Title: Power Through Prayer
Author: Bounds, Edward M. (Edward McKendree)
Language: English
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 POWER THROUGH
 PRAYER

 BY
 E. M. BOUNDS

 WITH FOREWORDS BY REV. A. C. DIXON, D.D.,
 AND MR. ALBERT A. HEAD.

 _TWELFTH EDITION_

 MARSHALL BROTHERS, LTD.
 _Publishers_,
 LONDON, EDINBURGH & NEW YORK.

 HUNT, BARNARD & CO., LTD.
 PRINTERS,
 LONDON & AYLESBURY.


FOREWORDS


 I
 BY REV. A. C. DIXON, D.D.

This little book was given me by a friend. I glanced through it and laid
it aside, thinking that I would read it at some convenient time, though
I had never heard of the author. But it was forgotten till Christmas,
when I received another copy as a present from another friend. "Well,"
thought I, "there must be something worth while in the little book, or
it would not have been selected as a present by two such intelligent
people." So I read at once the first page till I came to the words: "Man
is God's method. The church is looking for better methods; God is
looking for better men." That was enough to whet the appetite for more,
and I greedily read chapter after chapter with delight and blessing.
When the last sentence was finished I felt that I knew more about prayer
than when I began to read, and, better than that, I felt more like
praying. Every page pulsates with the heart and mind of a man who knows
how to pray; knows the men who have known how to pray, and is very
earnest in desiring that others should know how to pray.

His desire has been realized to some extent, in the case of at least
one, who would like to have others share the blessing with him.

The author has kindly consented to a reprint in Great Britain.

A. C. DIXON.


 II
 BY MR. ALBERT A. HEAD.

If there is one need felt beyond another by the members of the Church of
Christ to-day, it is power _in_ prayer—desire _for_ prayer—time to be
devoted _to_ prayer. What a number of unions for prayer exist already,
and yet how few members continue "instant in prayer" or "pray without
ceasing." The author of this book makes a clear diagnosis of the case
when he writes as follows:—"Never did the cause of God need perfect
illustrations of the possibilities of prayer more than in this age. To
pray is the greatest thing we can do. We must learn anew the work of
prayer, enter anew the school of prayer."

The contents of this message upon prayer should be read alike by
preacher and teacher, evangelist and intercessor. Its pages contain an
appeal to every "worker together with Christ," and stimulate the desire
for prayer in the varied relationships of Christian life. The appeal
deserves a wide circulation amongst members of Prayer Circles and Prayer
Unions, and, indeed, amongst all who are looking for a revival of true
religion in our land, and an exodus of ambassadors for Christ to heathen
and Moslem populations.

I most heartily commend the reading of it, feeling persuaded that God
has given the author a trumpet call to the Church of Christ to "arise
and pray."

ALBERT A. HEAD.



I

 _Recreation to a minister must be as whetting is with the mower—that
 is, to be used only so far as is necessary for his work. May a
 physician in plague-time take any more relaxation or recreation than is
 necessary for his life, when so many are expecting his help in a case
 of life and death? Will you stand by and see sinners gasping under the
 pangs of death, and say: "God doth not require me to make myself a
 drudge to save them?" Is this the voice of ministerial or Christian
 compassion or rather of sensual laziness and diabolical
 cruelty?_—RICHARD BAXTER.

 _Misemployment of time is injurious to the mind. In illness I have
 looked back with self-reproach on days spent in my study: I was wading
 through history and poetry and monthly journals, but I was in my study!
 Another man's trifling is notorious to all observers, but what am I
 doing? Nothing, perhaps, that has a reference to the spiritual good of
 my congregation. Be much in retirement and prayer. Study the honour and
 glory of your Master._—RICHARD CECIL.

 _Study universal holiness of life. Your whole usefulness depends on
 this, for your sermons last but an hour or two; your life preaches all
 the week. If Satan can only make a covetous minister a lover of praise,
 of pleasure, of good eating, he has ruined your ministry. Give yourself
 to prayer, and get your texts, your thoughts, your words from God.
 Luther spent his best three hours in prayer._—ROBERT MURRAY MCCHEYNE.


We are constantly on a stretch, if not on a strain, to devise new
methods, new plans, new organizations to advance the Church and secure
enlargement and efficiency for the Gospel. This trend of the day has a
tendency to lose sight of the man or sink the man in the plan or
organization. God's plan is to make much of the man, far more of him
than of anything else. Men are God's method. The Church is looking for
better methods; God is looking for better men. "There was a man sent
from God whose name was John." The dispensation that heralded and
prepared the way for Christ was bound up in that man John. "Unto us a
Child is born, unto us a Son is given." The world's salvation comes out
of that cradled Son. When Paul appeals to the personal character of the
men who rooted the gospel in the world, he solves the mystery of their
success. The glory and efficiency of the Gospel is staked on the men who
proclaim it. When God declares that "the eyes of the Lord run to and fro
throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong in the behalf of them
whose heart is perfect toward Him," He declares the necessity of men and
his dependence on them as a channel through which to exert His power
upon the world. This vital, urgent truth is one that this age of
machinery is apt to forget. The forgetting of it is as baneful on the
work of God as would be the striking of the sun from his sphere.
Darkness, confusion, and death would ensue.

What the Church needs to-day is not more machinery or better, not new
organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can
use—men of prayer, men mighty in prayer. The Holy Ghost does not flow
through methods, but through men. He does not come on machinery, but on
men. He does not anoint plans, but men—men of prayer.

An eminent historian has said that the accidents of personal character
have more to do with the revolutions of nations than either philosophic
historians or democratic politicians will allow. This truth has its
application in full to the gospel of Christ, the character and conduct
of the followers of Christ—Christianize the world, transfigure nations
and individuals. Of the preachers of the gospel it is eminently true.

The character as well as the fortunes of the gospel are committed to the
preacher. He makes or mars the message from God to man. The preacher is
the golden pipe through which the divine oil flows. The pipe must not
only be golden, but open and flawless, that the oil may have a full,
unhindered, unwasted flow.

The man makes the preacher. God must make the man. The messenger is, if
possible, more than the message. The preacher is more than the sermon.
The preacher makes the sermon. As the life-giving milk from the mother's
bosom is but the mother's life, so all the preacher says is tinctured,
impregnated by what the preacher is. The treasure is in earthen vessels,
and the taste of the vessel impregnates and may discolour. The man, the
whole man, lies behind the sermon. Preaching is not the performance of
an hour. It is the outflow of a life. It takes twenty years to make a
sermon, because it takes twenty years to make the man. The true sermon
is a thing of life. The sermon grows because the man grows. The sermon
is forceful because the man is forceful. The sermon is holy because the
man is holy. The sermon is full of the divine unction because the man is
full of the divine unction.

Paul termed it "My gospel;" not that he had degraded it by his personal
eccentricities or diverted it by selfish appropriation, but the gospel
was put into the heart and lifeblood of the man Paul, as a personal
trust to be executed by his Pauline traits, to be set aflame and
empowered by the fiery energy of his fiery soul. Paul's sermons—what
were they? Where are they? Skeletons, scattered fragments, afloat on the
sea of inspiration! But the man Paul, greater than his sermons, lives
forever, in full form, feature, and stature, with his moulding hand on
the Church. The preaching is but a voice. The voice in silence dies, the
text is forgotten, the sermon fades from memory; the preacher lives.

The sermon cannot rise in its life-giving forces above the man. Dead men
give out dead sermons, and dead sermons kill. Everything depends on the
spiritual character of the preacher. Under the Jewish dispensation the
high priest had inscribed in jewelled letters on a golden frontlet:
"Holiness to the Lord." So every preacher in Christ's ministry must be
moulded into and mastered by this same holy motto. It is a crying shame
for the Christian ministry to fall lower in holiness of character and
holiness of aim than the Jewish priesthood. Jonathan Edwards said: "I
went on with my eager pursuit after more holiness and conformity to
Christ. The heaven I desired was a heaven of holiness." The gospel of
Christ does not move by popular waves. It has no self-propagating power.
It moves as the men who have charge of it move. The preacher must
impersonate the gospel. Its divine, most distinctive features must be
embodied in him. The constraining power of love must be in the preacher
as a projecting, eccentric, an all-commanding, self-oblivious force. The
energy of self-denial must be his being, his heart and blood and bones.
He must go forth as a man among men, clothed with humility, abiding in
meekness, wise as a serpent, harmless as a dove; the bonds of a servant
with the spirit of a king, a king in high, royal, independent bearing,
with the simplicity and sweetness of a child. The preacher must throw
himself, with all the abandon of a perfect, self-emptying faith and a
self-consuming zeal, into his work for the salvation of men. Hearty,
heroic, compassionate, fearless martyrs must the men be who take hold of
and shape a generation for God. If they be timid timeservers, place
seekers, if they be men pleasers or men fearers, if their faith has a
weak hold on God or His Word, if their denial be broken by any phase of
self or the world, they cannot take hold of the Church nor the world for
God.

The preacher's sharpest and strongest preaching should be to himself.
His most difficult, delicate, laborious, and thorough work must be with
himself. The training of the twelve was the great, difficult, and
enduring work of Christ. Preachers are not sermon makers, but men makers
and saint makers, and he only is well-trained for this business who has
made himself a man and a saint. It is not great talents or great
learning or great preachers that God needs, but men great in holiness,
great in faith, great in love, great in fidelity, great for God—men
always preaching by holy sermons in the pulpit, by holy lives out of it.
These can mould a generation for God.

After this order, the early Christians were formed. Men they were of
solid mould, preachers after the heavenly type—heroic, stalwart, soldierly,
saintly. Preaching with them meant self-denying, self-crucifying,
serious, toilsome, martyr business. They applied themselves to it in a
way that told on their generation, and formed in its womb a generation
yet unborn for God. The preaching man is to be the praying man. Prayer
is the preacher's mightiest weapon. An almighty force in itself, it
gives life and force to all.

The real sermon is made in the closet. The man—God's man—is made in the
closet. His life and his profoundest convictions were born in his secret
communion with God. The burdened and tearful agony of his spirit, his
weightiest and sweetest messages were got when alone with God. Prayer
makes the man; prayer makes the preacher; prayer makes the pastor.

The pulpit of this day is weak in praying. The pride of learning is
against the dependent humility of prayer. Prayer is with the pulpit too
often only official—a performance for the routine of service. Prayer is
not to the modern pulpit the mighty force it was in Paul's life or
Paul's ministry. Every preacher who does not make prayer a mighty factor
in his own life and ministry is weak as a factor in God's work and is
powerless to advance God's cause in this world.



II

 _But above all he excelled in prayer. The inwardness and weight of his
 spirit, the reverence and solemnity of his address and behaviour, and
 the fewness and fullness of his words have often struck even strangers
 with admiration as they used to reach others with consolation. The most
 awful, living, reverend frame I ever felt or beheld, I must say, was
 his prayer. And truly it was a testimony. He knew and lived nearer to
 the Lord than other men, for they that know Him most will see most
 reason to approach Him with reverence and fear._—WILLIAM PENN OF
 GEORGE FOX.


The sweetest graces by a slight perversion may bear the bitterest fruit.
The sun gives life, but sunstrokes are death. Preaching is to give life;
it may kill. The preacher holds the keys; he may lock as well as unlock.
Preaching is God's great institution for the planting and maturing of
spiritual life. When properly executed, its benefits are untold; when
wrongly executed, no evil can exceed its damaging results. It is an easy
matter to destroy the flock if the shepherd be unwary or the pasture be
destroyed, easy to capture the citadel if the watchmen be asleep or the
food and water be poisoned. Invested with such gracious prerogatives,
exposed to so great evils, involving so many grave responsibilities, it
would be a parody on the shrewdness of the devil and a libel on his
character and reputation if he did not bring his master influences to
adulterate the preacher and the preaching. In face of all this, the
exclamatory interrogatory of Paul, "Who is sufficient for these things?"
is never out of order.

Paul says: "Our sufficiency is of God, who also hath made us able
ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit:
for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." The true ministry
is God-touched, God-enabled, and God-made. The Spirit of God is on the
preacher in anointing power, the fruit of the Spirit is in his heart,
the Spirit of God has vitalized the man and the word; his preaching
gives life, gives life as the spring gives life; gives life as the
resurrection gives life; gives ardent life as the summer gives ardent
life; gives fruitful life as the autumn gives fruitful life. The
life-giving preacher is a man of God, whose heart is ever athirst for
God, whose soul is ever following hard after God, whose eye is single to
God, and in whom by the power of God's Spirit the flesh and the world
have been crucified and his ministry is like the generous flood of a
life-giving river.

