Chapter 7 starts at 2:12:16.
“And when ye pray, ye shall not be as the hypocrites: for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine inner chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret shall recompense thee. And in praying use not vain repetitions, as the Gentiles do; for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask Him.” Matthew 6:5-8
“Again I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of My Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am Jin the midst of them.” Matthew 18:19,20
The subjects already considered are all preliminary to and necessary for the present one. God has made prayer possible to us through Jesus. We can pray prevailingly only as we respond to the truths which create the possibility. The sphere of prayer includes the coming of the Kingdom of God and the provision of all the need of the saints. Thus all these constitute an integral part of the subject of the practice of prayer. Prayer is only possible to the revealed Father through the mediating Son by the inspiring Spirit. Prayer is only a prevailing power as, in the life, the child of God is loyal to His Kingship, satisfied with His provision, conformed to His likeness. Moreover, it can only be operative within the sphere revealed in the pattern prayer.
All this being granted, we now come to the more technical consideration of this subject. It is necessary both in order to brevity and clearness that we should follow a process of elimination. The teaching of Jesus is so full of instruction concerning prayer that we do not propose to attempt even a survey of the whole field, but to confine ourselves to the words dealing with the two main lines of responsibility in this matter, those namely, of the practice of prayer personally, and the practice of prayer collectively.
First, as to the former. “But thou, when thou pray est, enter into thine inner chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret shall recompense thee.” We are at once arrested by the “but” with which the passage opens. It makes us conscious of a background, of a contrast which flung the actual words into clearer relief. Immediately preceding Jesus had said, “Ye shall not be as the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men.” Now it is perfectly evident that our Lord did not mean to say it was wrong to stand and pray in the synagogue or at the corner of the street. That against which He warned His disciples was the praying which had as its deepest desire a wish to be seen of men. He charged them to beware of the prayer which obtrudes itself upon human notice. Mark His gentle satire in this respect, “Verily I say unto you, they have their reward.” That is to say, they pray to be seen of men, they are seen of men. What they desire, they obtain. This is the background. We are interested in the instructions to which these warnings gave rise. “When thou pray est, enter into thine inner chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret.” Thus Christ instructed His disciples that in the life of each one of them there must be a special place, a special time and a special method, whereby in quietness and loneliness, every third person being excluded, each one should pray.
Then as to the latter, “If two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything they shall ask, it shall be done for them of My Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.” As the first passage insisted upon loneliness, this provides for fellowship in prayer. It declares the conditions of the true prayer-meeting. The promise is indeed a spacious one. “If two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them.” It is a somewhat curious thing that this promise is so perpetually misquoted by the addition of the words, “concerning My Kingdom.” It may be said that this, of course, was what our Lord meant us to understand. I unhesitatingly reply that we have no right to imagine that He meant anything other than He said. To introduce these words is to put a limit upon prayer which He did not put. If it be objected that this is a dangerous doctrine, I reply that Christ clearly marked the limits of such agreement and such asking in the words, “For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.” The promise is not made to two or three persons who meet together, and ask simply upon the basis of their own desire. “Jesus in the midst” means Jesus enthroned, obeyed, consulted. Where He is enthroned, obeyed, consulted, the Spirit creates desire, and prayer being in harmony with the will of God, the answer is assured. We must neither put false limitations upon this word of the Master, nor must we imagine that there are no limitations. According to Him, the limit is not upon the things for which we may ask, but upon our condition and the Spirit in which we ask. Two or three of us may agree as to our desire for certain things, and may ask for them, and never receive them. The prayer-meeting must not be based upon desire, but upon relationship to Christ. If two or three of us are gathered together in His name, under the dominion of His life, inspired by His Spirit, and if in the hearts of those thus gathered there is created a common desire, then they may ask and be assured of the answer.
