ship here to-day. Our home is in God-in Tennysonian phrase “When that which drew from out the boundless deep and as Sabatier, the great French theologian, has said, "If wearied with the world of pleasure or of toil, I long to find my soul again, and live a deeper life, I can accept no other Guide and Master than Jesus Christ, because in Him alone optimism is without frivolity and seriousness without despair." II. The method of such communion is not far to seek. I am not afraid of a trite observation, or of repeating something that is venerable, when I say, The first essential for busy men is withdrawal from your fellows that you may be alone with God. Into the tabernacle in the wilderness! Leave the multitude at the tent-door, you will serve them the better when you return. Fathers and mothers, burdened for your children, life means many things to you; it would become simple and glorious and beautiful if you left them sometimes that you might bear them on your hearts to God. "Oh, what peace we often forfeit, Here are you, City men, snatching an hour or half an hour in the middle of the day to worship God. Why are you going back again to toil? It is because of those represented here, but not amongst us-the wife and the little ones at home. You are not fighting for your own hand. Neither was that man who cheated you this morning; pity him, if it were so. I never yet met a man who was not playing to an audience, however small. You are caring for somebody, that is why you toil; you are labouring and suffering, not for yourself; life would be dreary to-morrow, if they were gone. You live in the being of another or others. They were God's before they were yours; those whom He has given you He could care for Himself without you. Would you learn how to serve? Leave them and be alone with God. "Haven't the time!" You have; you have time for many things; time to commune; listen to the voice of the Eternal. Time?—there is time in Cheapside to command audience of heaven. Time? -why, you are always alone, even in your busiest hour. Make a sanctuary outside the City Temple, in the midst of your fellows, in the heart of your business, speak with God in the tabernacle, face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend. The other condition of your communion is openness to God. Cease from the prayer of agonised entreaty; that has its place; wait for the speech of God. Our fathers knew all about this. I saw on the service paper last week that the City Temple is the oldest Congregational church in London. It dates from 1640. Do you know what was the type of religious life then? We could criticise it; it was very grim; in some cases it was very hard, perhaps it was too self-sufficient. But no man waited then for his neighbour to tell him about the preciousness of God; he knew. That was the day of the high-backed pew, when a man came to church not to look at anybody, but to speak with God. That experience was real; it made such men as conquered at Marston Moor and sent the Royalists to confusion at Naseby. They were not less men than you; there was no effeminacy in the Puritan. Now, in this day of conventions, and demonstrations, and congresses, and what not, we commune with each other rather than with God, and we lose because we do not know what it is-am I exaggerating?-in the same degree to be alone with the Maker of us all. There is prayer which is stillness, susceptibility to the Eternal, a heart ready for the impulses brought by the Spirit of God. 66 And when in silent awe we wait And word and sign forbear, The hinges of the golden gate Move, soundless, to our prayer.” That is the time of vision. Would you see what the needs of the world are, that you may have opportunity to remedy them? See in the stillness, see in the solitude, see in the holy place, the multitudes waiting without the tent door for the Prophet, Master, and Leader to return. "Our deepest feelings are precisely those we are least able to express, and even in the act of adoration silence is our highest praise." Then comes the blessing. The still, small voice that speaks within needs no apologist; you know it when you hear it. There is a sweet comfort and a shining peace in the holy place with Jesus. Well do I know the exceptions to this great statement. It is not always easy to pray. Sometimes you will be overwhelmed in the black waters of sorrow, and feel as if utterance were denied you, and you cannot pray. Say so to the living God. I have here some words that I copied for you, written by a fourteenthcentury mystic, who would not recognise the City of to-day, and yet they were written not far from the City: "Pray inwardly "-from within-" though thou thinkest it savour thee not; for it is profitable though thou feel not, though thou see naught, yea, though thou thinkest thou canst not; for in dryness, in barrenness, in sickness, in feebleness, then is thy prayer well pleasant unto Me—and I am Jesus." When I am thinking I am listening, and the voice that speaks to me is the voice that spake by the Lake of Galilee-the same, and not another; and the Christ who spake to our fathers, the Christ in whose name we are gathered here, the same Christ it is who speaks within your own soul now. Cease from your restlessness, give Him a hearing; He preaches His own sermons, brings His own message; keeps with His own power those whom the Father has given unto Him. Hear me, you who are strong, and true, and brave, but who do not commune: you are missing something. Begin even now; leave the rest of us and cleave to God. Be your problem what it may, you are insufficient for it; for even though you do not pray, God remembers and saves, but when you do the whole world is different, the light is upon it that never was on sea or land. Hear me, you who are sunken in despair, you who are in chains and bondage to propensity or shame: speak not to me concerning this. The arm of flesh will fail you; you dare not trust another's, much less your own. Go right to the Fountain of all that is good; speak to the Eternal, who is the source of everything that is holy, and tender, and true; learn to love by learning to pray. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty;" "and we all with unveiled face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory unto glory as by the Spirit of the Lord." IV CAN GOD ANSWER PRAYER? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?-Luke xi. 13. This is the confidence that we have in Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us; and if we know that He heareth us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him. T -1 John v. 14-15. HE subject of prayer is one of never-failing interest to human-kind. For all men pray at some time or other, whether fitfully or constantly, in weakness or in strength, in sorrow or in joy. Some men pray because it is their chiefest delight so to do, and some pray because necessity drives them to it; but they all pray. Prayer is a constant element, and the impulse to pray is ever present to human nature. The question is not, Shall we pray? but, Can God hear us when we do; is there room for Him to answer; is it any use to pray? To this question our texts-the one on the authority of Jesus Christ, and the other the testimony of Christian experience-supply the answer. The former, remember, is the simple, but very direct and unequivocal, declaration, "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give "-that which includes and is present in every good gift-" the Holy |