eep
dependence, and the strong crying to God, and the effectual prayer of
faith that avails--all this is sadly lacking. And just this is the one
thing needful.

Shall we not all set ourselves to learn the lesson which will make
prevailing prayer possible--the lesson of a faith that always sings,
"_My God will hear me_"? Simple and elementary as it is, it needs
practice and patience, it needs time and heavenly teaching, to learn it
aright. Under the impression of a bright thought, or a blessed
experience, it may look as if we knew the lesson perfectly. But ever
again the need will recur of making this our first prayer--that God who
hears prayer would teach us to believe it, and so to pray aright. If we
desire it we can count upon Him He who delights in hearing prayer and
answering it, He who gave His Son that He might ever pray for us and
with us, and His Holy Spirit to pray in us, we can be sure there is not
a prayer that He will hear more certainly than this: that He so reveal
Himself as the prayer-hearing God, that our whole being may respond,
"_My God will hear me._"

A PLEA FOR MORE PRAYER

CHAPTER XIII

Paul a Pattern of Prayer

"Go and inquire for one called Saul of Tarsus: for, _behold, he
prayeth_."--ACTS ix. 11.

"For this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ
might show forth all long-suffering, for a pattern to them which
should hereafter believe on Him to life everlasting."--1 TIM. i. 16.

God took His own Son, and made Him our Example and our Pattern. It
sometimes is as if the power of Christ's example is lost in the thought
that He, in whom is no sin, is not man as we are. Our Lord took Paul, a
man of like passions with ourselves, and made him a pattern of what he
could do for one who was the chief of sinners. And Paul, the man who,
more than any other, has set his mark on the Church, has ever been
appealed to as a pattern man. In his mastery of Divine truth, and his
teaching of it; in his devotion to his Lord, and his self-consuming zeal
in His service; in his deep experience of the power of the indwelling
Christ and the fellowship of his cross; in the sincerity of his
humility, and the simplicity and boldness of his faith; in his
missionary enthusiasm and endurance--in all this, and so much more, "the
grace of our Lord Jesus was exceeding abundant in him." Christ gave him,
and the Church has accepted him, as a pattern of what Christ would have,
of wha