These then are the two words of Jesus about prayer which reveal the broad lines of its practice. Firstly that we enter into an inner chamber, shut the door, and pray alone; and secondly, that we gather together two or three in His name and pray. One man may pray alone, indeed he must do so shutting out every other person; but that does not exhaust the practice of prayer. There must be the prayer-meeting. It is not necessarily a large gathering. The Master names the smallest number that can constitute a meeting - two. There cannot be a meeting of one. Yet the larger number is not necessarily wrong. The indefiniteness of His phrase “two or three” includes the possibility of the larger gathering. That which creates the true prayer-meeting is the inspiration of saints in communion with each other, because baptized by the Spirit into living communion with Christ.
Now for the most practical of words concerning each of these methods. As to the first, I desire to insist upon the necessity for the formation of very definite habits. The words of the Master could not be more emphatic than they are as to the necessity for separation, seclusion, and secrecy. An inner chamber and a shut door certainly mean that there must be in the life of every man or woman or child a place for retirement, a time for seclusion, an exercise of this high and holy privilege in absolute loneliness, when husband or wife, father or mother, brother or sister, son or daughter, is excluded. In all our busy life nothing is of more importance than that we should have some place peculiarly consecrated to prayer. The soul needs a Bethel. It may not be a place retained exclusively for prayer, but it should be a place to which at set times we may go and know that we shall be free from intrusion. For every minister of the Gospel this Bethel ought to be his study. I know how constantly we think of the study as the workroom, and rightly so. Woe be to the preacher of the Word who is not a workman. But the study ought to be at times the place where we may look into the face of God alone and hold personal communion with Him. This may sound like a plea for the private oratory of the Roman Catholic, and so it is in all its deepest spiritual intention. For the material trappings of crucifix, picture, or candle I care nothing, but for the spiritual intention of lonely communion with God in some set place, I care increasingly. There is far more than seems in the place set apart. Those of us who preach the Word surely know what it is to feel the ease of preaching in the place with which one is perfectly familiar. Familiarity enables forgetfulness of surroundings. The “where” matters little. The fact that there is a place is of great importance. To object to the idea of locality is to imagine there was no meaning in the words of Jesus when He spoke of an “inner chamber” and a “shut door.” To the merchant, it may be his private office, locked at a certain time for loneliness with God. To the mother it may be the quiet of her own room from which for a little she is able to exclude all those who serve under her in the maintenance of home. It seems to me that if the watchers in the heavenly places observe the places of the sons of men amid earth’s conflict, those in which they are most interested are the secret places where the saints hold converse with God. Until we find some place of habitual loneliness made sacred, not by material accessories, but by spiritual access, we are not as strong as we might be, and we have not formed the mightiest habit in the life of prayer. Then it is of equal importance that there should be a special time for prayer. I am perfectly well aware of the answer that comes from thousands of toilers to-day. This is a busy age. Of that there can be no denial, but if the age is too busy to pray, so much the worse for the age; or rather if in the age we are too busy to pray, so much the worse for our business. As to the time of prayer there can be no little doubt that for those who are able the “morning watch” is the finest. Yet I would urge none to be slave of the habit of another. If a proper regard for physical conditions makes it necessary for some over-wrought daughter of the King to rest in the morning hour, let her remember that she is not under law, but under grace. Then let there be no escape from the importance of time by declaring the brevity of the day, and the multiplication of positive duties. In fellowship with God the terms long or short ought to be cancelled. Five minutes with Him in which the soul is touched by the forces of eternity will mean a day full of spiritual vigour. God can do much in five minutes of man’s time if no more can honestly be spared. He can do nothing in five minutes for the man who should give Him sixty, who but is slothful. Those who know the value of lonely fellowship with God, at the beginning of the day, know also; how hot and restless is the day from which that time of communion has been absent. Again I say, cultivate that method of prayer which is most helpful, whether it be that of speaking aloud in loneliness, or of communing in stillness of heart and silence, whether standing or kneeling or sitting. No special attitude is insisted upon as necessary in the Word of God. The matter of supreme importance is that we discover the method of prayer which helps us most actually to realize the presence of God and hold communion with Him. The place, the time, the method, are matters concerning which there must be individual choice and decision. The matter of supreme importance is the cultivation of the habit of prayer. I do not use the word habit carelessly. Habits need to be formed whether they are good or evil. With regard to prayer that which is at first perhaps somewhat trying and difficult, becomes so much a part of the life as to be not second nature, but first nature. In all these matters it is important to distinguish between the essentials and the accidentals.
