Sunday Morning (Fourth Week)

WE will extol Thee, our GOD, O King, we will bless Thy name forever and ever; every day will we bless Thee, we will praise Thy name forever and ever. We bless Thee for the return of another Sabbath. Again Thou hast permitted us to awake in safety, and not suffered our eyes to sleep the sleep of death. May it prove a holy day of rest to each of us, a rest from sin and a rest in GOD. May we welcome with gladness of heart the peaceful return of these peaceful hours—may all vain and worldly thoughts be set aside—may we be enabled to worship Thee in the beauty of holiness.

But wherewithal, LORD, shall we come into thy presence. Our very prayers might seal our condemnation. Our purest services, if weighed in the balances, might rise up in judgment against us. We mourn our guilty insensibility to sin—we do not see its vileness—we have no depressing consciousness of the plague of our own hearts—we have no realizing sense of the infinite purity of Thy holy righteous law.

We come anew in the name of Thy dear Son, confessing, and desiring deeply to feel as we confess, that we are sinners and the chief of sinners. We look to grace abounding over the aboundings of sin—to infinite merit abounding over infinite demerit— the everlasting righteousness and faithfulness of a tried Redeemer, coming in the room of the poor, stinted, imperfect shortcomings and deficiencies of the finite and fallible creature. Teach us to feel that we are nothing, have nothing, know nothing. We would place all our sins and burdens on the head of the immaculate Surety ; He alone can bear them all away into a land of oblivion, so that they can rise up to condemn us no more. We bless Thee that he ever lives and reigns for our justification. We rejoice to think of Him as our Great High-Priest, with the names of His covenant people imperishably engraven on His heart, bearing them along with Him in every approach to the throne. We rejoice to think that all power in Heaven and in earth is entrusted to His hands:—nothing befals us but by His direction,—nothing is laid upon us but what He sees to be for our good.

LORD JESUS, we commit our temporal and our everlasting interests to Thee. We rejoice that into such hands we can confidently entrust them. Undertake Thou for us. Carry on within us Thine own work in Thine own way. Keep us from all evil that is likely to grieve us. Give us that dealing and that discipline that tends to bring us nearest Thyself.

We pray for all in sickness and distress, for those laid on beds of languishing, for those deprived of beloved relatives, and who are mourning those who “ are not.” May it please Thee to bind up their wounds, to soothe their sorrows, to heal their pains: direct the unwavering eye of faith to that better world, where every weight of earthly trial and earthly suffering shall be exchanged for the exceeding weight of heavenly glory, and where GOD shall wipe away all tears from off all faces.

Bless our own family and friends, both present and absent. May the invisible chain of Thy covenant-love bind us all together. [Bless our children, may they early obey the SAVIOUR’S invitation to come unto Him; may they be early consecrated to Thy glory, and learn that the secret of true happiness is to walk with GOD.] Strengthen this day all the ministers of the everlasting gospel, may great grace be with them; may Thy churches, walking in the fear of GOD and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost, everywhere be multiplied. Promote unity and concord among Thy true people. Oh may that blessed period soon arrive, when Ephraim shall not vex Judah, nor Judah vex Ephraim—when men shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning-hooks—all seeing eye to eye and heart to heart.

Take us now under Thy care, and enable us, whether waking or sleeping, to live together with Thee ; and all that we ask is for the sake of Him, in whose most precious name and words we would farther pray—

Our Father, &c.

The Grace of our Lord, &c.