:

of Prayer which our Lord gave. Thus would our Church feed His lambs in the same way that the Great SHEPHERD fed His sheep thus would she instruct us after our LORD's own example, that the great method of praying aright is by having good forms of prayer: and that of all prayers, infinitely the highest and the best is our LORD's Own Prayer; that it is to be to us the very pattern of prayers; that our prayers are to be set forms of prayer, and, if it may be, according to some Divine sanction, holy and good. The Disciples had on this occasion asked our LORD to teach them to pray in like manner as John the Baptist had taught his disciples; and it is inferred from our LORD's answer, that there was a certain form of prayer which the disciples of John had been furnished with by their master for their use.

It is moreover very observable that, on another occasion, in the Sermon on the Mount, recorded as taking place long before, in St. Matthew, when our LORD teaches them to pray, HE gives them the same form of prayer. This, I say, is much to be observed, because our LORD might easily have given them a thousand forms of prayer, all equally excellent and good; but He has chosen to give us one prayer only and that one HE repeated on two occasions. Many parables, many precepts, many discourses, many miracles has HE afforded us for our learning, but one prayer only of His own; and that the same twice given. And why is this? Partly, perhaps, for this reason. The great objection to forms of prayer is that we have to use the same expressions over again and again so often; but yet this is the very thing which our LORD HIMSELF Commends to us it is good for us for HE exhorts us to pray with perseverance and without ceasing; and when we pray to use this prayer.

The same lesson He has also taught us by His own most perfect example, for when HE HIMSELF prayed with great earnestness and importunity in the garden of Gethsemane, HE returned to pray, we are told, three times, "saying the same words'." As therefore it is needful for us very often to pray; so is it also right and necessary that we often use the LORD's Prayer.

This point brings us also to another circumstance in our

2 Matt. xxvi. 44.

Blessed SAVIOUR's own example: we read that He spent whole nights in Prayer; and often mention is made of His praying; and we may well suppose that, as the Son of Man, He was always praying; what these His Prayers were must be for the most part a secret from us; yet thus much is given us to notice that He appears, in His earnest addresses to His Father, to be using forms of Prayer; those sacred forms which His Holy SPIRIT has given to us. For when He prayed aloud at the Crucifixion it was with the words which occur at the beginning of the Twenty-second Psalm : "MY GOD, MY GOD, why hast THOU forsaken ME!" From which circumstance we reasonably infer that His silent Prayers throughout were more or less in the Divine words of the Psalms. And indeed His last dying words were also from another Psalm : "FATHER, into Thy hands I commend MY SPIRIT?" Moreover, if we refer to the Psalms, from whence these are taken, we find that not such words only spoken aloud, but the whole passage where they occur is in the highest degree applicable to our LORD HIMSELF, under those circumstances in which they were spoken.

Still more, on occasions of solemn worship, in company with others, may we reverently suppose that our LORD used sacred forms of Prayer, as in His worship in the Temple, that House of His FATHER which He would have to be called "the House of Prayer," intimating, no doubt, what He would have our Christian Churches to be. Thus, at the Last Supper, it is said that" when they had sung an hymn, they went forth to the mount of Olives*;" but the hymn which they then sung has always been said to have been one usual with the Jews on that occasion, called the "Great Hallel," consisting of certain Psalms ;-from the beginning of the 113th to the end of the 118th Psalm.

We shall find the same circumstance in others beside our LORD HIMSELF, who are set before us for examples in the Gospels. We are in the habit ourselves of using certain Divine songs or hymns taken from thence, as, for instance, that of the " Magnificat;" in which each of us, as baptized Christians, born again in Christ, take up and apply to ourselves that thanksgiving for our Redemption, which the Blessed Virgin herself made for God's

marvellous mercies to herself. But although the holy Mary then spake by the SPIRIT of GoD, and filled with the HOLY GHOST, yet she is not using words of her own; but the ancient form of an hymn to be found in the Scriptures. For it is throughout in substance the same hymn as Hannah, the mother of Samuel, spake, as we find it, in the Second Chapter of the First Book of Samuel. And yet if ever there was an occasion when we might have supposed that what we call an extemporary Thanksgiving, or Prayer, would have been poured forth by the HOLY GHOST, in words and sentences and thoughts altogether new, and flowing free and spontaneous - it would have been from the mouth of the Blessed Virgin at that time. Yet GOD is so great a lover of order, of unity and concord, that the thanksgiving, even for CHRIST's own Marvellous Birth into the world, is cast into that same form and mould of expression which had been familiar to them from of old. For nothing in the New Creation of GOD is "without form and void." The Psalms and the Hymns and Prayers of the Old Testament are all from the SPIRIT of GOD, Who is "the Same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever." His words, when once spoken, are "of no private interpretation," i. e. they do not apply merely to one single passing circumstance like man's words; they are the words of God, which are like those wheels in the vision of GOD, seen by the Prophet Ezekiel, which are said to have been "full of eyes round about "," they look many ways; they mean at the same time many things: therefore, when they are the words of Prayer they serve to express the wants of us all, and at all times, however many and manifold those wants may be.