It would be disastrous if any should imagine that these set times exhausted the practice of personal prayer. Our Lord declared that “Men ought always to pray, and not to faint,” and that is a very profound word. It is evident that His conception of life is that if men pray they will not faint, and conversely, if men do not pray then will they faint. This word indicates the fact that Jesus had a profound consciousness of the pressure and strain of life. He did not think it was a soothing softness through which men glide. To Him life was indeed simple, but also strenuous. He knew that men would be in danger of fainting underneath the burden and in the midst of the battle. He knew also a power which would prevent their fainting. “Men ought always to pray, and not to faint.” No man will pray always who neglects the formation of the habit of regular prayer. The disciple who regularly observes a place and time and method will gradually find the habit learned in the secret place is binding also through all the public life. A confirmed habit of regular prayer will create regularity and constancy amidst all irregularities of time and place and method. Prayer in the secret place will create a spirit which will obtain in all public places. Gradually thoughts will become prayers, thoughts of absent friends will take wings and move upwards. Fellowship with God as an activity will issue in fellowship with God as an attitude. When this is so, anywhere, and at any moment, and in any method the spirit will speak its need in the listening ear of God. Our fathers used to speak of and practice ejaculatory prayer. It would be a great gain to all of us if we could learn again the method and practice it. It is a great mistake to imagine that in the midst of London’s busy traffic one has to wait for the appointed place and hour and method. It is a great word in the “letter to the Hebrews” which declares that we “may find grace to help us in time of need.” I have always felt that I should like to discover some idiom of my own language which would gather the thought of the Greek phrase, and I am not sure but that it is perfectly done by saying that the message declares we may find grace to help us “in the nick of time.” The consciousness of this, however, can only be created as we are familiar with the secret place as a result of the set time and place and method.
So far we have dealt with only the practice of prayer in the individual life, with the inner chamber and the shut door, the special place, the special time and the special method, and with prayer flung out in sighs and sentences in the rush of every-day activity, in the abiding consciousness of God’s attention and God’s answer.
Turning to the habit of collective prayer, there is very much that might be said about the prayer-meeting. The prayer-meeting is a meeting for prayer. That is so obvious a statement as to appear unnecessary. Yet 1 do not hesitate to affirm that there is nothing the Church needs more at the present hour than to understand what a real prayer-meeting is. As we have already briefly said, the perfect ideal is set forth in the Master’s words, “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.” He was primarily declaring the ground upon which He had made His promise “If two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them.” I am perfectly aware that these sacred words of our Lord open before our vision vaster reaches, and have more spacious meanings, but at the present time we consider them only in the first application which our Lord made of them. The first necessity then for the prayer-meeting is that those constituting it should be gathered “in His name.” Two souls so gathered, each under His dominion - and the place is of no moment. The great word “where” is magnificent in its breadth; no longer in Jerusalem, no longer at the temple, no longer in a mountain set apart, no longer in a church or meeting-house or any other special place only, but “where,” in the home, in the field, upon the sea, on the mountain, in the great cathedral, in the mission-hall, they are “gathered in the Name.” We do not catch the thought if we say “two or three met together,” “assembled together,” no, they must be “gathered,” and the great and only “Gatherer” is the Lord Himself, acting to-day through the Holy Spirit. Then they must be gathered “in His name,” which does not merely mean that they must be called Christians, but they must be sharers of His nature, those who are living His life, under the impulse of His love, in the illumination of His light. When such souls are so gathered you have the prayer-meeting. A meeting for prayer is a meeting of two or three units, hundreds, thousands, gathered, as we have said, and who give themselves to prayer. I may be asked if I would discountenance singing and the exposition of scripture in prayer-meetings. Well, I should certainly have no singing in a prayer-meeting, save the singing of some of the great prayer hymns of the Church, in which she is rich. I would have no other reading of the Word of God save perhaps some passage indicating our responsibility in or re-stating the charter of prayer. In the true prayer-meeting there should be no “waiting.” By that I do not mean that it is necessary always for some one to be engaging in audible prayer, but rather that the cessation of the sounding of a human voice ought not to mean the cessation of prayer. During all the silent pauses, every individual should be in silent communion with God, bearing up quietly some petitions which perhaps have already been decided upon or named in the assembly. Yet on the other hand there should be no “waiting” in the sense of refusing to lead in audible prayer when the Spirit guides. Elder waits for younger, younger waits for elder; the Spirit waits for all, and is grieved and hindered. In the true prayer-meeting there should be pre-eminently the consciousness that the saints are gathered not only “in His name,” but because in His name, in His real presence. Where that is so there will be “waiting” only for direction by the Spirit. It may be objected that this kind of prayer-meeting would not be popular, yet surely it has not come to this that any Christian soul should imagine popularity to be the standard of success in the Church of God.
