It is not my intention, therefore, to make any comment upon that doxology with which, in our daily use, we end the prayer, but rather to call your attention to some thoughts on prayer in general suggested by the study of this prayer which Jesus gave to His disciples in answer to their request that He would teach them how to pray. First of all, let me say that I believe Jesus gave this prayer to His disciples _for use_, that is to say, He contemplated their using _this very form of words_. The circumstances of its origin seem to place this beyond dispute. This is the record Luke gives, “And it came to pass, as He was praying in a certain place, that when He ceased, one of His disciples said unto Him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, even as John also taught his disciples.’ And He said unto them, ‘When ye pray, say Father.’” In face of those words, “When ye pray, say,” there is, as Dr. Dods puts it, “no getting past the evident precept here delivered, that we ought habitually to use these words.” “Then our Lord,” some one will remark, “sanctions the use of forms of prayer.” I am here, I know, on the very edge of a question which is one of the most difficult to deal with, and one on which Free Churchmen differ strongly among themselves. Discussions upon the use of liturgical forms in worship crop up periodically at various assemblies, but my experience of them is, that they generate a good deal of heat without giving much light. In our Congregational Churches free prayer is the general, almost the invariable practice. Our forefathers were so shocked at the formalism of the liturgical worship of the Established Church, that in the interest of true spiritual worship they rejected forms altogether; some even going to the length of objecting to the use of the Lord’s Prayer in the public services of the sanctuary. Their dislike and distrust of forms we have to a large extent inherited. But the fact that many people are asking the question to-day whether our services would not be all the more helpful if a little of the liturgical element were imported into them, is proof that there are those amongst us who think that our fathers in their revolt against formalism went to the opposite extreme, and by their complete rejection of forms injured themselves and impoverished the public worship of the sanctuary. Of course formalism is fatal to true worship. But the use of forms is not formalism. Formalism is the abuse of forms. But the fact that forms get abused is no reason for discarding them altogether, any more than the fact that liberty sometimes, and with some people, degenerates into licence is a reason why we should all abjure our freedom. In fact, a certain amount of form is absolutely necessary. As some one has put it, “there may be occasionally form without life, but there can never be life without form.” No one, of course, proposes to do away with free prayer. The abolition of free prayer from our services would, I am