Secondly: A full answer to its petitions. "If two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my father which is in heaven.” so far as Humanity represents Deity, that forgiveness is a type of God's. She does not put into her ministers' lips words of incantation. He cannot bless whom God has not blessed-he cannot curse whom God has not cursed. If the Son of absolution be there, his absolution will rest. If you have ever tried the slow and apparently hopeless task of ministering to a heart diseased, and binding up the wound that will bleed afresh, to which no assurances can give comfort, because they are not authoritative, it must have crossed your mind that such a power as that which the Church of England claims, if it were believed, is exactly the remedy you want. You must have felt that even the formula of the Church of Rome would be a blessed power to exercise, could it but once be accepted as a pledge that all the past was obliterated, and that from that moment a free untainted future lay before the soul-you must have felt that; you must have wished you had dared to say it. My whole spirit has absolved my erring brother. Is God less merciful than I? Can I dare I say or think it conditionally? Dare I say, I hope ?-may I not, must I not, say I know God has forgiven you? Every man whose heart has truly bled over another's sin, and watched another's remorse with pangs as sharp as if the crime had been his own, has said it. Every parent has said it, who ever received back a repentant daughter, and opened out for her a new hope for life. Every mother has said it, who ever by her hope against hope for some profligate, protested for a love deeper and wider than that of society. Every man has said it who forgave a deep wrong. See then, why and how the church ab. solves. She only exercises that power which belongs to every son of man. If society were Christian-if society, by its forgiveness and its exclusion, truly represented the mind of God-there would be no necessity for a Church to speak; but the absolution of society and the world does not represent by any means God's forgiveness. Society absolves those whom God has not absolved-the proud, the selfish the strong, the seducer; society refuses return and acceptance to the seduced, the frail, and the sad penitent, whom God has accepted; therefore it is necessary that a selected body, through its appointed organs, should do in the name of man, what man, as such, does not. The Church is the ideal of Humanity. It represents what God intended man to be-what man is in God's sight as beheld in Christ by Him; and the minister of the Church speaks as the representative of that ideal humanity. Church absolution is an eternal protest, in the name of God the Absolver, against the false judgments of society."-T. W. Robertson.

The Heavenly Teacher, I presume, assumes here two things: -the rectitude of the principle of their agreement and the propriety of the thing they asked for. Their agreement was not a mere intellectual one, an accordance in doctrinal opinion, nor a mere selfish one, a unity of desire for a certain object for personal ends. I cannot conceive that in either case Heaven would attend to the request. There is much of this union of doctrinal sentiment and union of selfish desire in the prayers of conventional Churches ;-but there are no answers to them. Righteous Heaven is mercifully deaf to such prayers. The principle of agreement must be a righteous principle,-a principle in which all personal considerations are merged in the reigning desire to help humanity and serve the universe by following out the will of Infinite Benevolence ;—a desire that finds its utterance in the words, "Let thy kingdom come." "Let the people praise thee, O God," &c. Two souls united thus will always have a mighty influence in heaven. Moreover, the propriety of the thing asked for seems also to be assumed in these words. The word "anything" here must therefore be taken in a restricted sense. The context itself indicates the boundary lines, by giving us to understand that it means anything relating to the "loosing" and the "binding"; i.e. anything relating to the interests of Christ's cause in the world.

Regarding then, as I think we are bound to, these two things as being assumed by Christ, the promise commends itself to our judgment and corresponds with the experience of the good in all ages. I venture to believe that no social prayer where there has been the true agreement of soul for the true thing has ever ascended to heaven unheard or unanswered. Men ask, Why prayer is unanswered? My reply is, Prayer in Christ's sense is always answered. "I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done of my Father which is in heaven." The Church in the upper room in Jerusalem were agreed in asking for the Holy Ghost, and the day of Pente

cost, and it came with its marvellous gifts. Peter was in prison, and "prayer was made without ceasing of the Church unto God for him;-and the Lord brought him out of the prison." Peter and John arrived in Samaria from Jerusalem; they were agreed; and "they prayed that the men of Samaria who had received the word, should receive the Holy Ghost;" and they did receive the Holy Ghost. Let us not say that prayer is not answered. What we sometimes call prayer is not prayer. True prayer is always answered. “THIS IS THE

CONFIDENCE THAT WE HAVE IN HIM, THAT IF WE ASK ANYTHING ACCORDING TO HIS WILL HE HEARETH US."