This habit of collective prayer should not be confined to meetings merely in connection with the Church, that is, on the Church premises. It may be cultivated in the home-life, and indeed everywhere. As an illustration, let me suggest that Christian women should turn their faculty for social entertainment in this direction. Why not have “At Homes” for prayer? At least, they would have the advantage of definiteness, and in that very minor sense would be infinitely superior to many of the unhallowed crushes which characterize so-called social life to-day. Why not issue invitations upon this basis, that your friends should meet in your home to spend an afternoon in prayer. If the so-called friends would not accept the invitation, then surely you, as a Christian, are better without such friends. It is the Church’s friendship with people who do not want to pray, which blights the Church and blights the world. The people in the ungodly suburb where your home is, may be, according to the canons of a worldly hour, pre-eminently respectable, but if they are not prepared to come to your home to talk with Christ, they are injuring you and you are injuring them by your continued friendship. Not only in the home life, but in all social intercourse, the saints should come together more for prayer. I go back in memory to the days when, as a lad at school in Cheltenham, I formed a friendship with one David Smith, a colporteur. His memory is fragrant still. On half-holidays I would accompany him to some of the villages lying among the Cotswold Hills. It was our custom, at his suggestion, to start half an hour earlier than was necessary to bring us in time for the meetings in order that on the way we might make a pause for prayer together. Some of the most hallowed memories of my heart to-day are of those meetings of two, one a young man loving his Lord, and the other a boy, opening his eyes towards the possibility of a life-work, pausing' at some stile amid the fields and agreeing together to ask, asking and obtaining answers. The glory of such meetings lies in the utter absence from them of constraint or compulsion of any kind other than that of the presiding Lord. In such a meeting one may pray as many times as the heart prompts. One may stop without elaborate finish, and commence again because in another’s prayer a new desire has been born in one’s own heart. I think we cannot tell how much it would mean to the strength of the Church if the saints of God cultivated the habit of fellowship in prayer in small groups.
There are three notes of prevailing prayer of which I want to speak briefly. First, definiteness, secondly, importunity, and thirdly, submission. There is nothing we need more in personal prayer than to know what we want, and ask for it. It is possible to waste the great opportunity of prayer by indefiniteness. We may generalize prayer until we vaporize it, and there is no virtue left in it. It is a question whether ministers can serve their churches in any better way than by the simple habit of praying individually for the flock of God committed to their care. During the two years of my ministry at Westminster I have passed from North to South and East to West of my own country, and have twice visited the States. I have gone nowhere during that period without discovering the influence resulting from the ministry of the man of God who built that place, and more than thirty years ago passed on into the light of the Father’s home. The question arises as to what in the life and work of Samuel Martin created the influence which so long abides. He was an eloquent preacher, truly, and a man of saintly character, but perhaps the greatest thing about him was the fact of his definite praying. It was his habit to go into that great building when the doors were shut, and to pass from pew to pew praying for the people who occupied them at the regular services of the church. The same truth applies to our work in the Sunday-school. There is no more sacred, holy, or beautiful work than that of the teacher, no work that needs clearer vision or more tender heart. Our teachers will find great help from the practice of definite prayer for their children. Let them make the register of the scholar’s names a prayer-book in the highest sense of that word. As every child in turn is born upon the heart, there will be created a new power for influencing those thus prayed for towards Christ Himself.
