That itself is a divine revelation. For the Spirit is as truly a manifestation of God as is the Son or the Father. The teaching of our own heart and conscience is enough. If we follow the promptings of truth and purity, of justice and humility, sooner or later we shall come back to the same Original Source. The witness of the Spirit of all goodness is the same as the witness of the life of Jesus, the same as the witness of the works of God our Creator.

3. This distinction, which applies to particular wants of the life of each man, may be especially traced in the successive stages of the spiritual growth of individuals and of the human race itself. There is a beautiful poem of a gifted German poet of this century, in which he describes his wanderings in the Hartz Mountains, and as he rests in the house of a mountain peasant, a little child, the daughter of the house, sits at his feet, and looks up in his troubled countenance, and asks, "Dost thou believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost?" He makes answer in words which must be read in the original to see their full force. He says: "When I sat as a boy on my mother's knees, and learned from her to pray, I believed on God the Father, who reigns aloft so great and good, who created the beautiful earth and the beautiful men and women that are upon it, who to sun and moon and stars foretold their appointed course. And when I grew a little older and bigger, then I understood more and more, then I took in new truth with my reason and my understanding, and I believed on the Son - the wellbeloved Son, who in His love revealed to us what love is, and who for His reward, as always happens, was crucified by the senseless world. And now that I am grown up, and that I have read many books and travelled in many lands, my heart swells, and with all my heart I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of God. It is this Spirit

which works the greatest of miracles, and shall work greater miracles than we have yet seen. It is this Spirit which breaks down all the strongholds of oppression and sets the bondsmen free. It is this Spirit which heals old death-wounds and throws into the old law new life. Through this Spirit it is that all men become a race of nobles, equal in the sight of God. Through this Spirit are dispersed the black clouds and dark cobwebs that bewilder our hearts and brains."

"A thousand knights in armor clad

Hath the Holy Ghost ordained,

All His work and will to do,

By His living force sustained.

Bright their swords, their banners bright;
Who would not be ranked a knight,

Foremost in that sacred host?

Oh, whate'er our race or creed,

May we be such knights indeed,

Soldiers of the Holy Ghost."

III. The name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost will never cease to be the chief expression of Christian belief, and it has been endeavored to show what is the true meaning of them. The words probably from the earliest time fell short of this high signification. Even in the Bible they needed all the light which experience could throw upon them to suggest the full extent of the meaning of which they are capable. But it is believed that on the whole they contain or suggest thoughts of this kind, and that in this development of their meaning, more than in the scholastic systems built upon them or beside them, lies their true vitality.

"Apparet domus intus, et atria longa patescunt."

The true interest of the collocation of these three words in the Baptismal formula instead of any others that might have found a place there, is not that the Christians of the second or third century attached to them their full

depth of meaning, but that they are too deeply embedded in the Biblical records to have been effaced in those ages by any heterogeneous speculation, and that, when we come to ask their meaning, they yield a response which the course of time has rather strengthened than enfeebled. However trite and commonplace appear to us the truths involved in them, they were far from obvious to those early centuries, which worked upon them for the most part in senses quite unlike the profound religious revelations which are becoming to us so familiar. And then there still remains the universal and the deeper truth within. In Christianity nothing is of real concern except that which makes us wiser and better; everything which does make us wiser and better is the very thing which Christianity intends. Therefore even in these three most sacred words there is yet, besides all the other meanings which we have found in them, the deepest and most sacred meaning of all that which corresponds to them in the life of man. Many a one has repeated this Sacred Name, and yet never fulfilled in himself the truths which it conveys. Some have been unable to repeat it, and yet have grasped the substance which alone gives to it a spiritual value. What John Bunyan said on his death-bed concerning prayer is equally true of all religious forms: "Let thy heart be without words rather than thy words without heart." Wherever we are taught to know and understand the real nature of the world in which our lot is cast, there is a testimony, however humble, to the name of the Father; wherever we are taught to know and admire the highest and best of human excellence, there is a testimony to the name of the Son; wherever we learn the universal appreciation of such excellence, there is a testimony to the name of the Holy Ghost.

CHAPTER XV.

THE LORD'S PRAYER.

No one doubts that the Lord's Prayer entered into all the Liturgical observances of the Early Church. No one questions its fundamental value.

1. First, let us observe the importance of having such a form at all as the Lord's Prayer left to us by the Founder of our faith. It was said once by a Scottish statesman, "Give to any one you like the making of a nation's laws -give me the making of their ballads and songs, and that will tell us the mind of the nation." So it might be said, "Give to any one you like the making of a Church's creed - or a Church's decrees or rubrics give me the making of its prayers, and that will tell us the mind of the Church or religious community." We have in this Prayer the one public universal prayer of Christendom. It contains the purest wishes, the highest hopes, the tenderest aspirations which our Master put into the mouths of His followers. It is the rule of our worship, the guide of our inmost thoughts. This prayer on the whole has been accepted by all the Churches of the world. In the English Liturgy it is repeated in every single service too often for purposes of edification. The reason evidently is because it was thought that no service could be complete without it. This is the excuse for what otherwise would seem to be a vain repetition. Again, it is used so frequently in the Roman Catholic Church that its two first words have almost passed into a name for a prayer generally - Pater Nos

ter, - which is the Latin of "Our Father." It has been translated into almost all languages. It is used, at least in modern times, in all the Presbyterian churches of Scotland, and in most of the English Nonconformist churches. However great may be the scruples which any community may entertain against set forms, there is hardly any which will refuse to use this prayer. The Society of Friends is probably the only exception. Whatever may be the case with other formularies or catechisms, this at least is not a distinctive formulary; it is common to the whole of Christendom nay, as we shall see, it is common to the whole of mankind. Luther calls it "the Prayer of Prayers." Baxter says, "The Lord's Prayer, with the Creed and Ten Commandments, the older I grew, furnished me with a most plentiful and acceptable matter for all my meditations." Archbishop Leighton, the only man who was almost successful in joining together the Churches of England and Scotland, was, we are told, especially partial to the Lord's Prayer, and said of it, "Oh, the spirit of this prayer would make rare Christians." Bossuet, the most celebrated of French divines, and Channing, the most celebrated of American divines, both repeated it on their death-beds. Channing said, "This is the perfection of the Christian religion." Bossuet said, "Let us read and re-read incessantly the, Lord's Prayer. It is the true prayer of Christians, and the most perfect, for it contains all." On the day of his execution it was repeated by Count Egmont, leader of the insurrection in the Netherlands. On the day of his mortal illness it summed up the devotions of the Emperor Nicholas of Russia. Even those who knew nothing about it have acknowledged its excellence. A French countess read this prayer to her unbelieving husband in a dangerous illness. "Say that again," he said, "it is a beautiful prayer. Who made it?"