to the God of our Salvation. Wherever our Christian worship is thus offered up in the Name or for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ, it should always be mingled with delight and pleasure and thankfulness. There is also one other most important meaning of the words, 'in the name of Christ.' They express, above all, our dependence upon His Atonement and Mediation as our great High Priest. To this-as the one great principle which should, after His Ascension, characterise all Christian prayer-our Lord referred when He said to His disciples, 'Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.' No other name can be pleaded by us as a ground of confidence when we venture to draw near as sinners into the more immediate Presence of the Holy One. We are required to come before God, as those who believe that we owe this great privilege, as well as every other blessing which we need

most urgently, to the Saviour and His Atoning work. If either we or our services are accepted in the Holiest of all, it must be through Him alone. Even our prayers and praises are so imperfect and defiled by sin, that in order to come up with acceptance before the Throne of God, they must be cleansed through the precious Blood of the Lamb, and united with His Intercession. In thus looking to the Saviour, in the perfection of His unchangeable Priesthood, we have 'boldness of access with confidence through our faith in Him.' And wherever the united worship of Christians is thus offered up in the name of Christ, we cannot doubt that, according to His sure promise, He is Himself in the midst of them.

The special Presence of our Lord thus promised should surely tend to elevate our views of the sacred services, in which we are permitted to take part in the House of God. It should also impress upon us

the need of deepest reverence in the worship, which we offer there. All of useven the most sincere and devout worshippers must be frequently conscious of our tendency to numerous distractions. But are we sufficiently awake to the consideration, that more especially at this time, He, who is at once our Saviour and our Judge, is very near to us, and that we are under His all-seeing eye? Should not this truth be sufficient to produce watchfulness in seeking, through the promised help of the Holy Spirit, to guard against wandering thoughts, as well as against formalism and insincerity? At the same time we can find much encouragement and comfort in believing that, as our merciful and faithful High Priest, He has compassion upon the infirmities and temptations of those, who draw near unto God through our only Mediator in the spirit of adoption. We also obtain, in our means of grace, through their connexion with our Lord's presence, bonds

of union between the redeemed spirit and the living, present Saviour, growing in the knowledge of Him, resting in His unchangeable love, and constrained by the motive thus supplied, to walk more worthy of our high calling in Christ.

It is especially in this way that our united worship in the courts of His house has a hallowing influence upon our daily life. It also becomes for the same reason a foretaste and an earnest of that more perfect worship and service, in which our present infirmities shall exist no longer, and where our Lord and Saviour shall fulfil this promise, as He cannot yet, to all who are for His sake counted worthy to obtain that world. There,' He can truly and fully say, 'There shall I be, in the midst of you' for ever.

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III.

ACCEPTABLE WORSHIP.

'The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth for the Father seeketh such to worship him.'-ST. JOHN, iv. 23.

AMONGST the various pictures placed before us in the Gospel narrative, few are more familiar or more lifelike and attractive than the account of our Lord's meeting with the woman of Samaria at Jacob's well. In the weariness of His human nature, after a long journey, Jesus had found a restingplace upon the well. His disciples, having gone into the neighbouring town to buy food, had left Him for a little while alone. But His solitude was soon disturbed by the