All this is equally true of the collective praying of the saints. Prayer-meetings have too often been killed by aimless, rudderless, anchorless wanderings of such as seem to have no haven. It would be a habit of great helpfulness if before prayer the Church decided what it was about to pray for. It is impossible to pray about everything in one prayer-meeting. One day in a Yorkshire prayer-meeting there came a stranger who did what many men are in the habit of doing - God forgive them - he made a prayer. When he had been talking twenty minutes, and no living man ought to pray in a prayer-meeting above five, and had been giving the Almighty information of which He had been in possession long before the man was born, at last he said, “And now, O Lord God, what more shall we say unto Thee?” An old man who knew how to pray audibly replied “Call Him ‘Feyther,’ mon, and ax for summat.” This principle of definiteness is what we supremely need in individual and collective praying. Jesus did not say, “If you will give God information for twenty minutes in elegant language you may derive some benefit therefrom.” He said, “Ask, and receive”; “seek, and find”; “knock, and it shall be opened.”
The next note of prevailing prayer is that of importunity. In the eleventh and eighteenth chapters of Luke are two parables which show this necessity. The one is a picture of a man who obtained bread by knocking and by continuing to knock. The other is a picture of a woman who got redress for her wrongs by worrying a judge. Now Jesus was not teaching that God has to be begged in order to obtain His favour, not that He needs to be worried in order to persuade Him to do right, but rather that it is necessary for our sakes that there should be importunity. The man who asks and forgets does not really feel his need, and therefore will not receive. The man who knocks and runs away will never receive the beneficence of the One who alone can open the door. The men who know the real secret of prayer know| the meaning also of importunity. Epaphras agonized in prayer. There must be definiteness, and then importunity.
But importunity must never degenerate into self-will. There must also be submission. Submission as to the form in which the answer shall come; submission as to the method of the answer; submission as to the time of the answer. It must not be forgotten that we cannot see the end from the beginning, cannot understand the ultimate meaning of our own petitions, but we are praying to One who does see the end from the beginning, and who is perfectly conscious of the issue of our petitions. It may be that the things which to us seem most necessary would only prove a hindrance if they were granted. The best answer to such prayer is ever the kindly love which refuses. Therefore there must be submission in all prevailing prayer.
Then as to the subjects of prayer. We are warranted in praying for anything which is within the sphere of the will of God. That statement is inclusive and exclusive. It includes everything which in itself is right, and which forms part of my life and service according to the Divine plan. It excludes everything which is wholly self-centred. There is no doubt that prayer in the Spirit will mean the cessation of a great many petitions. Many things after which we have most strenuously striven even in prayer, we shall be able to strive after no more if our life is responsive to all the facts which make prayer possible. Petitions will be fewer, but they will be more powerful. One illustration of exclusion may be valuable, and yet in giving it let me first say that I am speaking from my own experience only. There may be no application of this illustration to any other. We must all be perfectly persuaded in our own minds on such things. If we have faith we must have it to ourselves before God. But to return. I cannot pray as I once did about the weather. Who am I that I should ask that any given day in the calendar should be fine? I am always profoundly thankful that although our friends across the ocean are able to send us weather forecasts, they do not send us weather. God still holds the government in His own hand. The mother of a friend of mine, a Baptist minister, told me why she had ceased praying concerning this matter. For many years at family worship she had been in the habit of asking for a fine day for the Sunday-school outing. When her boy was about ten years of age he came to her on one such morning and said, “Mother, I don’t think you ought to ask God for a fine day. Perhaps it would be a great deal better for the farmers to have it wet, and why should it be fine just for our outing?” She replied that of course her petition was that if it should be God’s will it might be fine. The boy then said, “Why don’t you ask God to help you to choose one of His fine days?” To me that is the whole philosophy of praying. It is not an arrangement by which we obtain things which we personally desire. It is rather the provision through which we seek to be brought into conformity with the will of God, and to obtain only the light which enables us to walk therein. Not that it is wrong to ask definitely, but it is always wise to carefully weigh our petitions as to whether or not they really recognize His sovereignty and wisdom. Charles Kingsley refused on one occasion to use the Archbishop’s prayer for the cessation of rain. He recognized that the long downpour was sorely needed for sanitary conditions.