We go on to observe that the true Church has a power Heaven to secure :

in

"For

Thirdly: A personal visitation from its Lord. where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." The Rabbinical writers say, "That if two men sit down with the law between them, the Shekinah or Divine presence is with them." This is not up to the grand reality of the Old Testament promises :-" In all places where I record my name I will come unto thee and I will bless thee." Or again, "The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth."

Christ's presence is secured not merely by meeting together, but by meeting together in His name. His name,His life-Himself-must be the reason of our meeting, the vital bond of our communion, the theme of our converse, the object of our love, the fontal spring of our life. When this is the case, He is present. He, not His mere representatives or influence, but He Himself. "There am I in the midst of them," &c. In the midst, as the Shekinah was in the midst of the mercy seat, shedding its mystic radiance on every part; as the sun in the midst of the planets, binding all in harmony, filling all with life, adorning all with beauty, and bathing all with the beams of its own glory. "Lo, I am with you always," &c. His presence amongst them explains the power of their prayer. Without Christ

our religious meetings, however crowded in numbers, scriptural in behaviour, enthusiastic in spirit, are worthless; with Him whatever else is absent, they are infinitely valuable.

Brothers, in our meetings, let our grand aim be to have Him present. It is not difficult to get crowds present. The "name" of some preacher, whose fluent audacities and pulpiteering tricks have gained him the popularity of the fleeting hour, will crowd your largest buildings to an overflow; but what boot such gatherings if Christ be not there? And He will not be there unless you meet together in His name.

Germs of Thought.

SUBJECT:-Divine Purposes and Human Agencies.

"Had Zimri peace who slew his master ? '-2 Kings, ix. 31.

Analysis of Homily the Four Hundred and Forty-eighth.

THESE are not the words of the Spirit of God, but of that wicked witch Jezebel, wife of the idolatrous Ahab. Nevertheless there is a truth implied in them which it shall be our present business to expound and illustrate.

The story, out of which they grow, is briefly told. Ahab is dead, and the measure of the iniquity of his house is full. A messenger from the prophet Elisha, sent to Ramoth Gilead, has anointed Jehu to be King over Israel, and commissioned him to execute the vengeance of the Lord upon Jezebel and the sons of Ahab. Jehu, nothing loth, receives the dreadful trust; and with his usual impetuosity hastens furiously to its discharge.

There is neither peace nor truce with the enemies of the Lord. Joram is slain by an arrow from the strong bow of Jehu, and the painted Jezebel anticipates her doom. But the love of life is strong, and as Jehu enters the gates of her palace, in Jezreel, she accosts him from an upper window

"Had Zimri peace who slew his master?" What did she mean by this? The answer is in the story of Zimri told in the 16th chapter of the 1st Book of Kings.

Elah, son of Baasha, has reigned over Israel but two years, when in a drunken revel, in the house of his steward, he is slain by Zimri, captain of half his chariots, and his throne usurped by the traitor who had thus shed his blood. But for Zimri there is indeed no peace; the seven days of his reign are days of terror and of blood.

Tirzah is speedily besieged by the army under Omri which hastens from Gibbethon; and when Zimri sees that his usurped power is gone, he betakes himself to the palace, where kindling a fire around him, he perishes in the midst of the flames.

"Therefore, O Jehu, be warned; see what is the end of him who madly lifts his hand against the Lord's anointed!" "Had Zimri peace?" But the parallel is imperfect-Zimri. had received no Divine commission—Jehu had. Jehu is also himself the anointed of the Lord! But perhaps Jezebel means more than this-Jehu indeed may be the appointed instrument in the hand of the Almighty for the fulfilment of the terrible prophecy of Elijah concerning the bloody business of Naboth and his vineyard, but let him remember that the instruments of destruction are often in their turn destroyed; the ruin of the house of Baasha had been predicted as much as that of the house of Ahab-the prophecies must needs be fulfilled, but woe unto him by whom they are fulfilled. “Had Zimri peace?" But here again this theme is truth in the general principle, though the particular application of it fails. Even as to Zimri himself, though the facts stated in Jezebel's question are correct, the inference she would draw from them is doubtful. Zimri slew his master; and Zimri had not peace; but that these two facts stand in the relation of cause and effect is not proven by the narrative; and from the 19th verse of 1 Kings xvi, the reverse seems rather to be implied. While as to Jehu, we find as a matter of history that the warning is altogether misplaced, for he