g to failure in the Spirit-life. Prayer is one of the most heavenly
and spiritual of the functions of the Spirit-life. How could we try or
expect to fulfil it so as to please God, except as our soul is in
perfect health, and our life truly possessed and moved by God's Spirit?
The insight into the place God means prayer to take, and which it only
can take, in a full Christian life, will show us that we have not been
living the true, the abundant life, and that any thought of praying more
and effectually will be vain, except as we are brought into a closer
relation to our Blessed Lord Jesus. Christ is our life, Christ liveth in
us, in such reality that His life of prayer on earth, and of
intercession in heaven, is breathed into us in just such measure as our
surrender and our faith allow and accept it. Jesus Christ is the Healer
of all diseases, the Conqueror of all enemies, the Deliverer from all
sin; if our failure teaches us to turn afresh to Him, and find in Him
the grace He gives to pray as we ought, this humiliation may become our
greatest blessing. Let us all unite in praying God that He would visit
our souls and fit us for that work of intercession, which is at this
moment the greatest need of the Church and the world. It is only by
intercession that that power can be brought down from Heaven which will
enable the Church to conquer the world. Let us stir up the slumbering
gift that is lying unused, and seek to gather and train and band
together as many as we can, to be God's remembrancers, and to give Him
no rest till He makes His Church a joy in the earth. Nothing but intense
believing prayer can meet the intense spirit of worldliness, of which
complaint is everywhere made.

A PLEA FOR MORE PRAYER

CHAPTER II

The Ministration of the Spirit and Prayer

"If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children;
how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to
them that ask Him?"--LUKE xi. 13.

Christ had just said (v. 9), "Ask, and it shall be given": God's giving
is inseparably connected with our asking. He applies this especially to
the Holy Spirit. As surely as a father on earth gives bread to his
child, so God gives the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him. The whole
ministration of the Spirit is ruled by the one great law: God must give,
we must ask. When the Holy Spirit was poured out at Pentecost with a
flow that never ceases, it was in answer to prayer. The inflo