tercession for the
needy calls forth the highest exercise of our power of believing and
prevailing prayer. Intercession is the most perfect form of prayer: it
is the prayer Christ ever liveth to pray on His throne. Let us learn
what the elements of true intercession are.

1. Notice _the urgent need_: here intercession has its origin. The
friend came at midnight--an untimely hour. He was hungry, and could not
buy bread. If we are to learn to pray aright we must open eye and heart
to the need around us.

We hear continually of the thousand millions of heathen and Mohammedans
living in midnight darkness, perishing for lack of the bread of life.
We hear of five hundred millions of nominal Christians, the great
majority of them almost as ignorant and indifferent as the heathen. We
see millions in the Christian Church, not ignorant or indifferent, and
yet knowing little of a walk in the light of God or in the power of a
life fed by bread from heaven. We have each of us our own
circles--congregations, schools, friends, missions--in which the great
complaint is that the light and life of God are too little known.
Surely, if we believe what we profess, that God alone is able to help,
that God certainly will help in answer to prayer,--all this need ought
to make intercessors of us, people who give their lives to prayer for
those around them.

Let us take time to consider and realise the need. Each Christless soul
going down into outer darkness, perishing of hunger, with bread enough
and to spare! Thirty millions a year dying without the knowledge of
Christ! Our own neighbours and friends, souls intrusted to us, dying
without hope! Christians around us living a sickly, feeble, fruitless
life! Surely there is need for prayer. Nothing, nothing but prayer to
God for help, will avail.

2. Note _the willing love_.--The friend took his weary, hungry friend
into his house, and into his heart too. He did not excuse himself by
saying he had no bread: he gave himself at midnight to seek it for him.
He sacrificed his night's rest, his comfort, to find the needed bread.
"Love seeketh not its own." It is the very nature of love to give up and
forget itself for the sake of others. It takes their needs and makes
them its own, it finds its real joy in living and dying for others as
Christ did.

It is the love of a mother to her prodigal son that makes her pray for
him. True love to souls will become in us the spirit of intercession. It
is