The preaching that kills is non-spiritual preaching. The ability of the
preaching is not from God. Lower sources than God have given to it
energy and stimulus. The Spirit is not evident in the preacher nor his
preaching. Many kinds of forces may be projected and stimulated by
preaching that kills, but they are not spiritual forces. They may
resemble spiritual forces, but are only the shadow, the counterfeit;
life they may seem to have, but the life is magnetized. The preaching
that kills is the letter; shapely and orderly it may be, but it is the
letter still, the dry, husky letter, the empty, bald shell. The letter
may have the germ of life in it, but it has no breath of spring to evoke
it; winter seeds they are, as hard as the winter's soil, as icy as the
winter's air, no thawing nor germinating by them. This letter-preaching
has the truth. But even divine truth has no life-giving energy alone; it
must be energized by the Spirit, with all God's forces at its back.
Truth unquickened by God's Spirit deadens as much as, or more than,
error. It may be the truth without admixture; but without the Spirit its
shade and touch are deadly, its truth error, its light darkness. The
letter-preaching is unctionless, neither mellowed nor oiled by the
Spirit. There may be tears, but tears cannot run God's machinery; tears
may be but summer's breath on a snow-covered iceberg, nothing but
surface slush. Feelings and earnestness there may be, but it is the
emotion of the actor and the earnestness of the attorney. The preacher
may feel from the kindling of his own sparks, be eloquent over his own
exegesis, earnest in delivering the product of his own brain; the
professor may usurp the place and imitate the fire of the apostle;
brains and nerves may serve the place and feign the work of God's
Spirit, and by these forces the letter may glow and sparkle like an
illumined text, but the glow and sparkle will be as barren of life as
the field sown with pearls. The death-dealing element lies behind the
words, behind the sermon, behind the occasion, behind the manner, behind
the action. The great hindrance is in the preacher himself. He has not
in himself the mighty life-creating forces. There may be no discount on
his orthodoxy, honesty, cleanness, or earnestness; but somehow the man,
the inner man, in its secret places has never broken down and
surrendered to God, his inner life is not a great highway for the
transmission of God's message, God's power. Somehow self and not God
rules in the holy of holies. Somewhere, all unconscious to himself, some
spiritual non-conductor has touched his inner being, and the divine
current has been arrested. His inner being has never felt its thorough
spiritual bankruptcy, its utter powerlessness; he has never learned to
cry out with an ineffable cry of self-despair and self-helplessness till
God's power and God's fire come in and fill, purify and empower.
Self-esteem, self-ability in some pernicious shape has defamed and
violated the temple which should be held sacred for God. Life-giving
preaching costs the preacher much—death to self, crucifixion to the
world, the travail of his own soul. Crucified preaching only can give
life. Crucified preaching can come only from a crucified man.



III

 _During this affliction I was brought to examine my life in relation to
 eternity closer than I had done when in the enjoyment of health. In
 this examination relative to the discharge of my duties toward my
 fellow-creatures as a man, a Christian minister, and an officer of the
 Church, I stood approved by my own conscience; but in relation to my
 Redeemer and Saviour the result was different. My returns of gratitude
 and loving obedience bear no proportion to my obligations for
 redeeming, preserving, and supporting me through the vicissitudes of
 life from infancy to old age. The coldness of my love to Him who first
 loved me and has done so much for me overwhelmed and confused me; and
 to complete my unworthy character, I had not only neglected to improve
 the grace given to the extent of my duty and privilege, but for want of
 that improvement had, while abounding in perplexing care and labour,
 declined from first zeal and love. I was confounded, humbled myself,
 implored mercy, and renewed my covenant to strive and devote myself
 unreservedly to the Lord._—BISHOP MCKENDREE.


The preaching that kills may be, and often is, orthodox—dogmatically,
inviolably orthodox. We love orthodoxy. It is good. It is the best. It
is the clean, clear-cut teaching of God's Word, the trophies won by
truth in its conflict with error, the levees which faith has raised
against the desolating floods of honest or reckless misbelief or
unbelief; but orthodoxy, clear and hard as crystal, suspicious and
militant, may be but the letter well-shaped, well-named, and
well-learned, the letter which kills. Nothing is so dead as a dead
orthodoxy, too dead to speculate, too dead to think, to study, or to
pray.

The preaching that kills may have insight and grasp of principles, may
be scholarly and critical in taste, may have all the minutiæ of the
derivation and grammar of the letter, may be able to trim the letter
into its perfect pattern, and illumine it as Plato and Cicero may be
illumined, may study it as a lawyer studies his text-books to form his
brief or to defend his case, and yet be like a frost, a killing frost.
Letter-preaching may be eloquent, enamelled with poetry and rhetoric,
sprinkled with prayer, spiced with sensation, illumined by genius, and
yet these be but the massive or chaste, costly mountings, the rare and
beautiful flowers which coffin the corpse. The preaching which kills may
be without scholarship, unmarked by any freshness of thought or feeling,
clothed in tasteless generalities or vapid specialities, with style
irregular, slovenly, savouring neither of closet nor of study, graced
neither by thought, expression, or prayer. Under such preaching how wide
and utter the desolation! how profound the spiritual death!

This letter-preaching deals with the surface and shadow of things, and
not the things themselves. It does not penetrate the inner part. It has
no deep insight into, no strong grasp of, the hidden life of God's Word.
It is true to the outside, but the outside is the hull which must be
broken and penetrated for the kernel. The letter may be dressed so as to
attract and be fashionable, but the attraction is not toward God nor is
the fashion for heaven. The failure is in the preacher. God has not made
him. He has never been in the hands of God like clay in the hands of the
potter. He has been busy about the sermon, its thought and finish, its
drawing and impressive forces, but the deep things of God have never
been sought, studied, fathomed, experienced by him. He has never stood
before "the throne high and lifted up," never heard the seraphim song,
never seen the vision nor felt the rush of that awful holiness, and
cried out in utter abandon and despair under the sense of weakness and
guilt, and had his life renewed, his heart touched, purged, inflamed by
the live coal from God's altar. His ministry may draw people to him, to
the Church, to the form and ceremony; but no true drawings to God, no
sweet, holy, divine communion induced. The Church has been frescoed but
not edified, pleased but not sanctified. Life is suppressed; a chill is
on the summer air; the soil is baked. The city of our God becomes the
city of the dead; the Church a graveyard, not an embattled army. Praise
and prayer are stifled; worship is dead. The preacher and the preaching
have helped sin, not holiness; peopled hell, not heaven.

Preaching which kills is prayerless preaching. Without prayer the
preacher creates death, and not life. The preacher who is feeble in
prayer is feeble in life-giving forces. The preacher who has retired
from prayer as a conspicuous and largely prevailing element in his own
character has shorn his preaching of its distinctive life-giving power.
Professional praying there is and will be, but professional praying
helps the preaching to its deadly work. Professional praying chills and
kills both preaching and praying. Much of the lax devotion and lazy,
irreverent attitudes in congregational praying are attributable to
professional praying in the pulpit. Long, discursive, dry, and inane are
the prayers in many pulpits. Without unction or heart, they fall like a
killing frost on all the graces of worship. Death-dealing prayers they
are. Every vestige of devotion has perished under their breath. The more
dead they are the longer they grow. A plea for short praying, live
praying, real heart praying, praying by the Holy Spirit—direct,
specific, ardent, simple, unctuous in the pulpit—is in order. A school
to teach preachers how to pray, as God counts praying, would be more
beneficial to true piety, true worship, and true preaching than all
theological schools.

Stop! Pause! Consider! Where are we? What are we doing? Preaching to
kill? Praying to kill? Praying to God! the great God, the Maker of all
worlds, the Judge of all men! What reverence! what simplicity! what
sincerity! what truth in the inward parts is demanded! How real we must
be! How hearty! Prayer to God the noblest exercise, the loftiest effort
of man, the most real thing! Shall we not discard forever accursed
preaching that kills and prayer that kills, and do the real thing, the
mightiest thing—prayerful praying, life-creating preaching bring the
mightiest force to bear on heaven and earth and draw on God's
exhaustless and open treasure for the need and beggary of man?



IV

 _Let us often look at Brainerd in the woods of America pouring out his
 very soul before God for the perishing heathen without whose salvation
 nothing could make him happy. Prayer—secret, fervent, believing
 prayer—lies at the root of all personal godliness. A competent
 knowledge of the language where a missionary lives, a mild and winning
 temper, a heart given up to God in closet religion—these, these are the
 attainments which, more than all knowledge, or all other gifts, will
 fit us to become the instruments of God in the great work of human
 redemption._—CAREY'S BROTHERHOOD, SERAMPORE.


There are two extreme tendencies in the ministry. The one is to shut
itself out from intercourse with the people. The monk, the hermit were
illustrations of this; they shut themselves out from men to be more with
God. They failed, of course. Our being with God is of use only as we
expend its priceless benefits on men. This age, neither with preacher
nor with people, is much intent on God. Our hankering is not that way.
We shut ourselves to our study, we become students, bookworms, Bible
worms, sermon makers, noted for literature, thought, and sermons; but
the people and God, where are they? Out of heart, out of mind. Preachers
who are great thinkers, great students must be the greatest of prayers,
or else they will be the greatest of backsliders, heartless professionals,
rationalistic, less than the least of preachers in God's estimate.

The other tendency is to thoroughly popularize the ministry. He is no
longer God's man, but a man of affairs, of the people. He prays not,
because his mission is to the people. If he can move the people, create
an interest, a sensation in favour of religion, an interest in Church
work—he is satisfied. His personal relation to God is no factor in his
work. Prayer has little or no place in his plans. The disaster and ruin
of such a ministry cannot be computed by earthly arithmetic. What the
preacher is in prayer to God, for himself, for his people, so is his
power for real good to men, so is his true fruitfulness, his true
fidelity to God, to man, for time and for eternity.

It is impossible for the preacher to keep his spirit in harmony with the
divine nature of his high calling without much prayer. That the preacher
by dint of duty and laborious fidelity to the work and routine of the
ministry can keep himself in trim and fitness is a serious mistake. Even
sermon-making, incessant and taxing as an art, as a duty, as a work, or
as a pleasure, will engross and harden, will estrange the heart, by
neglect of prayer, from God. The scientist loses God in nature. The
preacher may lose God in his sermon.

Prayer freshens the heart of the preacher, keeps it in tune with God and
in sympathy with the people, lifts his ministry out of the chilly air of
a profession, fructifies routine and moves every wheel with the facility
and power of a divine unction.

Mr. Spurgeon says: "Of course the preacher is above all others
distinguished as a man of prayer. He prays as an ordinary Christian,
else he were a hypocrite. He prays more than ordinary Christians, else
he were disqualified for the office he has undertaken. If you as
ministers are not very prayerful, you are to be pitied. If you become
lax in sacred devotion, not only will you need to be pitied but your
people also, and the day cometh in which you shall be ashamed and
confounded. All our libraries and studies are mere emptiness compared
with our closets. Our seasons of fasting and prayer at the Tabernacle
have been high days indeed; never has heaven's gate stood wider; never
have our hearts been nearer the central Glory."

The praying which makes a prayerful ministry is not a little praying put
in as we put flavour to give it a pleasant smack, but the praying must
be in the body, and form the blood and bones. Prayer is no petty duty,
put into a corner; no piecemeal performance made out of the fragments of
time which have been snatched from business and other engagements of
life; but it means that the best of our time, the heart of our time and
strength must be given. It does not mean the closet absorbed in the
study or swallowed up in the activities of ministerial duties; but it
means the closet first, the study and activities second, both study and
activities freshened and made efficient by the closet. Prayer that
affects one's ministry must give tone to one's life. The praying which
gives colour and bent to character is no pleasant hurried pastime. It
must enter as strongly into the heart and life as Christ's "strong
crying and tears" did; must draw out the soul into an agony of desire as
Paul's did; must be an inwrought fire and force like the "effectual,
fervent prayer" of James; must be of that quality which when put into
the golden censer and incensed before God, works mighty spiritual throes
and revolutions.

Prayer is not a little habit pinned on to us while we were tied to our
mother's apron strings; neither is it a little decent quarter of a
minute's grace said over an hour's dinner, but it is a most serious work
of our most serious years. It engages more of time and appetite than our
longest dinings or richest feasts. The prayer that makes much of our
preaching must be made much of. The character of our praying will
determine the character of our preaching. Light praying will make light
preaching. Prayer makes preaching strong, gives it unction, and makes it
stick. In every ministry weighty for good, prayer has always been a
serious business.

