sound. Through the teeming millions of the race, including the greatest scholars, geniuses, sages of all ages, who could say this to his Maker? (1) No one had the opportunity of knowing God that Christ had. He was in the "bosom of the Father." He knew the motive that prompted the creative act, and the plan on which the whole was organised. (2) No one had the capacity of knowing God that Christ had. Looking at Him merely as a man, and judging of Him by His sublime utterances, what an intellect He had, how keen and how far reaching its vision, how immeasurable its sweep, how firm its grasp, how amazing its fertility. What is the greatest human intellect to His? What is a blade of grass to the majestic cedar, a bee to the imperial eagle, a rushlight to the noontide sun? (3) No one had the heart for knowing God that Christ had. No person can really know another unless he has heart sympathy with him. To know all the facts of a man's history is not to know the man. You must be one with a man in soul in order to understand him. Christ was one with God in a transcendent sense. "I and my Father are one," one in heart, spirit, and purpose. Notice: Secondly-Christ's School. "These have known that Thou hast sent Me." All His genuine disciples know this. Without this knowledge, indeed, they could not enter His school. How did they know it? (1) By the mighty work which He wrought. "We know that Thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do these miracles that Thou doest." (2) By the sublime doctrines He propounded. His ideas about God, the universe, duty, destiny, were not only sub

limely original, but so accordant with the reason, conscience, the moral intuitions, and the deep felt wants of humanity, that people were constrained to ask the question, "Whence had this man this wisdom?" (3) By the manner of His teaching. "Never man spake like this man." There was something so natural, so unconventional, so spontaneous, so rational, and devout in His manner, that all His hearers felt He was not like the Scribes and Pharisees, they had never heard such a teacher before. They felt He was the Master of their souls. (4) By the matchless purity of His character. There was a moral halo about Him which all felt detached Him from them. Though He mingled with them, sat with them, feasted with them, they all felt that morally He was not of them, that He was made higher than they. Even Peter said, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man.” The ruffians in the garden fell prostrate before the majesty of purity that sat upon His brow. Notice

III. THE PREACHER AND HIS MISSION. What Christ did is the genuine work of every true preacher. What was the work? First: A persistent declaration of the Divine character. "I have declared unto them Thy name, and will declare it." To declare self, theories, or speculations, about God is what Churches do, but to declare "His name," His moral character, the essence of which is love is what Christ did and does. All His moral perfections, all His true glory are rooted in love. Secondly: A persistent declaration of the Divine character in order to diffuse Divine love into human souls. "That the love wherewith Thou hast loved me may be in them." Alas! how many there are who so preach God as to transfuse into the minds of their

hearers terror, abhorrence, loathing, atheism. He only is the true preacher who so presents God to his hearers as to transfuse into them God's love.

CONCLUSION: I have thus gone through this wonderful prayer-a prayer which reveals at once the heart of man and the heart of God. We see in it all that is glorious in renewed human nature, and all that is loving and tender in the heart of the Infinite. I have assumed that the prayer here is a genuine record of the devout utterances of Jesus. Men have asked how could they have been recorded? There is no proof that the Apostle had a pencil in hand to note down the sublime words as they fell from those sacred lips. Be it so. Was not John present, and the other ten disciples? Would they not be all profoundly interested in Him, and all they heard Him say? Would not every tone be marked, every sigh noticed? Does not memory always seize and hold most tenaciously everything in which the heart is most deeply interested? Since most of us know men who can repeat whole sermons from memory, is it not likely that every listener to this prayer would retain it? And then when they met together-which probably they would-immediately at its close, would not each one repeat to the other what he heard, and thus, in comparing their recollections, would it be possible for a single word to be lost? Profoundly conscious am I of my lack of qualifications, both intellectual and moral, to do anything like justice to such a transcendent composition as this, yet I have not dogmatised, I have endeavoured to free myself from all theological predilections in looking through the words. In consulting the expositions of others, both ancient and modern, I have been saddened at discovering the

prejudicial theological influence under which each expositor has laboured. They have spoken of the "counsels of eternity," and the contract between Christ and His Son before the foundation of the world was laid, or the wheels of time commenced their revolutions. They have penetrated the Divine essence, and laboured to expound the mysterious connection. between Christ and the Father. All this I regard as impiously presumptuous and fruitful only in the pernicious.

It would be well for all theologians to take to heart the words of Thomas of Thomas Carlyle :-"Is this what thou namest 'Mechanism of the Heavens' and 'System of the World;' this, wherein Sirius and the Pleiades, and all Herschel's Fifteen-thousand Suns, per minute, being left out, some paltry handful of Moons and inert Balls had been looked at, nicknamed, and marked in the Zodiacal Way-bill; so that we can now prate of their Whereabout; their How, their Why, their What, being hid from us, as in the signless Inane? Systems of Nature! To the wisest man, wide as is his vision, Nature remains of quite infinite depth, of quite infinite expansion; and all Experience thereof limits itself to some some few computed centuries and square-miles. The course of Nature's phases, on this our little fraction of a Planet, is partially known to us, but who knows what deeper courses these depend on; what infinitely larger Cycle (of causes) our little Epicycle revolves on? To the Minnow every cranny and pebble, and quality and accident, of its little native Creek may have become familiar; but does the Minnow understand the Ocean Tides and periodic Currents, the Trade-winds, and Monsoons, and

Moon's Eclipses; by all which the condition of its little Creek is regulated, and may, from time to time (unmiraculously enough), be quite overset and reversed? Such a Minnow is Man, his Creek this Planet Earth; his Ocean the immeasurable All; his Monsoons and periodic Currents the mysterious Course of Providence through Eons of Eons. Metaphysical Speculation, as it begins in No or Nothingness, so it must end in Nothingness; circulates and must circulate in endless vortices; creating, swallowing-itself! Which of your Philosophical Systems is other than a dream-theorem ; a net quotient, confidently given out, where divisor and dividend are both unknown? What are your Axioms, and Categories, and Systems, and Aphorisms? Words, words. High Air-Castles are cunningly built of Words, the Words well bedded also in good Logic-mortar; wherein, however, no knowledge will come to lodge. Like a God-created, fire-breathing Spirit-host, we emerge from the Inane, haste stormfully across the astonished Earth, then plunge again into the Inane. But whence? O Heaven, whither? Sense knows not; Faith knows not, only that it is through Mystery to Mystery, from God and to God."

PRAYER.-Do not think that it is necessary to pronounce many words. To pray is to say, "Let thy will be done ;" it is to form a good purpose; it is to raise your heart to God; it is to lament your weakness; it is to sigh at the recollection of your frequent disobedience. This prayer demands neither method, nor science, nor reasoning; it is not necessary to quit one's employment; it is a simple movement of the heart towards its Creator. The best of all prayer is to act with a pure intention, and with a continual reference to the will of God. Hence, it depends on ourselves whether our prayers be efficacious. It is not by a miracle, but by a change of heart, that we are benefited by a spirit of submission.-Fenelon.