ul as to the issue of any such
neglect, when we see the mind of Christ thus exemplified in His habitual
observance.

We all recognise His moral and spiritual superiority. Whether His spirit
has taken possession of our spirit or not, He stands out as our
undisputed guide to the practice of a good life.

In vision, in insight, in purity, in stainlessness, in all that we
reverence in human life and that good men strive to attain, we have no
model to set beside His example. All the more, then, this fact deserves
our notice, and calls us to follow Him, that we find Him, as His custom
was, in the synagogue on the Sabbath day. He was there Sabbath after
Sabbath listening to the provincial teacher, worshipping with the village
labourer, praying with the ignorant and the foolish, there as a matter of
life custom and for His soul's benefit.

I have said that it deserves our notice; but more than this--it should be
graven on the minds of the young, so that they may never lose the
impression of it, so that it go with them through all their years of
manhood, to preserve in them the devotional and reverent habit.

It is indeed good for all of us to think of Him there in that primitive
and unattractive house of God, listening to the rude Galilean accents,
and bowing His head in the habitual worship of that obscure community.

I do not think it is possible for us, unless we are quite indifferent
about our moral and spiritual condition--unless, that is, we have low
notions about our life, a low aim and a low standard--to be unaffected in
our practice by this example of the Lord. We can hardly believe that
those exercises of the spirit which were so fruitful in His life will
fail to bear their fruit in ours also.

What have we to say as we picture Him with all the great thoughts of His
new work swelling up in His soul, the divinely appointed teacher of new
wisdom and new faith, the bringer of new light among men, the voice of a
new world, and yet, being all this, at the same time, and as a means for
working out His mission more completely, a regular and devout worshipper
in a village house of prayer?

If it should ever happen to any of us that we come to fancy we do not
need such common prayer, or that because of defects in public worship we
do not profit by it, does not this example of the Saviour rise up and
rebuke us? Yes, you may rest assured, if that day ever comes to you,
that you are in danger of drifting away from the