ning of our supplication the commandment would go forth. The cry would be not only, Let us go and hear the preaching of the Word, but "let us go speedily and pray before the Lord." It would be the beginning of a new dispensation-another Pentecost in our churches.

The

sanctuary would be called "The house of prayer for all people ;" and within its hallowed precincts would be felt and seen the every-day triumphs of "the prayer of faith."

[TO BE CONCLUDED IN OUR NEXT NUMBER.

ON New Year's-day, not long ago, a pious man of business, while meditating upon the fact of the Divine sufficiency for every human need, was seriously impressed by the consideration, that there were really many important needs of his which hitherto he had not definitely felt, and which he had never, with distinct purpose, addressed to the Hearer and Answerer of Prayer. Being a man of a very practical and methodical character, he deliberately put down in writing a long column of Wants, which he desired to have satisfied, should it be the Lord's will. Having thus formed as accurate an idea as he could of his spiritual standing, he made it his constant practice to spread his wants before God, as Hezekiah did his notable letter in olden days. In return, there came to him answers the most signal; and at one of the meetings for special prayer in connection with the New Year, he stated, that a year of earnest believing prayer had brought him ere it closed, the most abundant satisfaction of all the wants he had so keenly experienced at its commencement.

Why should the declaration for a moment be deemed incredible? If we believe that there is a sufficiency in

God for all our wants, and if we accord to prayer the value He himself has placed upon it, why should not such instances of its power form the rule rather than the exception? One thing is plain, that the more sincerely we aim after Definiteness in Prayer, the more clearly shall we understand what prayer really is, and the more heartily shall we engage in it. The best prayers, the prayers of the saints of old, our Lord's own model prayer, and the prayers of all who sought assistance from Him while here on earth,-have all specific ends in view; they are wants taken to the Divine fulness, to the end that they may be supplied. Now we hear a David praying, not in mere generalities but in the midnight gloom of a guilty conscience, crying, "Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O Lord!"-and now a Solomon pleading for a "wise and understanding heart." At one time we hear a Peter exclaiming, "Save, Lord, or I perish!" and, at another, we listen to the stricken sisters of Bethany, by their very tears inarticulately pleading with the Lord of Life, to bring back from the dead their loved and lost. Prayers for mercy, for faith, for health, for temporal good, for every good gift and every

perfect gift, for individual prosperity and the welfare of the Church, we find emanating from those, who, in days gone by really believed that the God who had commanded them to pray, would never say to any one who sought His help, "seek my face in vain." Of course, in no true prayer will worship ever be wanting. We must first cry, "Our Father, which art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name," before we can hope to obtain assistance from Him who is worthy to be feared by all who seek His blessing. But, in a sense, the very worship of God, as in the Lord's Prayer, is to elevate us to a platform of hope and encouragement, from which we can give utterance to our largest petitions. "What is thy request ?" is the question put to us when we would attempt to pray, and we should have our request at least as clearly defined, as when we solicit a favour of human any

being. If we mistake not, in a world like ours, rapt and lofty ecstasies of devotion are rare. It is true, the child of God knows something of blessed and hallowed seasons, when the heart is content in breathing out its worship of the Most High without giving utterance to a single petition. There are times when we say, “Our Father which art in Heaven," and no more; but such seasons are rare in a world like ours. Once only in their lives were the three favoured ones taken up to the Mount of Transfiguration, there, so to behold the glory of the Lord, that the world below grew distasteful to them, and they cried, "Master, it is good for us to be here!" The world, however, in which they had actually to live, suffer, and die, was the world represented by that scene at the foot of the hill,

where madness, suspicion, and unbelief were cruelly raging. Once only in his life was Paul the Apostle caught up into the third heaven; he had many spiritual joys but likewise many conflicts and tears, the plaintive burden of which found vent in the exclamation, "O, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of sin and death!

Truly, in this world of ours, there is an earnest need of prayer, and of prayer presented with the most definite object in view. If the Christian would prosper and be in health, he should study to know his deepest necessities, and make their satisfaction far more his care than appeasing the wants of the body. It may seem almost presumptuous to attempt to express the daily wants of the Christian, no matter in what sphere of life he moves; so varied are they, so deep and wide. “I want,” he may exclaim, "to know my own heart, both its weakness and what I deem its strength, lest while strongly fortifying the weak, and disregarding the strong because of its imagined security, I may invite the enemy to come in as a flood and to prevail against me. I want to have it as one of my deepest convictions and grounded upon a never-changing fact, that a guilty past is entirely forgiven; that there is no more trace of it, in God's Book of Remembrance, than there is in the clear blue sky of the thunder-clouds, which an hour ago made it heavy and dark. I want daily to realize in my first moments of consciousness, upon awaking from night's slumber, that I am a child of God, that the great gulf between me and His holiness is bridged over by the merits of the atoning Saviour, and I

