object. When I speak of a lamb or a lion, the
name at once suggests the different nature peculiar to each. The Name of
God is meant to express His whole Divine nature and glory. And so the
Name of Christ means His whole nature, His person and work, His
disposition and Spirit. To ask in the Name of Christ is to pray in union
with Him. When first a sinner believes in Christ, he only knows and
thinks of His merit and intercession. And to the very end that is the
one foundation of our confidence. And yet, as the believer grows in
grace and enters more deeply and truly into union with Christ--that is,
as he abides in Him--he learns that to pray in the Name of Christ also
means in His Spirit, and in the possession of His nature, as the Holy
Spirit imparts it to us. As we grasp the meaning of the words, "_At that
day_ ye shall ask in My Name"--the day when in the Holy Spirit Christ
came to live in His disciples--we shall no longer be staggered at the
greatness of the promise: "_Whatsoever_ ye shall ask in My Name, I will
do it." We shall get some insight into the unchangeable necessity and
certainty of the law: what is asked in the Name of Christ, in union with
Him, out of His nature and Spirit, must be given. As Christ's
prayer-nature lives in us, His prayer-power becomes ours too. Not that
the measure of our attainment or experience is the ground of our
confidence, but the honesty and whole-heartedness of our surrender to
all that we see that Christ seeks to be in us, will be the measure of
our spiritual fitness and power to pray in His Name. "If ye abide in
Me," He says, "ye shall ask what ye will." As we live in Him, we get the
spiritual power to avail ourselves of His Name. As the branch wholly
given up to the life and service of the Vine can count upon all its sap
and strength for its fruit, so the believer, who in faith has accepted
the fulness of the Spirit to possess his whole life, can indeed avail
himself of all the power of Christ's Name.

Here on earth Christ as man came to reveal what prayer is. To pray in
the Name of Christ we must pray as He prayed on earth; as He taught us
to pray; in union with Him, as He now prays in heaven. We must in love
study, and in faith accept, Him as our Example, our Teacher, our
Intercessor.

CHRIST OUR EXAMPLE.

Prayer in Christ on earth and in us cannot be two different things. Just
as there is but one God, who is a Spirit, who hears prayer, there is but
one spirit of accept