The preacher must be pre-eminently a man of prayer. His heart must
graduate in the school of prayer. In the school of prayer only can the
heart learn to preach. No learning can make up for the failure to pray.
No earnestness, no diligence, no study, no gifts will supply its lack.

Talking to men for God is a great thing, but talking to God for men is
greater still. He will never talk well and with real success to men for
God who has not learned well how to talk to God for men. More than this,
prayerless words in the pulpit and out of it are deadening words.



V

 _You know the value of prayer: it is precious beyond all price. Never,
 never neglect it._—SIR THOMAS BUXTON.

 _Prayer is the first thing, the second thing, the third thing necessary
 to a minister. Pray, then, my dear brother; pray, pray,
 pray._—EDWARD PAYSON.


Prayer, in the preacher's life, in the preacher's study, in the
preacher's pulpit, must be a conspicuous and an all-impregnating force
and an all-colouring ingredient. It must play no secondary part, be no
mere coating. To him it is given to be with his Lord "all night in
prayer." The preacher, to train himself in self-denying prayer, is
charged to look to his Master, who, "rising up a great while before day,
went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed." The
preacher's study ought to be a closet, a Bethel, an altar, a vision, and
a ladder, that every thought might ascend heavenward ere it went
manward; that every part of the sermon might be scented by the air of
heaven and made serious, because God was in the study.

As the engine never moves until the fire is kindled, so preaching, with
all its machinery, perfection, and polish, is at a dead standstill, as
far as spiritual results are concerned, till prayer has kindled and
created the steam. The texture, fineness, and strength of the sermon is
as so much rubbish unless the mighty impulse of prayer is in it, through
it, and behind it. The preacher must, by prayer, put God in the sermon.
The preacher must, by prayer, move God toward the people before he can
move the people to God by his words. The preacher must have had audience
and ready access to God before he can have access to the people. An open
way to God for the preacher is the surest pledge of an open way to the
people.

It is necessary to iterate and reiterate that prayer, as a mere habit,
as a performance gone through by routine or in a professional way, is a
dead and rotten thing. Such praying has no connection with the praying
for which we plead. We lay stress on true praying, which engages and
sets on fire every high element of the preacher's being—prayer which is
born of vital oneness with Christ and the fullness of the Holy Ghost,
which springs from the deep, overflowing fountains of tender compassion,
deathless solicitude for man's eternal good; a consuming zeal for the
glory of God; a thorough conviction of the preacher's difficult and
delicate work and of the imperative need of God's mightiest help.
Praying grounded on these solemn and profound convictions is the only
true praying. Preaching backed by such praying is the only preaching
which sows the seeds of eternal life in human hearts and builds men up
for heaven.

It is true that there may be popular preaching, pleasant preaching,
taking preaching, preaching of much intellectual, literary, and brainy
force, with its measure and form of good, with little or no praying; but
the preaching which secures God's end in preaching must be born of
prayer from text to exordium, delivered with the energy and spirit of
prayer, followed and made to germinate, and kept in vital force in the
hearts of the hearers by the preacher's prayers, long after the occasion
has passed.

We may excuse the spiritual poverty of our preaching in many ways, but
the true secret will be found in the lack of urgent prayer for God's
presence in the power of the Holy Spirit. There are preachers
innumerable who can deliver masterful sermons after their order; but the
effects are shortlived and do not enter as a factor at all into the
regions of the spirit where the fearful war between God and Satan,
heaven and hell, is being waged because they are not made powerfully
militant and spiritually victorious by prayer.

The preachers who gain mighty results for God are the men who have
prevailed in their pleadings with God ere venturing to plead with men.
The preachers who are the mightiest in their closets with God are the
mightiest in their pulpits with men.

Preachers are human folks, and are exposed to and often caught by the
strong driftings of human currents. Praying is spiritual work; and human
nature does not like taxing, spiritual work. Human nature wants to sail
to heaven under a favouring breeze, a full, smooth sea. Prayer is
humbling work. It abases intellect and pride, crucifies vainglory, and
signs our spiritual bankruptcy, and all these are hard for flesh and
blood to bear. It is easier not to pray than to bear them. So we come to
one of the crying evils of these times, maybe of all times—little or no
praying. Of these two evils, perhaps little praying is worse than no
praying. Little praying is a kind of make-believe, a salve for the
conscience, a farce and a delusion.

The little estimate we put on prayer is evident from the little time we
give to it. The time given to prayer by the average preacher scarcely
counts in the sum of the daily aggregate. Not infrequently the
preacher's only praying is by his bedside in his nightdress, ready for
bed and soon in it, with, perchance, the addition of a few hasty
snatches of prayer ere he is dressed in the morning. How feeble, vain,
and little is such praying compared with the time and energy devoted to
praying by holy men in and out of the Bible! How poor and mean our
petty, childish praying is beside the habits of the true men of God in
all ages! To men who think praying their main business and devote time
to it according to this high estimate of its importance does God commit
the keys of His kingdom, and by them does He work His spiritual wonders
in this world. Great praying is the sign and seal of God's great leaders
and the earnest of the conquering forces with which God will crown their
labours.

The preacher is commissioned to pray as well as to preach. His mission
is incomplete if he does not do both well. The preacher may speak with
all the eloquence of men and of angels; but unless he can pray with a
faith which draws all heaven to his aid, his preaching will be "as
sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal" for permanent God-honouring,
soul-saving uses.



VI

 _The principal cause of my leanness and unfruitfulness is owing to an
 unaccountable backwardness to pray. I can write or read or converse or
 hear with a ready heart; but prayer is more spiritual and inward than
 any of these, and the more spiritual any duty is the more my carnal
 heart is apt to start from it. Prayer and patience and faith are never
 disappointed. I have long since learned that if ever I was to be a
 minister, faith and prayer must make me one. When I can find my heart
 in frame and liberty for prayer, everything else is comparatively
 easy._—RICHARD NEWTON.


It may be put down as a spiritual axiom that in every truly successful
ministry prayer is an evident and controlling force—evident and
controlling in the life of the preacher, evident and controlling in the
deep spirituality of his work. A ministry may be a very thoughtful
ministry without prayer; the preacher may secure fame and popularity
without prayer; the whole machinery of the preacher's life and work may
be run without the oil of prayer or with scarcely enough to grease one
cog; but no ministry can be a spiritual one, securing holiness in the
preacher and in his people, without prayer being made an evident and
controlling force.

The preacher that prays indeed puts God into the work. God does not come
into the preacher's work as a matter of course or on general principles,
but He comes by prayer and special urgency. That God will be found of us
in the day that we seek Him with the whole heart is as true of the
preacher as of the penitent. A prayerful ministry is the only ministry
that brings the preacher into sympathy with the people. Prayer as
essentially unites to the human as it does to the divine. A prayerful
ministry is the only ministry qualified for the high offices and
responsibilities of the preacher. Colleges, learning, books, theology,
preaching cannot make a preacher, but praying does. The apostles'
commission to preach was a blank till filled up by the Pentecost which
praying brought. A prayerful minister has passed beyond the regions of
the popular, beyond the man of mere affairs, of secularities, of pulpit
attractiveness; passed beyond the ecclesiastical organizer or general
into a sublimer and mightier region, the region of the spiritual.
Holiness is the product of his work; transfigured hearts and lives
emblazon the reality of his work, its trueness and substantial nature.
God is with him. His ministry is not projected on worldly or surface
principles. He is deeply stored with and deeply schooled in the things
of God. His long, deep communings with God about his people and the
agony of his wrestling spirit have crowned him as a prince in the things
of God. The iciness of the mere professional has long since melted under
the intensity of his praying.

The superficial results of many a ministry, the deadness of others, are
to be found in the lack of praying. No ministry can succeed without
much praying, and this praying must be fundamental, ever-abiding,
ever-increasing. The text, the sermon, should be the result of prayer.
The study should be bathed in prayer, all its duties impregnated with
prayer, its whole spirit the spirit of prayer. "I am sorry that I have
prayed so little," was the deathbed regret of one of God's chosen ones,
a sad and remorseful regret for a preacher. "I want a life of greater,
deeper, truer prayer," said the late Archbishop Tait. So may we all say,
and this may we all secure.

God's true preachers have been distinguished by one great feature: they
were men of prayer. Differing often in many things, they have always had
a common centre. They may have started from different points, and
travelled by different roads, but they converged to one point: they were
one in prayer. God to them was the centre of attraction, and prayer was
the path that led to God. These men prayed not occasionally, not a
little at regular or at odd times; but they so prayed that their prayers
entered into and shaped their characters; they so prayed as to affect
their own lives and the lives of others; they so prayed as to make the
history of the Church and influence the current of the times. They spent
much time in prayer, not because they marked the shadow on the dial or
the hands on the clock, but because it was to them so momentous and
engaging a business that they could scarcely give over.

Prayer was to them what it was to Paul, a striving with earnest effort
of soul; what it was to Jacob, a wrestling and prevailing; what it was
to Christ, "strong crying and tears." They "prayed always with all
prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all
perseverance." "The effectual, fervent prayer" has been the mightiest
weapon of God's mightiest soldiers. The statement in regard to
Elijah—that he "was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he
prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth
by the space of three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the
heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit"—comprehends all
prophets and preachers who have moved their generation for God, and
shows the instrument by which they worked their wonders.



VII

 _The great masters and teachers in Christian doctrine have always found
 in prayer their highest source of illumination. Not to go beyond the
 limits of the English Church, it is recorded of Bishop Andrewes that he
 spent five hours daily on his knees. The greatest practical resolves
 that have enriched and beautified human life in Christian times have
 been arrived at in prayer._—CANON LIDDON.


While many private prayers, in the nature of things, must be short;
while public prayers, as a rule, ought to be short and condensed; while
there is ample room for and value put on ejaculatory prayer—yet in our
private communions with God time is a feature essential to its value.
Much time spent with God is the secret of all successful praying. Prayer
which is felt as a mighty force is the mediate or immediate product of
much time spent with God. Our short prayers owe their point and
efficiency to the long ones that have preceded them. The short
prevailing prayer cannot be prayed by one who has not prevailed with God
in a mightier struggle of long continuance. Jacob's victory of faith
could not have been gained without that all-night wrestling. God's
acquaintance is not made hurriedly. He does not bestow His gifts on the
casual or hasty comer and goer. To be much alone with God is the secret
of knowing Him and of influence with Him. He yields to the persistency
of a faith that knows Him. He bestows His richest gifts upon those who
declare their desire for and appreciation of those gifts by the
constancy as well as earnestness of their importunity. Christ, who in
this as well as other things is our Example, spent many whole nights in
prayer. His custom was to pray much. He had His habitual place to pray.
Many long seasons of praying make up His history and character. Paul
prayed day and night. It took time from very important interests for
Daniel to pray three times a day. David's morning, noon, and night
praying were doubtless on many occasions very protracted. While we have
no specific account of the time these Bible saints spent in prayer, yet
the indications are that they consumed much time in prayer, and on some
occasions long seasons of praying was their custom.

We would not have any think that the value of their prayers is to be
measured by the clock, but our purpose is to impress on our minds the
necessity of being much alone with God; and that if this feature has not
been produced by our faith, then our faith is of a feeble and surface
type.

The men who have most fully illustrated Christ in their character, and
have most powerfully affected the world for Him, have been men who spent
so much time with God as to make it a notable feature of their lives.
Charles Simeon devoted the hours from four till eight in the morning to
God. Mr. Wesley spent two hours daily in prayer. He began at four in the
morning. Of him, one who knew him well wrote: "He thought prayer to be
more his business than anything else, and I have seen him come out of
his closet with a serenity of face next to shining." John Fletcher
stained the walls of his room by the breath of his prayers. Sometimes he
would pray all night; always, frequently, and with great earnestness.
His whole life was a life of prayer. "I would not rise from my seat," he
said, "without lifting my heart to God." His greeting to a friend was
always: "Do I meet you praying?" Luther said: "If I fail to spend two
hours in prayer each morning, the devil gets the victory through the
day. I have so much business I cannot get on without spending three
hours daily in prayer." He had a motto: "He that has prayed well has
studied well."

