^ M. Johnson.
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about a right relation to Him deserves to be called the most holy faith. Such a foundation involves every other, just as the greater necessarily includes the lesser. There is involved in it every real good. It embraces every department of life, and enters into all its complex and diversified aspects. The social and political, the mental, moral and religious, are all alike parts of its vast empire ; and whatever relates to these in their development and operation receives its sanction and benediction. While it has an essentially Godward aspect, it has, at the same time, to do with all the relations in which men stand to their fellows. It makes our relation to Christ the principle and motive for fulfilling our duties to others.
ff Ministering, some years ago now, in Switzerland, I was sorry as I left the beautiful little mountain church to observe that the rock upon which one of the buttresses of the chancel was built was crumbling. My friend said to me: "You could not quote that as an illustration of the safety of the house built upon a rock." I said, " No, but I can quote it as an illustration of the insecurity of a house built upon what looks like a fair foundation. That rock looked fair and strong, or it would never have been chosen." We know how St. Paul had built for many years upon the fair appearance of morality and ceremonial observance, and how at length he cast them to the winds, " not having his own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith." ^
2. Praying in the Holy Spirit.
(1) Prayer of some sort marks every religion, for prayer in its most general sense is an appeal to God. But Christian prayer is the prayer of faith, and not merely of form ; it is prayer of the heart, and not merely of the lips ; it is prayer which rests not in bodily posture, but in spiritual power. The Christian prays as he lives and lives as he prays. But his power for prayer is not in himself, for it is the Spirit dwelling within him that enables him to pray. Nor is true prayer merely hy the Holy Ghost ; it is " in the Holy Ghost," for spiritual life is the sphere of spiritual prayer. Pray then, pray always, if you would keep in touch with things unseen, if you would keep your hearts open to God and heaven. Pray by the Holy Ghost by yielding your will to Him if you 1 E. "W. Moore, in The Kesvnck Week, 1905, p. 1G5.
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would worship in spirit and in truth, and feel the power of prayer and obtain the blessings you seek. But pray in the Holy Ghost by honouring His presence within you, and hearkening to His voice, if you would know the peace and joy of heavenly fellowship and maintain a lively sense of the love of God.
^ The prayer which helps us to keep in the love of God is not the petulant and passionate utterance of our own wishes, but is the yielding of our desires to the impulses divinely breathed upon us. As Michael Angelo says, " The prayers I make will then be sweet indeed. If Thou the spirit give by which I pray." Our own desires may be hot and vehement, but the desires that run parallel with the Divine will, and are breathed into us by God's own Spirit, are the desires which, in their meek submissive- ness, are omnipotent with Him whose omnipotence is perfected in our weakness.^
(2) Praying in the Spirit is the surest defence against the evils that arise from a low moral temperature. In some parts of the world, malaria and tropical heat speedily turn healthy and capable colonists into sickly loiterers and rickety " ne'er-do-weels." No race seems able to toil under the frightful conditions of climate which prevail on the Isthmus of Panama. And, on the other hand, some climates are so crisp and exhilarating that the laggard finds it difficult to do less than a fair day's work. Un- known ingredients in the air seem to accelerate the blood and spur to strenuous exertion. The qualities of the work done by poet, painter, musician, may almost be told in the terms of the atmospheric pressure prevailing at the time. Genius, just as much as the unopened flower bud, needs the bright, bracing day to bring out its splendour.
And the soul requires for the reaching out of its highest powers towards God a refined and well-balanced element, which we can describe only as "climate" or "atmosphere." The difference between praying on the mere level of our natural perceptions and sympathies, and praying in a realm pervaded by the unfailing inspirations of the Spirit, is not imlike the difference between drudgery on a tropical swamp and movement on a glorious tableland. In the one case prayer is an effort, a burden, a vexation, and an idle penance ; in the other, a joy, a sunrise, a melodious outrush of upper springs, glad spontaneity, life
^ A. Maclaren, 2'he Unchanging Christ, 178.
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pulsating with the sense of power and victory. The prayer imposed upon us by slavish conventions or habits, the prime motives of which have shrivelled away, seems to open all the channels of the life to poison, disease, religious degeneration. But when the breath of the Spirit pervades the shrine in which we pray, and calls up a gracious environment which we can carry about with us in our daily walk, prayer acquires new attributes, assumes fresh attractions, and springs to unknown victories.