and if you will seek for His teaching, He will reveal to you, by means of the Word, and by means of the discipline of life,-more and more of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, in His person and in His work. Day by day you will see more, and understand more. You will be like a man ascending a lofty mountain, where every step reveals to him hitherto-undiscovered beauty and grandeur in the landscape that lies below; for the office of the Spirit is, as our Lord says Himself, "To take of the things of Christ, and show them unto us."

creasing in us

life which we

sess.

But I think that the Holy Spirit not only Then He shows, but helps. He helps by showing, of helps by incourse; for a man feels much stronger and the spiritual happier when he sees things clearly and already possteadily, especially when he comes to understand what it is to have a personal interest in Christ. The thought that Christ is on my side, that Christ is my Saviour, my Protector, my Friend, is a very comforting one; but I allude to something beyond this. If we are living Christians, we have our life from the Holy Ghost. He is the "giver of life." Of course it is hard to say exactly what this "life" is. But it is that by which we do Christian acts,

and feel Christian feelings, and think Christian thoughts; and though we cannot explain the mystery of life, we all know, by experience, something about it. Now it is, I think, with our souls as with our bodies. Sometimes the life in our bodies is feeble: we are then, as we say, "below par,"-weak and helpless, and unable to do much work. That you understand, I daresay, well enough. And so with our souls. What we sometimes require— perhaps I ought to say, what we often require -is to "have life more abundantly," to have a stream of life, as it were, flowing into us, that we may be able to do vigorous things. That increase of spiritual life comes from the Holy Ghost. It is He who imparts it; how, of course, I do not know. I do not understand, nor does any one understand, the mysteries of the Spirit; but I know that it is He Who imparts it, chiefly in the use of the appointed means of grace, to those who earnestly desire and seek for it. If, then, we wish to be strong to resist temptation, strong to live above the world, strong to bear ridicule, or to fulfil hard duties of any kind, -and to do all this cheerfully and manfully and well,—we must look to the Holy Ghost

to supply us with the needful help, by supplying us with the abundance of spiritual life.

This help to be obtain

and in the use

means.

III. Then, in the last place, how are we to obtain this help? The question is easily ed by prayer answered. By asking for it, by prayer of appointed offered in the name of Jesus Christ. My dear young friends, rest upon this promise, as upon a rock: "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?"

Prayer.

V.

THE MEANS OF GRACE.

I say

"as a

THE Holy Spirit acts upon us, as a rule,
through the means of grace.
rule," because being God He is not tied to
the use of means, but can work quite inde-
pendently of them, if He chooses to do so,
-and, I think, that sometimes He does choose
to do so; but ordinarily His gracious in-
fluences flow into our souls through certain
channels, which He has Himself appointed
and laid down. It is about some of these
channels that I wish to speak in the present
paper.

I. I suppose that one of the earliest proofs we give of being really living souls, is by breathing the breath of prayer. "Behold, he prayeth!" was said of Saul of Tarsus shortly after his conversion; because, although

Saul had uttered thousands upon thousands of forms of prayer in his previous lifetime, and had been a very earnest and devout man, he had never yet offered what God considered to be prayer. Saul had been too much like the Pharisee, and too little like the Publican. He thought he could claim what he asked for. He considered himself very good. But now all this was altered: he had come to know what a sinner he really was, and how undeserving he was of God's goodness; and here he is with broken voice, and streaming eyes, prostrate on the ground, pouring out his very heart before the throne of grace, and beseeching the Lord, against Whom he had rebelled, to have mercy upon him. This is real prayer; and this is a proof that he is alive,-alive unto God.

We must distinguish, then, when we speak about prayer. There is praying which is nothing more than the utterance of a form of words. And there is praying which is a speaking with God: speaking as one who knows that he is heard, and who expects to receive a reply. It is that latter kind of prayer with which we are concerned just now. You, if you are led and taught by the