Archbishop Leighton was so much alone with God that he seemed to be in a
perpetual meditation. "Prayer and praise were his business and his
pleasure," says his biographer. Bishop Ken was so much with God that his
soul was said to be God-enamoured. He was with God before the clock
struck three every morning. Bishop Asbury said: "I propose to rise at
four o'clock as often as I can and spend two hours in prayer and
meditation." Samuel Rutherford, the fragrance of whose piety is still
rich, rose at three in the morning to meet God in prayer. Joseph Alleine
arose at four o'clock for his business of praying till eight. If he
heard other tradesmen plying their business before he was up, he would
exclaim: "O how this shames me! Doth not my Master deserve more than
theirs?" He who has learned this trade well draws at will, on sight, and
with the acceptance of heaven's unfailing bank.

One of the holiest and most gifted of Scottish preachers says: "I ought
to spend the best hours in communion with God. It is my noblest and most
fruitful employment, and is not to be thrust into a corner. The morning
hours, from six to eight, are the most uninterrupted and should be thus
employed. After tea is my best hour, and that should be solemnly
dedicated to God. I ought not to give up the good old habit of prayer
before going to bed; but guard must be kept against sleep. When I awake
in the night, I ought to rise and pray. A little time after breakfast
might be given to intercession." This was the praying plan of Robert
McCheyne. The memorable Methodist band in their praying shame us. "From
four or five in the morning, private prayer; from five to six in the
evening, private prayer."

John Welch, the holy and wonderful Scotch preacher, thought the day ill
spent if he did not spend eight or ten hours in prayer. He kept a plaid
that he might wrap himself when he arose to pray at night. His wife
would complain when she found him lying on the ground weeping. He would
reply: "O woman I have the souls of three thousand to answer for, and I
know not how it is with many of them!"



VIII

 _The act of praying is the very highest energy of which the human mind
 is capable; praying, that is, with the total concentration of the
 faculties. The great mass of worldly men and of learned men are
 absolutely incapable of prayer._—COLERIDGE.


Bishop Wilson says: "In H. Martyn's journal the spirit of prayer, the
time he devoted to the duty, and his fervour in it are the first things
which strike me."

Payson wore the hard-wood boards into grooves where his knees pressed so
often and so long. His biographer says: "His continuing instant in
prayer, be his circumstances what they might, is the most noticeable
fact in his history, and points out the duty of all who would rival his
eminency. To his ardent and persevering prayers must no doubt be
ascribed in a great measure his distinguished and almost uninterrupted
success."

The Marquis DeRenty, to whom Christ was most precious, ordered his
servant to call him from his devotions at the end of half an hour. The
servant at the time saw his face through an aperture. It was marked with
such holiness that he hated to arouse him. His lips were moving, but he
was perfectly silent. He waited until three half hours had passed; then
he called to him, when he arose from his knees, saying that the half
hour was so short when he was communing with Christ.

Brainerd said: "I love to be alone in my cottage, where I can spend much
time in prayer."

William Bramwell is famous in Methodist annals for personal holiness and
for his wonderful success in preaching and for the marvellous answers to
his prayers. For hours at a time he would pray. He almost lived on his
knees. He went over his circuits like a flame of fire. The fire was
kindled by the time he spent in prayer. He often spent as much as four
hours in a single season of prayer in retirement.

Bishop Andrewes spent the greatest part of five hours every day in
prayer and devotion.

Sir Henry Havelock always spent the first two hours of each day alone
with God. If the encampment was struck at 6 a.m., he would rise at four.

Earl Cairns rose daily at six o'clock to secure an hour and a half for
the study of the Bible and for prayer, before conducting family worship
at a quarter to eight.

Dr. Judson's success in God's work is attributable to the fact that he
gave much time to prayer. He says on this point: "Arrange thy affairs,
if possible, so that thou canst leisurely devote two or three hours
every day not merely to devotional exercises but to the very act of
secret prayer and communion with God. Endeavour seven times a day to
withdraw from business and company and lift up thy soul to God in
private retirement. Begin the day by rising after midnight and devoting
some time amid the silence and darkness of the night to this sacred
work. Let the hour of opening dawn find thee at the same work. Let the
hours of nine, twelve, three, six, and nine at night witness the same.
Be resolute in His cause. Make all practicable sacrifices to maintain
it. Consider that thy time is short, and that business and company must
not be allowed to rob thee of thy God." Impossible, say we, fanatical
directions! Dr. Judson impressed an empire for Christ and laid the
foundations of God's kingdom with imperishable granite in the heart of
Burmah. He was successful, one of the few men who mightily impressed the
world for Christ. Many men of greater gifts and genius and learning than
he have made no such impression; their religious work is like footsteps
in the sands, but he has engraven his work on the adamant. The secret of
its profundity and endurance is found in the fact that he gave time to
prayer. He kept the iron red-hot with prayer, and God's skill fashioned
it with enduring power. No man can do a great and enduring work for God
who is not a man of prayer, and no man can be a man of prayer who does
not give much time to praying.

Is it true that prayer is simply the compliance with habit, dull and
mechanical? A petty performance into which we are trained till tameness,
shortness, superficiality are its chief elements? "Is it true that
prayer is, as is assumed, little else than the half-passive play of
sentiment which flows languidly on through the minutes or hours of easy
reverie?" Canon Liddon continues: "Let those who have really prayed give
the answer. They sometimes describe prayer with the patriarch Jacob as a
wrestling together with an Unseen Power which may last, not unfrequently
in an earnest life, late into the night hours, or even to the break of
day. Sometimes they refer to common intercession with St. Paul as a
concerted struggle. They have, when praying, their eyes fixed on the
Great Intercessor in Gethsemane, upon the drops of blood which fall to
the ground in that agony of resignation and sacrifice. Importunity is of
the essence of successful prayer. Importunity means not dreaminess but
sustained work. It is through prayer especially that the kingdom of
heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force. It was a
saying of the late Bishop Hamilton that "No man is likely to do much
good in prayer who does not begin by looking upon it in the light of a
work to be prepared for and persevered in with all the earnestness which
we bring to bear upon subjects which are in our opinion at once most
interesting and most necessary."



IX

 _I ought to pray before seeing any one. Often when I sleep long, or
 meet with others early, it is eleven or twelve o'clock before I begin
 secret prayer. This is a wretched system. It is unscriptural. Christ
 arose before day and went into a solitary place. David says: "Early
 will I seek Thee;" "Thou shalt early hear my voice." Family prayer
 loses much of its power and sweetness, and I can do no good to those
 who come to seek from me. The conscience feels guilty, the soul unfed,
 the lamp not trimmed. Then when in secret prayer the soul is often out
 of tune. I feel it is far better to begin with God—to see His face
 first, to get my soul near Him before it is near
 another._—ROBERT MURRAY MCCHEYNE.


The men who have done the most for God in this world have been early on
their knees. He who fritters away the early morning, its opportunity and
freshness, in other pursuits than seeking God will make poor headway
seeking Him the rest of the day. If God is not first in our thoughts and
efforts in the morning, He will be in the last place the remainder of
the day.

Behind this early rising and early praying is the ardent desire which
presses us into this pursuit after God. Morning listlessness is the
index to a listless heart. The heart which is behindhand in seeking God
in the morning has lost its relish for God. David's heart was ardent
after God. He hungered and thirsted after God, and so he sought God
early, before daylight. The bed and sleep could not chain his soul in
its eagerness after God. Christ longed for communion with God; and so,
rising a great while before day, He would go out into the mountain to
pray. The disciples, when fully awake and ashamed of their indulgence,
would know where to find Him. We might go through the list of men who
have mightily impressed the world for God, and we would find them early
after God.

A desire for God which cannot break the chains of sleep is a weak thing
and will do but little good for God after it has indulged itself fully.
The desire for God that keeps so far behind the devil and the world at
the beginning of the day will never catch up.

It is not simply the getting up that puts men to the front and makes
them captain generals in God's hosts, but it is the ardent desire which
stirs and breaks all self-indulgent chains. But the getting up gives
vent, increase, and strength to the desire. If they had lain in bed and
indulged themselves, the desire would have been quenched. The desire
aroused them and put them on the stretch for God, and this heeding and
acting on the call gave their faith its grasp on God and gave to their
hearts the sweetest and fullest revelation of God, and this strength of
faith and fulness of revelation made them saints by eminence, and the
halo of their sainthood has come down to us, and we have entered on the
enjoyment of their conquests. But we take our fill in enjoyment, and not
in productions. We build their tombs and write their epitaphs, but are
careful not to follow their examples.

We need a generation of preachers who seek God and seek Him early, who
give the freshness and dew of effort to God, and secure in return the
freshness and fulness of His power that He may be as the dew to them,
full of gladness and strength, through all the heat and labour of the
day. Our laziness after God is our crying sin. The children of this
world are far wiser than we. They are at it early and late. We do not
seek God with ardour and diligence. No man gets God who does not follow
hard after Him, and no soul follows hard after God who is not after Him
in early morn.



X

 _There is a manifest want of spiritual influence on the ministry of the
 present day. I feel it in my own case and I see it in that of others. I
 am afraid there is too much of a low, managing, contriving, manœuvering
 temper of mind among us. We are laying ourselves out more than is
 expedient to meet one man's taste and another man's prejudices. The
 ministry is a grand and holy affair, and it should find in us a simple
 habit of spirit and a holy but humble indifference to all consequences.
 The leading defect in Christian ministers is want of a devotional
 habit._—RICHARD CECIL.


Never was there greater need for saintly men and women; more imperative
still is the call for saintly, God-devoted preachers. The world moves
with gigantic strides. Satan has his hold and rule on the world, and
labours to make all its movements subserve his ends. Religion must do
its best work, present its most attractive and perfect models. By every
means, modern sainthood must be inspired by the loftiest ideals and by
the largest possibilities through the Spirit. Paul lived on his knees,
that the Ephesian Church might measure the heights, breadths, and depths
of an unmeasurable saintliness, and "be filled with all the fulness of
God." Epaphras laid himself out with the exhaustive toil and strenuous
conflict of fervent prayer that the Colossian Church might "stand
perfect and complete in all the will of God." Everywhere, everything in
apostolic times was on the stretch that the people of God might each and
"all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of
God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness
of Christ." No premium was given to dwarfs; no encouragement to an old
babyhood. The babies were to grow; the old, instead of feebleness and
infirmities, were to bear fruit in old age, and be fat and flourishing.
The divinest thing in religion is holy men and holy women.

No amount of money, genius, or culture can move things for God. Holiness
energizing the soul, the whole man aflame with love, with desire for
more faith, more prayer, more zeal, more consecration—this is the secret
of power. These we need and must have, and men must be the incarnation
of this God-inflamed devotedness. God's advance has been stayed, His
cause crippled, His name dishonoured for their lack. Genius (though the
loftiest and most gifted), education (though the most learned and
refined), position, dignity, place, honoured names, high ecclesiastics
cannot move this chariot of our God. It is a fiery one, and fiery forces
only can move it. The genius of a Milton fails. The imperial strength of
a Leo fails. Brainerd's spirit can move it. Brainerd's spirit was on
fire for God, on fire for souls. Nothing earthly, worldly, selfish came
in to abate in the least the intensity of this all-impelling and
all-consuming force and flame.

Prayer is the creator as well as the channel of devotion. The spirit of
devotion is the spirit of prayer. Prayer and devotion are united as soul
and body are united, as life and heart are united. There is no real
prayer without devotion, no devotion without prayer. The preacher must
be surrendered to God in the holiest devotion. He is not a professional
man, his ministry is not a profession; it is a divine institution, a
divine devotion. He is devoted to God. His aim, aspirations, ambition
are for God and to God, and to such prayer is as essential as food is to
life.

The preacher, above everything else, must be devoted to God. The
preacher's relations to God are the insignia and credentials of his
ministry. These must be clear, conclusive, unmistakable. No common,
surface type of piety must be his. If he does not excel in grace, he
does not excel at all. If he does not preach by life, character,
conduct, he does not preach at all. If his piety be light, his preaching
may be as soft and as sweet as music, as gifted as Apollo, yet its
weight will be a feather's weight, visionary, fleeting as the morning
cloud or the early dew. Devotion to God—there is no substitute for this
in the preacher's character and conduct. Devotion to a Church, to
opinions, to an organization, to orthodoxy—these are paltry, misleading,
and vain when they become the source of inspiration, the animus of a
call. God must be the mainspring of the preacher's effort, the fountain
and crown of all his toil. The name and honour of Jesus Christ, the
advance of His cause, must be all in all. The preacher must have no
inspiration but the name of Jesus Christ, no ambition but to have Him
glorified, no toil but for Him. Then prayer will be a source of his
illuminations, the means of perpetual advance, the gauge of his success.
The perpetual aim, the only ambition, the preacher can cherish is to
have God with him.

