many difficulties in this world of sin and temptation. In yourselves you have no sufficiency for it. But surely there is Divine encouragement in the first word spoken by the Lord to His trembling disciples, after the voice from the cloud charged them to "hear Him." We read (verse 7) that "Jesus came and touched them and said, Arise, and be not afraid." So He says to every believer, truly bent on hearing and following Him-"My grace is sufficient for thee; for my strength is made perfect in weakness."

Again, how woeful the state of those who, ignorant and insensible as to their lost condition, are blind to the glory of Christ, and indifferent to the great things of Gospel salvation! Perhaps you make no profession, and are living only for the world. Or, if you do make mention of His name, you have no ear for His counsel, and no heart to follow Him. It may be that you have some vague purpose, at a future and more convenient season, to deal seriously with Him and His truth, but meantime there is no disposition to hearken, and no obedience of faith. O, be assured, whatever may be your outward character, that, thus living, you are in the way of darkness and death! Ponder, I earnestly beseech you, that solemn version which Peter, by the Holy Ghost, gives of the word to Moses; "And it shall come to pass, that every soul which will not hear that Prophet shall be destroyed from among the people" (Acts iii. 23).

And finally, I press this gracious call on all to whom this word comes. "Hear ye Him;" for there is no other refuge for a sinner, no other Saviour of souls; but, as the Lord Himself testified to the Jews, "if ye believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins." "Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men." "To-day, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts." "See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh; for if they escaped not who refused Him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from Him that speaketh from heaven" (Heb. xii. 25). Yea, rather, "I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God," praying that the word may come home to you "in demonstration of the Splrit and of power," Incline your ear, and come unto me, hear and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David" (Isaiah lv. 3).

THE CHURCH'S MISSIONARY PSALM:

A SERMON.

BY

ANDREW THOMSON, D.D.,

BROUGHTON PLACE UNITED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, EDINBURGH. *

"God be merciful unto us, and bless us; and cause His face to shine upon us. That Thy way may be known upon earth, Thy saving health among all nations.”—Ps. lxxii. 1, 2.

THIS prayer of the ancient Church consists in part of the benediction which the High Priest was accustomed to pronounce upon the assembled tribes of Israel. The people here lay hold of the sublime benediction, send it up in united supplication to heaven, and beseech God Himself to make it His own blessing upon His own people," God be merciful unto us, and bless us; and cause His face to shine upon us." Whatever other thoughts there may be in this comprehensive prayer, we cannot be mistaken in regarding the following as standing prominent among the blessings which it implores :-the continued enjoyment of God's forgiveness and friendship, and especially the increased experience of His love in quickened graces and enlarged spiritual strength; that the spring of His Church might ripen into summer; that the dawn might brighten unto the perfect day; that, having life already, His people might have it more abundantly; and all this the effect of mercy, free and unforced, far-reaching as the firmament, and fathomless as the sea.

It is remarkable, however, that as this prayer of the Church proceeds, its desires are not restricted to itself, but extended to the vast Gentile world that is "sitting in darkness and in the region and shadow of death." It seeks to have the heavenly benediction spread over the whole race of man. And more than than this, it supplicates a higher spiritual life for itself, partly in

* Preached during a season of revival.

order that it may become a qualified instrument for proclaiming and extending the true religion over the entire world, in all its nations, and kindreds, and peoples, and tongues,-" that Thy way," by restoring men to Thy favour and renewing them after Thy likeness," may be known upon earth; Thy saving health,”thy salvation,-" among all nations," proclaimed to all and possessed by all.

It is scarcely possible for us to determine, with any certainty, whether this prayer, when it was first spoken, had reference to any single period or event. Perhaps it may have pointed forward to more than one great era of enlargement and blessing, for there are germinant prayers as well as germinant prophecies. We shall not, however, be mistaken, in supposing that there was a special reference, at all events, to the advent of the Messiah, when the glory of the Lord was to arise upon the ancient Church, and "Gentiles were to come to her light, and kings to the brightness of her coming,”—a period for which holy Jews, for many an age, waited and prayed with longing eyes. The fact therefore stands out, distinct and clear, from such a prayer as this, that the Jews, in their purer and better times, did not think of themselves as the monopolists of the Divine favour, or regard the people of other countries with proud and arrogant exclusiveness. It belonged to an age of corruption and formalism to do this, for charity to man always decays and dies out with the decay of piety to God. The devout Hebrew of David's times anticipated the period when the Gentile should become a common partaker of his light and privileges, as the true golden age of the Church of God. It was a false and vitiated Judaism which grudged those highest benefits to other nations, as unlike the Judaism of the Psalms and the Prophets, as the Christianity of the twelfth century was unlike the Christianity of the first.

