it was as undistinguished a name as Simeon, or Judas, or any other of His followers’ names.  To call upon the name of Jesus means to realise and bring near to ourselves, for our consolation and encouragement, for our strength and peace, the blessed thought of His manhood, so really and closely knit to ours; to grasp the blessedness of the thought that He knows our frame because He Himself has worn it, and understands and pities our weakness, being Himself a man.  To Him whom we adore as Lord we draw near in tenderer, but not less humble and prostrate, adoration as our brother when we call on the name of the Lord Jesus, and thus embrace as harmonious, and not contradictory, both the divinity of the Lord and the humanity of Jesus.

To call on the name of Christ is to embrace in our faith and to beseech the exercise on our behalf of all which Jesus is as the Messiah, anointed by God with the fulness of the Spirit.  As such He is the climax, and therefore the close of all revelation, who is the long-expected fruition of the desire of weary hearts, the fulfilment, and therefore the abolition, of sacrifice and temple and priesthood and prophecy and all that witnessed for Him ere He came.  We further call on the name of Christ the Anointed, on whom the whole fulness of the Divine Spirit dwelt in order that, calling upon Him, that fulness may in its measure be granted to us.

So the name of the Lord Jesus Christ brings to view the divine, the human, the Messiah, the anointed Lord of the Spirit, and Giver of the divine life.  To call on His name is to be blessed, to be made pure and strong, joyous and immortal.  ’The name of the Lord is a strong tower, the righteous runneth into it and is safe.’  Call on His name in the day of trouble and ye shall be heard and helped.

III.  Lastly, this text suggests what a Christian life should be.

We have already remarked that to call on the name of Jesus was the distinctive peculiarity of the early believers, which marked them off as a people by themselves.  Would it be a true designation of the bulk of so-called Christians now?  You do not object to profess yourself a Christian, or, perhaps, even to say that you are a disciple of Christ, or even to go the length of calling yourself a follower and imitator.  But are you a worshipper of Him?  In your life have you the habit of meditating on Him as Lord, as Jesus, as Christ, and of refreshing and gladdening dusty days and fainting strength by the living water, drawn from the one unfailing stream from these triple fountains?  Is the invocation of His aid habitual with you?

There needs no long elaborate supplication to secure His aid.  How much has been done in the Church’s history by short bursts of prayer, as ‘Lord, help me!’ spoken or unspoken in the moment of extremity!  ‘They cried unto God in the battle.’  They would not have time for very lengthy petitions then, would they?  They would not give much heed to elegant arrangement of them