want really, gratefully, most humanly, to love that Saviour, through whose merits mine iniquities have been freely pardoned. I desire that there may not be a trace, however faint, of formality in this love, but that I may really love Christ as I ought to love One who gave up everything for me, and in the end gave Himself for me upon the accursed tree. I seek not to know Christ after the flesh, to know what outwardly He was, either in face or figure: but I desire so to read the brief records of His life, that He, although unseen, may be as real to me as He was to His first disciples; and that whether I am in solitude or society, whether working or resting, rejoicing or sorrowing, I may have Him as my constant companion, guide, and counsellor. I want to feel the power of the Holy Ghost subduing what is evil; the vain, the selfish and worldly feelings of my heart, causing the features of the Old Man to become less and less distinct; and the characteristics of the New Man created in knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness, developed in their stead. want in the midst of a world of sense, intensely to realise my own spirituality, and to regard every one within the sphere of my influence as an immortal spirit, tending towards either the right hand or the left. I want to be doing my every-day work, whatever it may be, as the servant of Christ, and to be found faithful and watchful at my post of duty at whatever hour it shall please the Master to say, "Give an account of thy stewardship." I want to feel that old temptations are losing

their

power, through the faith which overcometh the world; that the allurements which once led me captive have

ceased to charm, and that the sin

which hath so easily beset me has been vanquished. I want each new day to be the very best day of my life, containing in it a propelling force for good, from all that has been gained in the past. I want more deeply to prize the means of grace, more truly to understand what prayer is, what the Bible may become to my soul, to what blessed uses the Sabbath may be applied, and to gain for myself the largest benefit from the fellowship of saints. I want to bear sickness, bereavement, disappointment, worldly losses, and all the general ills of life, as one who seeks a country, and who would not live always in this world even if he could. I want to be useful in my day and generation; and then, having done the will of God, to meet and welcome the hour of death, as the labouring man welcomes the sleep which fits him for the new life which the morrow brings."

"I want"-but the catalogue must terminate, because even the attempt to put down in words what the Christian needs in his growing and enlarging life, suggests wants SO numerous, which if written in books the world itself would not contain them. A Christian Minister's wants, the wants of Sabbath-school teachers, of Christian parents, and of the glorious army which in our day make up the elect of God,-what heart can conceive, what pen describe them! Our simple hope is, that the words we have written will recall to the reader what his special wants are, and that then, he will at once take them to the Throne of Grace, there to wrestle until they are satisfied by Him "who giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not."

as open to our efforts, as it was closed in the latter part of the 17th century. The spread of intelligence; the elevation of the masses; the strengthening of the middle class; the progress of liberal sentiment; the daily rising tide in favour of religious equality; and a growing respect for religion itself, have made the great majority of our fellow-countrymen accessible to our religious efforts. Nonconformity has outlived the age of contempt and repression, and has, by the force of events within itself, and by marked improvements without, gained a position, which it will be our own fault only, if we do not turn to the best account for the spread of religion, and the good of our country.

This new and favourable aspect of the public mind towards our religious agency naturally takes the form of a call upon us to "rise and build." Not only are building operations in themselves quite the order of the day; but only through this medium can the outlying population be brought into direct and stated contact with our ministerial and other regular Christian agency.

All, however, now turns on the point of adaptation. The whole thing being an accident, and not any part of the essence of our faith, we can, of course, quite consistently, shape and turn it any way we think best. Christ, by His silence, has evidently left this work entirely to our own judgment, taste, and sense of public duty. Our fathers certainly have no more authority over us in this than in any question of either principle or usage. So far indeed as their example has any weight with us, it is in favour of the rule that we advocate; for it favours adaptation to the times. They built

according to their circumstances; and we, their sons, act consistently by building according to ours. Their call to build arose from within; ours springs from without. They built for their fellow-saints; we have to build for our fellow-men. for our fellow-men. They built for the sect; we may build for the world. And this special use of the building instrument in our day should determine its character.

Our question, in entering upon the erection of a place of public religious teaching and worship now, ought to be, not what is most similar to the accidents of the past, but what is best fitted to bring our religious agency to bear upon a waiting, willing, and responsive public? We can now, with obvious effect, build for man; and if we undertake to meet this demand, our Christianity as well as our common sense constrains us so to build, that man will enter, learn the truth, and be saved.

All angry discussion on the comparative merits of different styles of architecture, all searching into mere precedent for precedent's sake, are really waste of time, and wide of the point in hand. The world asks us to build; then let us so respond, that the world will attend. Whatever we may find by adequate experiment will best answer our Christian and philanthropic purpose, let that result settle all questions, till further lessons shall spring from this same source.

By this one test of proved adaptation to our fellow-men, let us determine all points relating to the position, structure, arrangement, size and style of our public religious edifices; satisfied that in this direction, whatever answers our Christian purposes best, is best; and He that authorised the