f temptation may meet them with
sudden jets of petition, and thus put out their fires. And the same
help avails for long-continuing as for sudden needs. Some of us may
have to carry lifelong burdens and to fight in a battle ever renewed.
It may seem as if our cry was not heard, since the enemy's assault is
not weakened, nor our power to beat it back perceptibly increased.
But the appeal is not in vain, and when the fight is over, if not
before, we shall know what reinforcements of strength to our weakness
were due to our poor cry entering into the ears of our Lord and
Brother. No other 'name' is permissible as our plea or as recipient
of our prayer. In and on the name of the Lord we must call, and if we
do, anything is possible rather than that the promise which was
claimed for the Church and referred to Jesus, in the very first
Christian preaching on Pentecost, should not be fulfilled--'Whosoever
shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.'

'In every place.' We may venture to subject the words of my text to a
little gentle pressure here. The Apostle only meant to express the
universal characteristics of Christians everywhere. But we may
venture to give a different turn to the words, and learn from them
the duty of devout communion with Christ as a duty for each of us
wherever we are. If a place is not fit to pray in it is not fit to be
in. We may carry praying hearts, remembrances of the Lord, sweet,
though they may be swift and short, contemplations of His grace, His
love, His power, His sufficiency, His nearness, His punctual help,
like a hidden light in our hearts, into all the dusty ways of life,
and in every place call on His name. There is no place so dismal but
that thoughts of Him will make sunshine in it; no work so hard, so
commonplace, so prosaic, so uninteresting, but that it will become
the opposite of all these if whatever we do is done in remembrance of
our Lord. Nothing will be too hard for us to do, and nothing too
bitter for us to swallow, and nothing too sad for us to bear, if only
over all that befalls us and all that we undertake and endeavour we
make the sign of the Cross and call upon the name of the Lord. If 'in
every place' we have Him as the object of our faith and desire, and
as the Hearer of our petition, in 'every place' we shall have Him for
our help, and all will be full of His bright presence; and though we
have to journey through the wilderness we shall ever drink of that
spiri