stood before Him in the gap."[9] The
wrath of God was paralysed in the face of the prayer of the Saint.

Isaiah, sounding his lament over the lost condition of Israel, says,
"There is none that calleth {136} upon Thy name, that stirreth up
himself to take hold of thee."[10] The Hebrew tongue affords us no
stronger expression than that which the Spirit here inspired the
prophet to use. The meaning is, to lay, as it were, violent hands upon
God, by means of prayer, and with a holy audacity to hold Him back from
launching the thunderbolt of His wrath against the apostate nation.
The expression "stirreth up himself" indicates by a bold rhetorical
stroke the power which the prophet knew such a one would have if he
could be found among the sons of Israel. When used in the Old
Testament it invariably implies the arousing of some mighty force,
which when once awakened would sweep all before it, as when Balaam
prophesied concerning Israel, "He couched, he lay down as a lion, as a
great lion; who shall stir him up?"[11]

Thus in the power of prayer shall we be able to sweep all before us, if
in the hour of temptation we pray with a like holy audacity.

(2) But not only does prayer in the hour of temptation call the power
of God to our succour, but the bare fact that we pray at such a time
completely overreaches Satan. The primary reason {137} of his
temptation is to draw us away from God. If the invariable result of
temptation is thus to draw us the more surely and closely to His feet
in prayer, the tempter will not be slow to realize that he is being
used as the instrument, and his assault as the occasion, of
accomplishing this very thing that his labour is directed against.
When he realizes this, baffled and discouraged, he will have no
alternative but to withdraw.

We must say a word about ejaculatory prayer, for in the hour of
temptation this method of prayer is to be our chief source of strength.
Most frequently, perhaps, in temptation there is no time or occasion
for formal prayer. Our appeal to God in such times must be instant.
These prayers of ejaculation have been described as "short, sharp, and
swift darts [Latin, jaculum, a dart], and desires, shot by our burning
hearts, and reaching heaven in an instant. Our forefathers, the
Saints, frequently used them, for being short, they trouble not the
memory; being fervent, they rouse our dulness and dryness to affection
and devotion; being frequent, they still ren