swered. Then there are
committee meetings waiting, with numberless other engagements, more than
enough to fill up the day. It is difficult to see how it can be done."

My answer was, in substance, that it was simply a question of whether
the call of God for our time and attention was of more importance than
that of man. If God was waiting to meet us, and to give us blessing and
power from heaven for His work, it was a short-sighted policy to put
other work in the place which God and waiting on Him should have.

At one of our ministerial meetings, the superintendent of a large
district put the case thus: "I rise in the morning and have half an
hour with God, in the Word and prayer, in my room before breakfast. I go
out, and am occupied all day with a multiplicity of engagements. I do
not think many minutes elapse without my breathing a prayer for guidance
or help. After my day's work, I return in my evening devotions and speak
to God of the day's work. But of the intense, definite, importunate
prayer of which Scripture speaks one knows little." What, he asked, must
I think of such a life?

We all know the difference between a man whose profits are just enough
to maintain his family and keep up his business, and another whose
income enables him to extend the business and to help others. There may
be an earnest Christian life in which there is prayer enough to keep us
from going back, and just maintain the position we have attained to,
without much of growth in spirituality or Christlikeness. The attitude
is more defensive, seeking to ward off temptation, than aggressive,
reaching out after higher attainment. If there is indeed to be a going
from strength to strength, with some large experience of God's power to
sanctify ourselves and to bring down real blessing on others, there must
be more definite and persevering prayer. The Scripture teaching about
crying day and night, continuing steadfastly in prayer, watching unto
prayer, being heard for his importunity, must in some degree become our
experience if we are really to be intercessors.

At the very next Convention the same question was put in somewhat
different form. "I am at the head of a station, with a large outlying
district to care for. I see the importance of much prayer, and yet my
life hardly leaves room for it. Are we to submit? Or tell us how we can
attain to what we desire?" I admitted that the difficulty was universal.
I recalled the words of one of our m