c prayer and at the common meeting--"He
went, as His custom was, into the synagogue"--the questions suggested are
very pertinent and practical.

Just consider the circumstances under which, as we are told here, "He
went, as His custom was, into the synagogue on the Sabbath day." The
earlier part of the same chapter tells us of His fasting and temptation
in the wilderness, of the commencement of His public mission, and his
return to Nazareth. And, on His return, this is what we are told of
him--"He went, as his custom was, into the synagogue on the Sabbath day."

Thus we see Him, fresh from the great crisis of His early manhood; the
long, protracted struggle of His soul in the lonely wilderness; the
subtle voices of manifold temptation; the hardly won victory and the
ministering angels; all this we must suppose to be still flashing across
His vision, as the scenes of any such crisis must always continue to
flash through the quivering and responsive organism of the soul.

If ever any man might have claimed to need no longer the customary
worship of common men, it was surely Jesus, as we see Him here on this
occasion, with the breath of His own heart-searching worship still upon
Him, and the light of new revelation burning in His thoughts.

Among all the significant and instructive parts of the Saviour's example
this is not the least instructive; that on this occasion, as on all
others, he went as a matter of regular custom into the synagogue on the
Sabbath day, thus putting the seal and stamp of His own practice for all
of us who believe in His name upon the duty of joining in habitual and
stated spiritual exercises.

Had the Lord's example been different in this respect, how easy it would
have seemed to set up a string of what we should have called sufficient
reasons.

The old-fashioned routine, it might have been said, of synagogue worship,
with its mechanical dulness and its mistaken interpretations of God's
word, its shallow and superficial and tedious traditional commentaries,
its formalism and vain repetitions; all this, whatever might have been
its value for the ordinary unenlightened Jew, how could it have been
necessary and what profit could there have been in it for the divinely
gifted Son of man?

So it might have been argued; so indeed it would seem men who consider
themselves enlightened sometimes argue in support of their own neglect of
the religious life.

But it may well make us more than doubtf