Never did the cause of God need perfect illustrations of the possibilities
of prayer more than in this age. No age, no person, will be ensamples of
the gospel power except the ages or persons of deep and earnest prayer.
A prayerless age will have but scant models of divine power. Prayerless
hearts will never rise to these Alpine heights. The age may be a better
age than the past, but there is an infinite distance between the
betterment of an age by the force of an advancing civilization and its
betterment by the increase of holiness and Christ-likeness by the energy
of prayer. The Jews were much better when Christ came than in the ages
before. It was the golden age of their Pharisaic religion. Their golden
religious age crucified Christ. Never more praying, never less praying;
never more sacrifices, never less sacrifice; never less idolatry, never
more idolatry; never more of temple worship, never less of God worship;
never more of lip service, never less of heart service (God worshiped by
lips whose hearts and hands crucified God's Son!); never more of
church-goers, never less of saints.

It is a prayer-force which makes saints. Holy characters are formed by
the power of real praying. The more of true saints, the more of praying;
the more of praying, the more of true saints.



XI

 _I urge upon you communion with Christ, a growing communion. There are
 curtains to be drawn aside in Christ that we never saw, and new
 foldings of love in Him. I despair that I shall ever win to the far end
 of that love, there are so many plies in it. Therefore dig deep, and
 sweat and labour and take pains for Him, and set by as much time in the
 day for Him as you can. He will be won in the labour._—RUTHERFORD.


God has now, and has had, many of these devoted, prayerful preachers—men
in whose lives prayer has been a mighty, controlling, conspicuous force.
The world has felt their power, God has felt and honoured their power,
God's cause has moved mightily and swiftly by their prayers, holiness
has shone out in their characters with a divine effulgence.

God found one of the men he was looking for in David Brainerd, whose
work and name have gone into history. He was no ordinary man, but was
capable of shining in any company, the peer of the wise and gifted ones,
eminently suited to fill the most attractive pulpits and to labour among
the most refined and the cultured, who were so anxious to secure him for
their pastor. President Edwards bears testimony that he was "a young man
of distinguished talents, had extraordinary knowledge of men and things,
had rare conversational powers, excelled in his knowledge of theology,
and was truly, for one so young, an extraordinary divine, and especially
in all matters relating to experimental religion. I never knew his equal
of his age and standing for clear and accurate notions of the nature and
essence of true religion. His manner in prayer was almost inimitable,
such as I have very rarely known equalled. His learning was very
considerable, and he had extraordinary gifts for the pulpit."

No sublimer story has been recorded in earthly annals than that of David
Brainerd; no miracle attests with diviner force the truth of Christianity
than the life and work of such a man. Alone in the savage wilds of
America, struggling day and night with a mortal disease, unschooled in
the care of souls, having access to the Indians for a large portion of
time only through the bungling medium of a pagan interpreter, with the
Word of God in his heart and in his hand, his soul fired with the divine
flame, a place and time to pour out his soul to God in prayer, he fully
established the worship of God and secured all its gracious results. The
Indians were changed with a great change from the lowest besotments of
an ignorant and debased heathenism, to pure, devout, intelligent
Christians; all vice reformed, the external duties of Christianity at
once embraced and acted on; family prayer set up; the Sabbath instituted
and religiously observed; the internal graces of religion exhibited with
growing sweetness and strength. The solution of these results is found
in David Brainerd himself, not in the conditions or accidents but in the
man Brainerd. He was God's man, for God first and last and all the time.
God could flow unhindered through him. The omnipotence of grace was
neither arrested nor straitened by the conditions of his heart; the
whole channel was broadened and cleaned out for God's fullest and most
powerful passage, so that God with all His mighty forces could come down
on the hopeless, savage wilderness, and transform it into His blooming
and fruitful garden; for nothing is too hard for God to do if He can get
the right kind of a man to do it with.

Brainerd lived the life of holiness and prayer. His diary is full and
monotonous with the record of his seasons of fasting, meditation, and
retirement. The time he spent in private prayer amounted to many hours
daily. "When I return home," he said, "and give myself to meditation,
prayer, and fasting, my soul longs for mortification, self-denial,
humility and divorcement from all things of the world." "I have nothing
to do," he said, "with earth, but only to labour in it honestly for God.
I do not desire to live one minute for anything which earth can afford."
After this high order did he pray: "Feeling somewhat of the sweetness of
communion with God and the constraining force of His love, and how
admirably it captivates the soul and makes all the desires and
affections to centre in God, I set apart this day for secret fasting and
prayer, to entreat God to direct and bless me with regard to the great
work which I have in view of preaching the gospel and that the Lord
would return to me and show me the light of His countenance. I had
little life and power in the forenoon. Near the middle of the afternoon
God enabled me to wrestle ardently in intercession for my absent
friends, but just at night the Lord visited me marvellously in prayer. I
think my soul was never in such agony before. I felt no restraint, for
the treasures of divine grace were opened to me. I wrestled for absent
friends, for the ingathering of souls, for multitudes of poor souls, and
for many that I thought were the children of God, personally, in many
distant places. I was in such agony from sun half an hour high till near
dark that I was all over wet with sweat, but yet it seemed to me I had
done nothing. O, my dear Saviour did sweat blood for poor souls! I
longed for more compassion toward them. I felt still in a sweet frame,
under a sense of divine love and grace, and went to bed in such a frame,
with my heart set on God." It was prayer which gave to his life and
ministry their marvellous power.

The men of mighty prayer are men of spiritual might. Prayers never die.
Brainerd's whole life was a life of prayer. By day and by night he
prayed. Before preaching and after preaching he prayed. Riding through
the interminable solitudes of the forests he prayed. On his bed of straw
he prayed. Retiring to the dense and lonely forests he prayed. Hour by
hour, day after day, early morn and late at night, he was praying and
fasting, pouring out his soul, interceding, communing with God. He was
with God mightily in prayer, and God was with him mightily, and by it he
being dead yet speaketh and worketh, and will speak and work till the
end comes, and among the glorious ones of that glorious day he will be
with the first.

Jonathan Edwards says of him: "His life shows the right way to success
in the works of the ministry. He sought it as the soldier seeks victory
in a siege or battle; or as a man that runs a race for a great prize.
Animated with love to Christ and souls, how did he labour? Always
fervently. Not only in word and doctrine, in public and in private, but
in prayers by day and night, wrestling with God in secret and travailing
in birth with unutterable groans, and agonies, until Christ was formed
in the hearts of the people to whom he was sent. Like a true son of
Jacob, he persevered in wrestling through all the darkness of the night,
until the breaking of the day!"



XII

 _For nothing reaches the heart but what is from the heart, or pierces
 the conscience but what comes from a living conscience._—WILLIAM PENN.

 _In the morning was more engaged in preparing the head than the heart.
 This has been frequently my error, and I have always felt the evil of
 it, especially in prayer. Reform it, then, O Lord! Enlarge my heart,
 and I shall preach._—ROBERT MURRAY MCCHEYNE.

 _A sermon that has more head infused into it than heart will not come
 home with efficacy to the hearers._—RICHARD CECIL.


Prayer, with its manifold and many-sided forces, helps the mouth to
utter the truth in its fulness and freedom. The preacher is to be prayed
for, the preacher is made by prayer. The preacher's mouth is to be
prayed for; his mouth is to be opened and filled by prayer. A holy mouth
is made by praying, by much praying; a brave mouth is made by praying,
by much praying. The Church and the world, God and heaven, owe much to
Paul's mouth; Paul's mouth owed its power to prayer.

How manifold, illimitable, valuable, and helpful prayer is to the
preacher in so many ways, at so many points, in every way! One great
value is, it helps his heart.

Praying makes the preacher a heart preacher. Prayer puts the preacher's
heart into the preacher's sermon; prayer puts the preacher's sermon into
the preacher's heart.

The heart makes the preacher. Men of great hearts are great preachers.
Men of bad hearts may do a measure of good, but this is rare. The
hireling and the stranger may help the sheep at some points but it is
the good shepherd with the good shepherd's heart who will bless the
sheep and answer the full measure of the shepherd's place.

We have emphasized sermon-preparation until we have lost sight of the
important thing to be prepared—the heart. A prepared heart is much
better than a prepared sermon. A prepared heart will make a prepared
sermon.

Volumes have been written laying down the mechanics and taste of
sermon-making, until we have become possessed with the idea that this
scaffolding is the building. The young preacher has been taught to lay
out all his strength on the form, taste, and beauty of his sermon as a
mechanical and intellectual product. We have thereby cultivated a
vicious taste among the people and raise the clamour for talent instead
of grace, eloquence instead of piety, rhetoric instead of revelation,
reputation and brilliancy instead of holiness. By it we have lost the
true idea of preaching, lost preaching power, lost pungent conviction
for sin, lost the rich experience and elevated Christian character, lost
the authority over consciences and lives which always result from
genuine preaching.

It would not do to say that preachers study too much. Some of them do
not study at all; others do not study enough. Numbers do not study the
right way to show themselves workmen approved of God. But our great lack
is not in head culture, but in heart culture; not lack of knowledge but
lack of holiness is our sad and telling defect—not that we know too
much, but that we do not meditate on God and His word and watch and fast
and pray enough. The heart is the great hindrance to our preaching.
Words pregnant with divine truth find in our hearts non-conductors;
arrested, they fall flat and powerless.

Can ambition, that lusts after praise and place, preach the gospel of
Him who made Himself of no reputation and took on Him the form of a
servant? Can the proud, the vain, the egotistical preach the gospel of
Him who was meek and lowly? Can the bad-tempered, passionate, selfish,
hard, worldly man preach the system which teems with long-suffering,
self-denial, tenderness, which imperatively demands separation from
enmity and crucifixion to the world? Can the hireling official,
heartless, perfunctory, preach the gospel which demands that the
Shepherd give His life for the sheep? Can the covetous man, who counts
salary and money, preach the gospel till he has gleaned his heart and
can say in the Spirit of Christ and Paul in the words of Wesley: "I
count it dung and dross; I trample it under my feet; I (yet not I, but
the grace of God in me) esteem it just as the mire of the streets, I
desire it not, I seek it not?" God's revelation does not need the light
of human genius, the polish and strength of human culture, the
brilliancy of human thought, the force of human brains to adorn or
enforce it; but it does demand the simplicity, the docility, humility,
and faith of a child's heart.

It was this surrender and subordination of intellect and genius to the
divine and spiritual forces which made Paul peerless among the apostles.
It was this which gave Wesley his power and radicated his labours in the
history of humanity.

Our great need is heart-preparation. Luther held it as an axiom: "He who
has prayed well has studied well." We do not say that men are not to
think and use their intellects; but he will use his intellect best who
cultivates his heart most. We do not say that preachers should not be
students; but we do say that their great study should be the Bible, and
he studies the Bible best who has kept his heart with diligence. We do
not say that the preacher should not know men, but he will be the
greater adept in human nature who has fathomed the depths and
intricacies of his own heart. We do say that while the channel of
preaching is the mind, its fountain is the heart; you may broaden and
deepen the channel, but if you do not look well to the purity and depth
of the fountain, you will have a dry or polluted channel. We do say that
almost any man of common intelligence has sense enough to preach the
gospel, but very few have grace enough to do so. We do say that he who
has struggled with his own heart and conquered it; who has taught it
humility, faith, love, truth, mercy, sympathy, courage; who can pour the
rich treasures of the heart thus trained, through a manly intellect, all
surcharged with the power of the gospel on the consciences of his
hearers—such an one will be the truest, most successful preacher in the
esteem of his Lord.



XIII

 _Study not to be a fine preacher. Jerichos are blown down with rams'
 horns. Look simply unto Jesus for preaching food; and what is wanted
 will be given, and what is given will be blessed, whether it be a
 barley grain or a wheaten loaf, a crust or a crumb. Your mouth will be
 a flowing stream or a fountain sealed, according as your heart is.
 Avoid all controversy in preaching, talking, or writing; preach nothing
 down but the devil, and nothing up but Jesus Christ._—BERRIDGE.