5

Further, it may be noticed that when our LORD was received by the Jews in a manner acceptable to HIM, it was with songs and thanksgivings which were taken from the Jewish Liturgy, and not by any words spoken at random by thoughtless man; for the multitude cried aloud, as more than one evangelist records it, saying, "Hosannah, Blessed is HE that cometh in the Name of the LORD;" words which are found in the Psalms: and, on the same occasion, the words of the children in the Temple, which displeased the chief priests, were "Hosannah to the Son of David"."

5 Ezek. x. 12.

6 Ps. cxviii. 25, 26.

7 Matt. xxi. 9. 15.

Hosannah, or,

LORD, save us," the formal Church invocation, found in the Psalms, and used in her Divine worship.

And surely if these were so unacceptable when they used words, of which it must be said, that they indeed knew not what they were saying, on account of the vastness of those blessings and prophecies which were contained in the Divine forms which they sung; much more so may it be the case with us, who, in those and the like words, know what we speak of. When, for instance, we say in the Litany, O SON of DAVID, have mercy on us," we are using words found in the Gospels, the Prayer of the Blind man, a Prayer which the Christian Church has always used from the beginning—yet in that form we ask for greater things, and put in a greater claim than that Blind man thought of. In like manner, we are told, in the Revelation, of the Church of GOD in Heaven, that " they sing the song of Moses, the servant of GOD, and the song of the Lamb "." They sing both songs, or the song of Moses has become to them the song of the Lamb; even as the hymn of Miriam, the sister of Moses', and of Hannah, the mother of Samuel', is to us no other than the hymn of the Blessed Virgin, and the hymn of the Heavenly Bride of CHRIST, which is His Church. Such are the Psalms of David, they are truly the song of Moses and of the LAMB, they were recited or spoken by our LORD HIMSELF, as a pattern to us; they speak at the same time of Moses and the sacrifices of the Law, and also of the true LAMB of GOD, "our Passover," which is sacrificed for us."

We read in the Book of the Chronicles 2, that king Hezekiah, in restoring the worship of the temple, appointed and arranged the singing of the Psalms of David: in like manner in that New Jerusalem-the Spiritual temple, the Church of God in Heaven, the saints are represented as using the same Divine forms of thanksgiving, of the Old and New Testament together.

Indeed, in public worship, a set form of words is so necessary, and at the same time so sacred and Divine, that we find GoD HIMSELF prescribes to Moses the form of Priestly Blessing, the same as we now use in the Service of the Visitation for the Sick.

8 Rev. xv. 3.

11 Sam. ii. 1-10.

9 Exod. xv. 1. 20, 21.

2 2 Chron. xxix. 30.

"And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto Aaron and unto his sons, saying, On this wise ye shall bless the children of Israel, saying unto them, The LORD bless thee, and keep thee: the LORD make His face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee; the LORD lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace 3."

Now this appears to be one great point which the Catechism brings to our notice, by requiring of a child the LORD's Prayer, and a due understanding of it. It lays the foundation in a Christian child-the foundation of that temple of the HOLY GHOST within him, which is afterwards to be built up by means of holy Prayers, and Liturgies, and Psalms. It calls attention to the subject of forms of Prayer altogether, and points out the Divine sanction and example which we have for them; it leads us, as usual with our Church, to the Fountain-head of all wisdom, when it lays such stress on the right knowledge of this the first and best of all the Prayers which God has given us. It seems also, I think, to suggest to pastors and to parents in GOD, that one great part of the right training of a Christian child will be to store his mind with the best Prayers, and to induce him to attend to the right apprehension of them; such especially as the Psalms and the Collects of our Church.

And here I would say something of the Church Prayer Book. It has been brought down to us, and put into our hands by the very singular care and gracious Providence of Almighty God, Who has promised to be always with His Church, and Who has shown the presence of His HOLY SPIRIT in nothing more than in protecting and preserving to our use a depository of such Prayers, and order of such services. It can surely be owing to nothing but the superintending care of that same good SPIRIT which has given to us the Bible, which has also brought down to us the Prayer Book, the chief and most substantial parts of which are almost as old as the Bible itself. For as most parts of it are found to have been in existence for more than a thousand years, they probably came down from the age of the Apostles themselves; many of the Prayers can be traced to old Liturgies, some of which were known under the names of Apostles; one was called

3 Numb. vi. 22-26.

C