Proceeding now to consider the text a little more in detail, there are three things in it to which I invite your special attention, and which are not unsuitable to our present circumstances. I. There is a prayer for the Revival of the Church. II. There is a prayer for the Increase of the Church. III. The connection between the revived life of the Church and its beneficent influence

upon the world is indicated in the words, "That Thy way may be known upon earth, thy saving health among all nations."

I. The Church is here represented as praying for Revival,that is, for a higher state of spiritual life, for eminence in holy

character, "God be merciful unto us and bless us, and cause His face to shine upon us."

Whatever other desires may be contained in the words, this at least stands prominent in them. What are some of the signs of this advanced religion in an individual, in a congregation, or in a fellowship of Churches? What are some of the tokens, when they unmistakably present themselves, that, in this truest and most blessed sense, a people have "put on strength"? Increased knowledge of Divine truth; a firmer grasp of its Divine realities, and a living upon it daily as the very nutriment of the soul; a glow of Christian love that burns against sin, that delights in God and in every creature that is Christ-like,-that makes Christian obedience easy, and lightens the cross of heavy trials,—that causes the mouth to speak out of the abundance of the heart the the praises of Christ, and that yearns, with the intensity of a commanding passion, for the conversion of souls. There will also appear, in such a case, an abounding and delighting in prayer that will no longer be confined to the stated times of devotion, but, mingling itself even with common duties and engagements, will many a time overflow its banks, like Jordan in the time of harvest. There will be a growing weanedness from the world and indifference to the pleasures of sense, because the heart has found satisfaction in a conscious salvation, in holy affections, and heavenly hopes. There will be a growing spirit of thankfulness and praise, a sense of divine sonship, and, in the midst even of trying providences, an inward peace, a sweet undertone of joy. These are signs of God's blessing a people, and causing His face to shine upon them, as distinct and certain as the tongues of fire resting on the first Christian disciples. Many of them have appeared in our congregations during the past months, reminding us of the power that wrought so wondrously at Pentecost, carrying our thoughts upward to the enthroned Redeemer, from whom the power has come; showing us the working of spiritual forces that could transform the world; and giving us glimpses of a state of things which, on an immensely greater scale, is to bring in the glories of the latter day. It is a state of things which every Church should seek to reach and to retain, like the continued spring and summer of the tropics, and for which we are taught in the text constantly and universally to pray, “God be merciful unto us and bless us, and cause His face to shine upon us."

There are various considerations which, in addition to that which we are afterwards more particularly to specify, indicate

the duty and the supreme importance of our seeking to have this eminence in spiritual life as the normal state of our Churches. Thus, we are struck with the fact that this is the principal request -I had almost said, the sublime refrain-of our Lord's intercessory prayer in the seventeenth chapter of John's Gospel. There is scarcely an epistle of Paul in which his argument or exhortation does not, at some point, kindle into prayer; and in every prayer, however varied the phraseology, the central and absorbing desire which gathers everything into itself, is the greater holiness of the Church. And in that grand symbolic picture in which the ascended Saviour is represented as continually moving in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks which are the seven Churches, and, with those eyes which are as a flame of fire, taking infallible note of the condition of each, it is again the question of holy character and attainment that is the supreme inquiry. What amount of holy radiance are those light-bearers, which were originally kindled from heaven, continuing to shed around them? How He remonstrates with one Church because of its little strength, and because the things which remain are ready to die; and how He rejoices over another, because of its purity, its fidelity to the truth, its service in action, and its yet higher service in suffering! His representation, coming before us in many a form, is that it is only where there is vigorous and abounding life in a people, that they fulfil their mission and design as churches, and that His Father receives glory from them, and that He Himself delights in them. "Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples." Our religion, in order to influence others, must be visible; and in order to be visible, it must be strong and deep. Our Lord declares, in one place, that He would have preferred even to see the Laodicean Church extinguished, rather than continue to misrepresent His religion and dishonour His name by its state of living death. Should not such considerations as these send us back in thought upon our own history as individuals and as a Church? Measuring from some peint in the past not very remote, has ours been a history of progress or of decay? What our Lord in heaven requires of us is, a religion so pronounced, so self-consistent, so all-pervading, that, like Himself when on earth, it cannot be hidden, and that, when seen, it cannot fail to proclaim its own divinity to the world. But let us remember that this blessed condition cannot be reached, and, after it has been reached, cannot be retained, except through a constant, living, communion with Christ, and a daily drawing,