The heart is the saviour of the world. Heads do not save. Genius,
brains, brilliancy, strength, natural gifts do not save. The gospel
flows through hearts. All the mightiest forces are heart forces. All the
sweetest and loveliest graces are heart graces. Great hearts make great
characters; great hearts make divine characters. God is love. There is
nothing greater than love, nothing greater than God. Hearts make heaven;
heaven is love. There is nothing higher, nothing sweeter, than heaven.
It is the heart and not the head which makes God's great preachers. The
heart counts much every way in religion. The heart must speak from the
pulpit. The heart must hear in the pew. In fact, we serve God with our
hearts. Head homage does not pass current in heaven.

We believe that one of the serious and most popular errors of the modern
pulpit is the putting of more thought than prayer, of more head than of
heart in its sermons. Big hearts make big preachers; good hearts make
good preachers. A theological school to enlarge and cultivate the heart
is the golden desideratum of the gospel. The pastor binds his people to
him and rules his people by his heart. They may admire his gifts, they
may be proud of his ability, they may be affected for the time by his
sermons; but the stronghold of his power is his heart. His sceptre is
love. The throne of his power is his heart.

The good Shepherd gives His life for the sheep. Heads never make
martyrs. It is the heart which surrenders the life to love and fidelity.
It takes great courage to be a faithful pastor, but the heart alone can
supply this courage. Gifts and genius may be brave, but it is the gifts
and genius of the heart and not of the head.

It is easier to fill the head than it is to prepare the heart. It is
easier to make a brain sermon than a heart sermon. It was heart that
drew the Son of God from heaven. It is heart that will draw men to
heaven. Men of heart is what the world needs to sympathize with its woe,
to kiss away its sorrows, to compassionate its misery, and to alleviate
its pain. Christ was eminently the man of sorrows, because He was
pre-eminently the man of heart.

"Give Me thy heart," is God's requisition of men. "Give me thy heart!"
is man's demand of man.

A professional ministry is a heartless ministry. When salary plays a
great part in the ministry, the heart plays little part. We may make
preaching our business, and not put our hearts in the business. He who
puts self to the front in his preaching puts heart to the rear. He who
does not sow with his heart in his study will never reap a harvest for
God. The closet is the heart's study. We will learn more about how to
preach and what to preach there than we can learn in our libraries.
"Jesus wept" is the shortest and biggest verse in the Bible. It is he
who goes forth _weeping_ (not preaching great sermons), bearing precious
seed, who shall come again rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.

Praying gives sense, brings wisdom, broadens and strengthens the mind.
The closet is a perfect school-teacher and school-house for the
preacher. Thought is not only brightened and clarified in prayer, but
thought is born in prayer. We can learn more in an hour praying, when
praying indeed, than from many hours in the study. Books are in the
closet which can be found and read nowhere else. Revelations are made in
the closet which are made nowhere else.



XIV

 _One bright benison which private prayer brings down upon the ministry
 is an indescribable and inimitable something—an unction from the Holy
 One.... If the anointing which we bear come not from the Lord of hosts,
 we are deceivers, since only in prayer can we obtain it. Let us
 continue instant, constant, fervent in supplication. Let your fleece
 lie on the thrashing-floor of supplication till it is wet with the dew
 of heaven._—SPURGEON.


Alexander Knox, a Christian philosopher of the days of Wesley, not an
adherent but a strong personal friend of Wesley, and with much spiritual
sympathy with the Wesleyan movement, writes: "It is strange and
lamentable, but I verily believe the fact to be that except among
Methodists and Methodistical clergymen, there is not much interesting
preaching in England. The clergy, too generally, have absolutely lost
the art. There is, I conceive, in the great laws of the moral world a
kind of secret understanding like the affinities in chemistry, between
rightly promulgated religious truth and the deepest feelings of the
human mind. Where the one is duly exhibited, the other will respond.
"Did not our hearts burn within us"?—but this devout feeling is
indispensable in the speaker. Now, I am obliged to state from my own
observation that this _onction_, as the French not unfitly term it, is
beyond all comparison more likely to be found in England in a Methodist
conventicle than in a parish Church. This, and this alone, seems really
to be that which fills the Methodist houses and thins the Churches. I
am, I verily think, no enthusiast; I am a most sincere and cordial
Churchman, a humble disciple of the School of Hale and Boyle, of Burnet
and Leighton. Now I must aver that when I was in this country, two years
ago, I did not hear a single preacher who taught me like my own great
masters but such as are deemed Methodistical. And I now despair of
getting an atom of heart-instruction from any other quarter. The
Methodist preachers (however I may not always approve of all their
expressions) do most assuredly diffuse this true religion and undefiled.
I felt real pleasure last Sunday. I can bear witness that the preacher
did at once speak the words of truth and soberness. There was no
eloquence—the honest man never dreamed of such a thing—but there was far
better: a cordial communication of vitalized truth. I say vitalized
because what he declared to others it was impossible not to feel he
lived on himself."

This unction is the art of preaching. The preacher who never had this
unction never had the art of preaching. The preacher who has lost this
unction has lost the art of preaching. Whatever other arts he may have
and retain—the art of sermon-making, the art of eloquence, the art of
great, clear thinking, the art of pleasing an audience—he has lost the
divine art of preaching. This unction makes God's truth powerful and
interesting, draws and attracts, edifies, convicts, saves.

This unction vitalizes God's revealed truth, makes it living and
life-giving. Even God's truth spoken without this unction is light,
dead, and deadening. Though abounding in truth, though weighty with
thought, though sparkling with rhetoric, though pointed by logic, though
powerful by earnestness, without this divine unction it issues in death
and not in life. Mr. Spurgeon says: "I wonder how long we might beat our
brains before we could plainly put into word what is meant by preaching
with unction. Yet he who preaches knows its presence, and he who hears
soon detects its absence. Samaria, in famine, typifies a discourse
without it. Jerusalem, with her feast of fat things, full of marrow, may
represent a sermon enriched with it. Every one knows what the freshness
of the morning is when orient pearls abound on every blade of grass, but
who can describe it, much less produce it of itself? Such is the mystery
of spiritual anointing. We know, but we cannot tell to others what it
is. It is as easy as it is foolish, to counterfeit it. Unction is a
thing which you cannot manufacture, and its counterfeits are worse than
worthless. Yet it is, in itself, priceless, and beyond measure needful
if you would edify believers and bring sinners to Christ."



XV

 _Speak for eternity. Above all things, cultivate your own spirit. A
 word spoken by you when your conscience is clear and your heart full of
 God's Spirit is worth ten thousand words spoken in unbelief and sin.
 Remember that God, and not man, must have the glory. If the veil of the
 world's machinery were lifted off, how much we would find is done in
 answer to the prayers of God's children._—ROBERT MURRAY MCCHEYNE.


Unction is that indefinable, indescribable something which an old,
renowned Scotch preacher describes thus: "There is sometimes somewhat in
preaching that cannot be described either to matter or expression, and
cannot be described what it is, or from whence it cometh, but with a
sweet violence it pierceth into the heart and affections and comes
immediately from the Lord; but if there be any way to obtain such a
thing it is by the heavenly disposition of the speaker."

We call it unction. It is this unction which makes the Word of God
"quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even
to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and
marrow, and a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." It is
this unction which gives the words of the preacher such point,
sharpness, and power, and which creates such friction and stir in many a
dead congregation. The same truths have been told in the strictness of
the letter, smooth as human oil could make them; but no signs of life,
not a pulse throb; all as peaceful as the grave and as dead. The same
preacher in the meanwhile receives a baptism of this unction, the divine
inflatus is on him, the letter of the Word has been embellished and
fired by this mysterious power, and the throbbings of life begin—life
which receives or life which resists. The unction pervades and convicts
the conscience and breaks the heart.

This divine unction is the feature which separates and distinguishes
true gospel preaching from all other methods of presenting the truth,
and which creates a wide spiritual chasm between the preacher who has it
and the one who has it not. It supports and impregnates revealed truth
with all the energy of God. Unction is simply putting God in His own
Word and on His own preacher. By mighty and great prayerfulness and by
continual prayerfulness, it is all potential and personal to the
preacher; it inspires and clarifies his intellect, gives insight and
grasp and projecting power; it gives to the preacher heart power, which
is greater than head power; and tenderness, purity, force flow from the
heart by it. Enlargement, freedom, fulness of thought, directness and
simplicity of utterance are the fruits of this unction.

Often earnestness is mistaken for this unction. He who has the divine
unction will be earnest in the very spiritual nature of things, but
there may be a vast deal of earnestness without the least mixture of
unction.

Earnestness and unction look alike from some points of view. Earnestness
may be readily and without detection substituted or mistaken for
unction. It requires a spiritual eye and a spiritual taste to
discriminate.

Earnestness may be sincere, serious, ardent, and persevering. It goes at
a thing with a good will, pursues it with perseverance, and urges it
with ardour; puts force in it. But all these forces do not rise higher
than the mere human. The _man_ is in it—the whole man, with all that he
has of will and heart, of brain and genius, of planning and working and
talking. He has set himself to some purpose which has mastered him, and
he pursues to master it. There may be none of God in it. There may be
little of God in it, because there is so much of the man in it. He may
present pleas in advocacy of his earnest purpose which please or touch
and move or overwhelm with conviction of their importance; and in all
this earnestness may move along earthly ways, being propelled by human
forces only, its altar made by earthly hands and its fire kindled by
earthly flames. It is said of a rather famous preacher of gifts, whose
construction of Scripture was to his fancy or purpose, that he "grew
very eloquent over his own exegesis." So men grow exceeding earnest over
their own plans or movements. Earnestness may be selfishness simulated.

What of unction? It is the indefinable in preaching which makes it
preaching. It is that which distinguishes and separates preaching from
all mere human addresses. It is the divine in preaching. It makes the
preaching sharp to those who need sharpness. It distils as the dew to
those who need to be refreshed. It is well described as:

  "... a two-edged sword
    Of heavenly temper keen,
  And double were the wounds it made
    Where'er it glanced between.
  'Twas death to sin; 'twas life
    To all who mourned for sin.
  It kindled and it silenced strife,
    Made war and peace within."

This unction comes to the preacher not in the study but in the closet.
It is heaven's distillation in answer to prayer. It is the sweetest
exhalation of the Holy Spirit. It impregnates, suffuses, softens,
percolates, cuts, and soothes. It carries the Word like dynamite, like
salt, like sugar; makes the Word a soother, an arraigner, a revealer, a
searcher; makes the hearer a culprit or a saint, makes him weep like a
child and live like a giant; opens his heart and his purse as gently,
yet as strongly as the spring opens the leaves. This unction is not the
gift of genius. It is not found in the halls of learning. No eloquence
can woo it. No industry can win it. No prelatical hands can confer it.
It is the gift of God—the signet set to His own messengers. It is
heaven's knighthood given to the chosen true and brave ones who have
sought this anointed honour through many an hour of tearful, wrestling
prayer.

Earnestness is good and impressive; genius is gifted and great. Thought
kindles and inspires, but it takes a diviner endowment, a more powerful
energy than earnestness or genius or thought to break the chains of sin,
to win estranged and depraved hearts to God, to repair the breaches and
restore the Church to her old ways of purity and power. Nothing but this
holy unction can do this.



XVI

 _All the minister's efforts will be vanity or worse than vanity if he
 have not unction. Unction must come down from heaven and spread a
 savour and feeling and relish over his ministry; and among the other
 means of qualifying himself for his office, the Bible must hold the
 first place, and the last also must be given to the Word of God and
 prayer._—RICHARD CECIL.


In the Christian system unction is the anointing of the Holy Ghost,
separating unto God's work and qualifying for it. This unction is the
one divine enablement by which the preacher accomplishes the peculiar
and saving ends of preaching. Without this unction there are no true
spiritual results accomplished; the results and forces in preaching do
not rise above the results of unsanctified speech. Without unction the
latter is as potent as the pulpit.

This divine unction on the preacher generates through the Word of God
the spiritual results that flow from the gospel; and without this
unction, these results are not secured. Many pleasant impressions may be
made, but these all fall far below the ends of gospel preaching. This
unction may be simulated. There are many things that look like it, there
are many results that resemble its effects; but they are foreign to its
results and to its nature. The fervour or softness excited by a pathetic
or emotional sermon may look like the movements of the divine unction,
but they have no pungent, penetrating, heart-breaking force. No
heart-healing balm is there in these surface, sympathetic, emotional
movements; they are not radical, neither sin-searching nor sin-curing.

This divine unction is the one distinguishing feature that separates
true gospel preaching from all other methods of presenting truth. It
backs and interpenetrates the revealed truth with all the force of God.
It illumines the Word and broadens and enrichens the intellect and
empowers it to grasp and apprehend the Word. It qualifies the preacher's
heart, and brings it to that condition of tenderness, of purity, of
force and light that are necessary to secure the highest results. This
unction gives to the preacher liberty and enlargement of thought and
soul—a freedom, fulness, and directness of utterance that can be secured
by no other process.

Without this unction on the preacher the gospel has no more power to
propagate itself than any other system of truth. This is the seal of its
divinity. Unction in the preacher puts God in the gospel. Without the
unction, God is absent, and the gospel is left to the low and
unsatisfactory forces that the ingenuity, interest, or talents of men
can devise to enforce and project its doctrines.

It is in this element that the pulpit oftener fails than in any other
element. Just at this all-important point it lapses. Learning it may
have, brilliancy and eloquence may delight and charm, sensation or less
offensive methods may bring the populace in crowds, mental power may
impress and enforce truth with all its resources; but without this
unction, each and all these will be but as the fretful assault of the
waters on a Gibraltar. Spray and foam may cover and spangle; but the
rocks are there still, unimpressed and unimpressible. The human heart
can no more be swept of its hardness and sin by these human forces than
these rocks can be swept away by the ocean's ceaseless flow.

This unction is the consecration force, and its presence the continuous
test of that consecration. It is this divine anointing on the preacher
that secures his consecration to God and his work. Other forces and
motives may call him to the work, but this only is consecration. A
separation to God's work by the power of the Holy Spirit is the only
consecration recognized by God as legitimate.

The unction, the divine unction, this heavenly anointing, is what the
pulpit needs and must have. This divine and heavenly oil put on it by
the imposition of God's hand must soften and lubricate the whole
man—heart, head, spirit—until it separates him with a mighty separation
from all earthly, secular, worldly, selfish motives and aims, separating
him to everything that is pure and Godlike.

It is the presence of this unction on the preacher that creates the stir
and friction in many a congregation. The same truths have been told in
the strictness of the letter, but no ruffle has been seen, no pain or
pulsation felt. All is quiet as a graveyard. Another preacher comes, and
this mysterious influence is on him; the letter of the Word has been
fired by the Spirit, the throes of a mighty movement are felt, it is the
unction that pervades and stirs the conscience and breaks the heart.
Unctionless preaching makes everything hard, dry, acrid, dead.

This unction is not a memory or an era of the past only; it is a
present, realized, conscious fact. It belongs to the experience of the
man as well as to his preaching. It is that which transforms him into
the image of his divine Master, as well as that by which he declares the
truths of Christ with power. It is so much the power in the ministry as
to make all else seem feeble and vain without it, and by its presence to
atone for the absence of all other and feebler forces.

This unction is not an inalienable gift. It is a conditional gift, and
its presence is perpetuated and increased by the same process by which
it was at first secured; by unceasing prayer to God, by impassioned
desires after God, by estimating it, by seeking it with tireless ardour,
by deeming all else loss and failure without it.

How and whence comes this unction? Direct from God in answer to prayer.
Praying hearts only are the hearts filled with this holy oil; praying
lips only are anointed with this divine unction.

Prayer, much prayer, is the price of preaching unction; prayer, much
prayer, is the one, sole condition of keeping this unction. Without
unceasing prayer the unction never comes to the preacher. Without
perseverance in prayer, the unction, like the manna overkept, breeds
worms.



XVII

 _Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire
 nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or
 laymen; such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom
 of heaven on earth. God does nothing but in answer to
 prayer_.—JOHN WESLEY.


The apostles knew the necessity and worth of prayer to their ministry.
They knew that their high commission as apostles, instead of relieving
them from the necessity of prayer, committed them to it by a more urgent
need; so that they were exceedingly jealous else some other important
work should exhaust their time and prevent their praying as they ought;
so they appointed laymen to look after the delicate and engrossing
duties of ministering to the poor, that they (the apostles) might,
unhindered, "give themselves continually to prayer and to the ministry
of the word." Prayer is put first, and their relation to prayer is put
most strongly—"give themselves to it," making a business of it,
surrendering themselves to praying, putting fervour, urgency,
perseverance, and time in it.

How holy, apostolic men devoted themselves to this divine work of
prayer! "Night and day praying exceedingly," says Paul. "We will give
ourselves continually to prayer" is the consensus of apostolic
devotement. How these New Testament preachers laid themselves out in
prayer for God's people! How they put God in full force into their
Churches by their praying! These holy apostles did not vainly fancy that
they had met their high and solemn duties by delivering faithfully God's
Word, but their preaching was made to stick and tell by the ardour and
insistence of their praying. Apostolic praying was as taxing, toilsome,
and imperative as apostolic preaching. They prayed mightily day and
night to bring their people to the highest regions of faith and
holiness. They prayed mightier still to hold them to this high spiritual
altitude. The preacher who has never learned in the School of Christ the
high and divine art of intercession for his people will never learn the
art of preaching, though homiletics be poured into him by the ton, and
though he be the most gifted genius in sermon-making and sermon-delivery.

The prayers of apostolic, saintly leaders do much in making saints of
those who are not apostles. If the Church leaders in after years had
been as particular and fervent in praying for their people as the
apostles were, the sad, dark times of worldliness and apostasy had not
marred the history and eclipsed the glory and arrested the advance of
the Church. Apostolic praying makes apostolic saints and keeps apostolic
times of purity and power in the Church.

What loftiness of soul, what purity and elevation of motive, what
unselfishness, what self-sacrifice, what exhaustive toil, what ardour of
spirit, what divine tact are requisite to be an intercessor for men!

The preacher is to lay himself out in prayer for his people; not that
they might be saved, simply, but that they be mightily saved. The
apostles laid themselves out in prayer that their saints might be
perfect; not that they should have a little relish for the things of
God, but that they "might be filled with all the fulness of God." Paul
did not rely on his apostolic preaching to secure this end, but "for
this cause he bowed his knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ."
Paul's praying carried Paul's converts farther along the highway of
sainthood than Paul's preaching did. Epaphras did as much or more by
prayer for the Colossian saints than by his preaching. He laboured
fervently always in prayer for them that "they might stand perfect and
complete in all the Will of God."

Preachers are pre-eminently God's leaders. They are primarily
responsible for the condition of the Church. They shape its character,
give tone and direction to its life.

Much every way depends on these leaders. They shape the times and the
institutions. The Church is divine, the treasure it incases is heavenly,
but it bears the imprint of the human. The treasure is in earthen
vessels, and it smacks of the vessel. The Church of God makes, or is
made by, its leaders. Whether it makes them or is made by them, it will
be what its leaders are; spiritual if they are so, secular if they are,
conglomerate if its leaders are. Israel's kings gave character to
Israel's piety. A Church rarely revolts against or rises above the
religion of its leaders. Strongly spiritual leaders; men of holy might,
at the lead, are tokens of God's favour; disaster and weakness follow
the wake of feeble or worldly leaders. Israel had fallen low when God
gave children to be their princes and babes to rule over them. No happy
state is predicted by the prophets when children oppress God's Israel
and women rule over them. Times of spiritual leadership are times of
great spiritual prosperity to the Church.

Prayer is one of the eminent characteristics of strong spiritual
leadership. Men of mighty prayer are men of might and mould things.
Their power with God has the conquering tread.

How can a man preach who does not get his message fresh from God in the
closet? How can he preach without having his faith quickened, his vision
cleared, and his heart warmed by his closeting with God? Alas, for the
pulpit lips which are untouched by this closet flame. Dry and
unctionless they will ever be, and truths divine will never come with
power from such lips. As far as the real interests of religion are
concerned, a pulpit without a closet will always be a barren thing.

A preacher may preach in an official, entertaining, or learned way
without prayer, but between this kind of preaching and sowing God's
precious seed with holy hands and prayerful, weeping hearts there is an
immeasurable distance.

A prayerless ministry is the undertaker for all God's truth and for
God's Church. He may have the most costly casket and the most beautiful
flowers, but it is a funeral, notwithstanding the charmful array. A
prayerless Christian will never learn God's truth; a prayerless ministry
will never be able to teach God's truth. Ages of millennial glory have
been lost by a prayerless Church. The coming of our Lord has been
postponed indefinitely by a prayerless Church. Hell has enlarged herself
and filled her dire caves in the presence of the dead service of a
prayerless Church.

The best, the greatest offering is an offering of prayer. If the
preachers of the twentieth century will learn well the lesson of prayer,
and use fully the power of prayer, the millennium will come to its noon
ere the century closes. "Prayer without ceasing" is the trumpet call to
the preachers of the twentieth century. If the twentieth century will
get their texts, their thoughts, their words, their sermons in their
closets, the next century will find a new heaven and a new earth. The
old sin-stained and sin-eclipsed heaven and earth will pass away under
the power of a praying ministry.



XVIII

 _If some Christians that have been complaining of their ministers had
 said and acted less before men and had applied themselves with all
 their might to cry to God for their ministers—had, as it were, risen
 and stormed heaven with their humble, fervent, and incessant prayers
 for them—they would have been much more in the way of
 success._—JONATHAN EDWARDS.


Somehow the practice of praying in particular for the preacher has
fallen into disuse or become discounted. Occasionally have we heard the
practice arraigned as a disparagement of the ministry, being a public
declaration by those who do it of the inefficiency of the ministry. It
offends the pride of learning and self-sufficiency, perhaps, and these
ought to be offended and rebuked in a ministry that is so derelict as to
allow them to exist.

Prayer, to the preacher, is not simply the duty of his profession, a
privilege, but it is a necessity. Air is not more necessary to the lungs
than prayer is to the preacher. It is absolutely necessary for the
preacher to pray. It is an absolute necessity that the preacher be
prayed for. These two propositions are wedded into a union which ought
never to know any divorce: _the preacher must pray; the preacher must be
prayed for_. It will take all the praying he can do, and all the praying
he can get done, to meet the fearful responsibilities and gain the
largest, truest success in his great work. The true preacher, next to
the cultivation of the spirit and fact of prayer in himself, in their
intensest form, covets with a great covetousness the prayers of God's
people.

The holier a man is, the more does he estimate prayer; the clearer does
he see that God gives Himself to the praying ones, and that the measure
of God's revelation to the soul is the measure of the soul's longing,
importunate prayer for God. Salvation never finds its way to a
prayerless heart. The Holy Spirit never abides in a prayerless spirit.
Preaching never edifies a prayerless soul. Christ knows nothing of
prayerless Christians. The gospel cannot be extended by a prayerless
preacher. Gifts, talents, education, eloquence, God's call, cannot abate
the demand of prayer, but only intensify the necessity for the preacher
to pray and to be prayed for. The more the preacher's eyes are opened to
the nature, responsibility, and difficulties in his work, the more will
he see, and if he be a true preacher the more will he feel, the
necessity of prayer; not only the increasing demand to pray himself, but
to call on others to help him by their prayers.

Paul is an illustration of this. If any man could extend or advance the
gospel by dint of personal force, by brain power, by culture, by
personal grace, by God's apostolic commission, God's extraordinary call,
that man was Paul. That the preacher must be a man given to prayer, Paul
is an eminent example. That the true apostolic preacher must have the
prayers of other good people to give to his ministry its full quota of
success, Paul is a pre-eminent example. He asks, he covets, he pleads in
an impassioned way for the help of all God's saints. He knew that in the
spiritual realm, as elsewhere, in union there is strength; that the
concentration and aggregation of faith, desire, and prayer increased the
volume of spiritual force until it became overwhelming and irresistible
in its power. Units of prayer combined, like drops of water, make an
ocean which defies resistance. So Paul, with his clear and full
apprehension of spiritual dynamics, determined to make his ministry as
impressive, as eternal, as irresistible as the ocean, by gathering all
the scattered units of prayer and precipitating them on his ministry.
May not the solution of Paul's pre-eminence in labours and results, and
impress on the Church and the world, be found in this fact that he was
able to centre on himself and his ministry more of prayer than others?
To his brethren at Rome he wrote: "Now I beseech you, brethren, for the
Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and for the love of the Spirit, that ye strive
together with me in prayers to God for me." To the Ephesians he says:
"Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and
watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all
saints; and for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open
my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel." To the
Colossians he emphasizes: "Withal praying also for us, that God would
open unto us a door of utterance, to speak the mystery of Christ, for
which I am also in bonds: that I may make it manifest as I ought to
speak." To the Thessalonians he says sharply, strongly: "Brethren, pray
for us." Paul calls on the Corinthian Church to help him: "Ye also
helping together by prayer for us." This was to be part of their work.
They were to lay to the helping hand of prayer. He in an additional and
closing charge to the Thessalonian Church about the importance and
necessity of their prayers says: "Finally, brethren, pray for us, that
the Word of the Lord may have free course, and be glorified, even as it
is with you: and that we may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked
men." He impresses the Philippians that all his trials and opposition
can be made subservient to the spread of the gospel by the efficiency of
their prayers for him. Philemon was to prepare a lodging for him, for
through Philemon's prayer Paul was to be his guest.

Paul's attitude on this question illustrates his humility and his deep
insight into the spiritual forces which project the gospel. More than
this, it teaches a lesson for all times, that if Paul was so dependent
on the prayers of God's saints to give his ministry success, how much
greater the necessity that the prayers of God's saints be centred on the
ministry of to-day!

Paul did not feel that this urgent plea for prayer was to lower his
dignity, lessen his influence, or depreciate his piety. What if it did?
Let dignity go, let influence be destroyed, let his reputation be
marred—he must have their prayers. Called, commissioned, chief of the
Apostles as he was, all his equipment was imperfect without the prayers
of his people. He wrote letters everywhere, urging them to pray for him.
Do you pray for your preacher? Do you pray for him in secret? Public
prayers are of little worth unless they are founded on or followed up by
private praying. The praying ones are to the preacher as Aaron and Hur
were to Moses. They hold up his hands and decide the issue that is so
fiercely raging around them.

The plea and purpose of the apostles were to put the Church to praying.
They did not ignore the grace of cheerful giving. They were not ignorant
of the place which religious activity and work occupied in the spiritual
life; but not one or all of these, in apostolic estimate or urgency,
could at all compare in necessity and importance with prayer. The most
sacred and urgent pleas were used, the most fervid exhortations, the
most comprehensive and arousing words were uttered to enforce the
all-important obligation and necessity of prayer.

"Put the saints everywhere to praying" is the burden of the apostolic
effort and the keynote of apostolic success. Jesus Christ had striven to
do this in the days of His personal ministry. As He was moved by
infinite compassion at the ripened fields of earth perishing for lack of
labourers—and pausing in His own praying—He tries to awaken the stupid
sensibilities of His disciples to the duty of prayer as He charges them,
"Pray ye the Lord of the harvest that He will send forth labourers into
His harvest." "And He spake a parable unto them to this end, that men
ought always to pray and not to faint."



XIX

 _This perpetual hurry of business and company ruins me in soul if not
 in body. More solitude and earlier hours! I suspect I have been
 allotting habitually too little time to religious exercises, as private
 devotion and religious meditation, Scripture-reading, etc. Hence I am
 lean and cold and hard. I had better allot two hours or an hour and a
 half daily. I have been keeping too late hours, and hence have had but
 a hurried half hour in a morning to myself. Surely the experience of
 all good men confirms the proposition that without a due measure of
 private devotions the soul will grow lean. But all may be done through
 prayer—almighty prayer I am ready to say—and why not? For that it is
 almighty is only through the gracious ordination of the God of love and
 truth. O then, pray, pray, pray!_—WILLIAM WILBERFORCE.


Our devotions are not measured by the clock, but time is of their
essence. The ability to wait and stay and press belongs essentially to
our intercourse with God. Hurry, everywhere unseeming and damaging, is
so to an alarming extent in the great business of communion with God.
Short devotions are the bane of deep piety. Calmness, grasp, strength,
are never the companions of hurry. Short devotions deplete spiritual
vigour, arrest spiritual progress, sap spiritual foundations, blight the
root and bloom of spiritual life. They are the prolific source of
backsliding, the sure indication of a superficial piety; they deceive,
blight, rot the seed, and impoverish the soil.

It is true that Bible prayers in word and print are short, but the
praying men of the Bible were with God through many a sweet and holy
wrestling hour. They won by few words but long waiting. The prayers
Moses records may be short, but Moses prayed to God with fastings and
mighty cryings forty days and nights.

The statement of Elijah's praying may be condensed to a few brief
paragraphs but doubtless Elijah, who when "praying he prayed," spent
many hours of fiery struggle and lofty intercourse with God before he
could, with assured boldness, say to Ahab, "There shall not be dew nor
rain these years, but according to my word." The Bible record of Paul's
prayers is short, but Paul "prayed night and day exceedingly." The
"Lord's Prayer" is a divine epitome for infant lips, but the man Christ
Jesus prayed many an all-night ere His work was done; and His all-night
and long-sustained devotions gave to His work its finish and perfection,
and to His character the fulness and glory of its divinity.

Spiritual work is taxing work, and men are loath to do it. Praying, true
praying, costs an outlay of serious attention and of time, which flesh
and blood do not relish. Few persons are made of such strong fibre that
they will make a costly outlay when surface work will pass as well in
the market. We can habituate ourselves to our beggarly praying until it
looks well to us, at least it keeps up a decent form and quiets
conscience—the deadliest of opiates! We can curtail our praying, and not
realize the peril till the foundations are gone. Hurried devotions make
weak faith, feeble convictions, questionable piety. To be little with
God is to be little for God. To cut short the praying makes the whole
religious character short, scrimp, niggardly, and slovenly.

It takes good time for the full flow of God into the spirit. Short
devotions cut the pipe of God's full flow. It takes time in the secret
places to get the full revelation of God. Little time and hurry mar the
picture.

Henry Martyn laments that "want of private devotional reading and
shortness of prayer through incessant sermon-making had produced much
strangeness between God and his soul." He judged that he had dedicated
too much time to _public_ ministrations and too little to _private_
communion with God. He was much impressed with the need of setting apart
times for fasting and to devote times for solemn prayer. Resulting from
this he records: "Was assisted this morning to pray for two hours." Said
William Wilberforce the peer of kings: "I must secure more time for
private devotions. I have been living far too public for me. The
shortening of private devotions starves the soul; it grows lean and
faint. I have been keeping too late hours." Of a failure in Parliament
he says: "Let me record my grief and shame, and all, probably, from
private devotions having been contracted, and so God let me stumble."
More solitude and earlier hours were his remedy.

More time and early hours for prayer would act like magic to revive and
invigorate many a decayed spiritual life. More time and early hours for
prayer would be manifest in holy living. A holy life would not be so
rare or so difficult a thing if our devotions were not so short and
hurried. A Christly temper in its sweet and passionless fragrance would
not be so alien and hopeless a heritage if our closet stay were
lengthened and intensified. We live shabbily because we pray meanly.
Plenty of time to feast in our closets will bring marrow and fatness to
our lives. Our ability to stay with God in our closet measures our
ability to stay with God out of the closet. Hasty closet visits are
deceptive, defaulting. We are not only deluded by them, but we are
losers by them in many ways and in many rich legacies. Tarrying in the
closet instructs and wins. We are taught by it, and the greatest
victories are often the results of great waiting—waiting till words and
plans are exhausted, and silent and patient waiting gains the crown.
Jesus Christ asks with an affronted emphasis, "Shall not God avenge His
own elect which cry day and night unto Him?"

To pray is the greatest thing we can do: and to do it well there must be
calmness, time, and deliberation; otherwise it is degraded into the
smallest and meanest of things. True praying has the largest results for
good; and poor praying, the least. We cannot do too much of real
praying; we cannot do too little of the sham. We must learn anew the
worth of prayer, enter anew the school of prayer. There is nothing which
it takes more time to learn. And if we would learn the wondrous art we
must not give a fragment here and there—"A little talk with Jesus," as
the tiny saintlets sing—but we must demand and hold with iron grasp the
best hours of the day for God and prayer, or there will be no praying
worth the name.

This, however, is not a day of prayer. Few men there are who pray.
Prayer is defamed by preacher and priest. In these days of hurry and
bustle, of electricity and steam, men will not take time to pray.
Preachers there are who "say prayers" as a part of their programme, on
regular or state occasions; but who "stirs himself up to take hold upon
God?" Who prays as Jacob prayed—till he is crowned as a prevailing
princely intercessor? Who prays as Elijah prayed—till all the locked-up
forces of nature were unsealed and a famine-stricken land bloomed as the
garden of God? Who prayed as Jesus Christ prayed as out upon the
mountain he "continued all night in prayer to God?" The apostles "gave
themselves to prayer"—the most difficult thing to get men or even the
preachers to do. Laymen there are who will give their money—some of them
in rich abundance—but they will not "give themselves" to prayer, without
which their money is but a curse. There are plenty of preachers who will
preach and deliver great and eloquent addresses on the need of revival
and the spread of the kingdom of God, but not many there are who will do
that without which all preaching and organizing are worse than
vain—pray. It is out of date, almost a lost art, and the greatest
benefactor this age could have is the man who will bring the preachers
and the church back to prayer.



XX

 _I judge that my prayer is more than the devil himself; if it were
 otherwise, Luther would have fared differently long before this. Yet
 men will not see and acknowledge the great wonders or miracles God
 works in my behalf. If I should neglect prayer but a single day, I
 should lose a great deal of the fire of faith._—MARTIN LUTHER.


Only glimpses of the great importance of prayer could the apostles get
before Pentecost. But the Spirit coming and filling at Pentecost
elevated prayer to its vital and all commanding position in the gospel
of Christ. The call now of prayer to every saint is the Spirit's loudest
and most exigent call. Sainthood's piety is made, refined, perfected, by
prayer. The gospel moves with slow and timid pace when the saints are
not at their prayers early and late and long.

Where are the Christly leaders who can teach the modern saints how to
pray and put them at it? Do we know we are raising up a prayerless set
of saints? Where are the apostolic leaders who can put God's people to
praying? Let them come to the front and do the work, and it will be the
greatest work which can be done. An increase of educational facilities
and a great increase of money force will be the direst curse to religion
if they are not sanctified by more and better praying than we are doing.
More praying will not come as a matter of course. The campaign for the
twentieth or thirtieth century fund will not help our praying but hinder
if we are not careful. Nothing but a specific effort from a praying
leadership will avail. The chief ones must lead in the apostolic effort
to radicate the vital importance and _fact_ of prayer in the heart and
life of the Church. None but praying leaders can have praying followers.
Praying apostles will beget praying saints. A praying pulpit will beget
praying pews. We do greatly need somebody who can set the saints to this
business of praying. We are not a generation of praying saints.
Non-praying saints are a beggarly gang of saints who have neither the
ardour nor the beauty nor the power of saints. Who will restore this
breach? The greatest will he be of reformers and apostles, who can set
the Church to praying.

We put it as our most sober judgment that the great need of the Church
in this and all ages is men of such commanding faith, of such unsullied
holiness, of such marked spiritual vigour and consuming zeal, that their
prayers, faith, lives, and ministry will be of such a radical and
aggressive form as to work spiritual revolutions which will form eras in
individual and Church life.

We do not mean men who get up sensational stirs by novel devices, nor
those who attract by a pleasing entertainment; but men who can stir
things, and work revolutions by the preaching of God's Word and by the
power of the Holy Ghost, revolutions which change the whole current of
things.

Natural ability and educational advantages do not figure as factors in
this matter; but capacity for faith, the ability to pray, the power of
thorough consecration, the ability of self-littleness, an absolute
losing of one's self in God's glory and an ever-present and insatiable
yearning and seeking after all the fulness of God—men who can set the
Church ablaze for God; not in a noisy, showy way, but with an intense
and quiet heat that melts and moves everything for God.

God can work wonders if He can get a suitable man. Men can work wonders
if they can get God to lead them. The full endowment of the spirit that
turned the world upside down would be eminently useful in these latter
days. Men who can stir things mightily for God, whose spiritual
revolutions change the whole aspect of things, are the universal need of
the Church.

The Church has never been without these men; they adorn its history;
they are the standing miracles of the divinity of the Church; their
example and history are an unfailing inspiration and blessing. An
increase in their number and power should be our prayer.

That which has been done in spiritual matters can be done again, and be
better done. This was Christ's view. He said: "Verily, verily, I say
unto you, he that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also;
and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto My Father."
The past has not exhausted the possibilities nor the demands for doing
great things for God. The Church that is dependent on its past history
for its miracles of power and grace is a fallen Church.

God wants elect men—men out of whom self and the world have gone by a
severe crucifixion, by a bankruptcy which has so totally ruined self and
the world that there is neither hope nor desire of recovery; men who by
this insolvency and crucifixion have turned toward God perfect hearts.

Let us pray ardently that God's promise to prayer may be more than
realized.



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