There are particular things about which we ought to pray, for which we are commanded to pray; for all the saints, for the Word of God, for the Christian ministry, for all souls.
Jesus prayed for all the saints in that great intercessory prayer. Paul prayed for these as the letters of the imprisonment testify. What a healing of our denominational differences would result, if instead of perpetually discussing those differences we gave ourselves to prayer for each other.
Then we should pray for the Word of God, that it “may run and be glorified.” Again how much more powerful such action would be than that of debating our differing interpretations of its meaning. Then for the ministry. If the Church would pray for the ministry instead of criticising it, there would be wonderful results. In this connection I should like to urge upon the Church that its special duty according to the teaching of the Lord is to pray that God will thrust out into His harvest His own labourers. I am sometimes asked to appeal to young men to enter the ministry because there is a need of them. My answer is that no man can choose to become a minister - he must be sent. Therefore we should pray as our Master taught us that the Lord Himself will send. In this connection also, it may be well to urge the importance of praying for those who have the sacred and awful charge of training men for the exercise of their ministry. Then moreover, we are to pray for the men who are exercising the holy calling. I once heard Dr. Berry give a charge to a young minister. In the course of that charge he said to the people, “You will get out of my young brother what you expect, and you will expect what you pray for.” Then he used this homely but forceful illustration. Said he, “We were giving soup away lately to our poor people, and had issued general instructions that the lads who came to fetch the soup should bring with them a vessel that should hold about two quarts. I was at the soup-kitchen one day, and saw a boy about ten years of age, ragged and dirty, but with eyes that flashed fire, going into the soup-kitchen carrying a vessel that would hold at least three gallons. We could not for shame put two quarts into that.” “Now,” said Dr. Berry, “when you come to hear your minister, do not bring a two-quart measure! “Oh, what it is to preach to men and women who have been praying for you.
Then we are charged to pray for all souls, the sorrowing, the sighing, the sad, the sinning. Moreover there is no small matter about which we have not the right to pray. Anna Shipton wrote a little book called “Tell Jesus”, being the memorials of Emily Goss. It is the story of a girl who told Jesus everything, from the trouble of a tangle in a skein of wool to the joys of the passing hours.
From this sacred service of prayer no saint of God is excluded; the youngest and the weakest can pray. There are some of us who are excluded from certain lines of service because of the pressure of life upon us, but no one of us is excluded from prayer. There are saints of God who for long, long years have been shut off from all the activities of the Church, and even from the worship of the sanctuary, but who, nevertheless, have continued to labour together in prayer with the whole fellowship of the saints. There comes to me the thought of one woman who, to my knowledge, since 1872 in this great babel of London, has been in perpetual pain, and yet in constant prayer. She is to-day a woman twisted and distorted by suffering, and yet exhaling the calm and strength of the secret of the Most High. In 1872 she was a bed-ridden girl in the North of London, praying that God would send revival to the Church of which she was a member, and yet into which even then she never came. She had read in the little paper called “Revival”, which subsequently became “The Christian”, the story of a work being done in Chicago among ragged children by a man called Moody. She had never seen Moody, but putting that little paper under her pillow, she began to pray, “O Lord, send this man to our Church.” She had no means of reaching him or communicating with him. He had already visited the country in 1867, and in 1872 he started again for a short trip with no intention of doing any work. Mr. Lessey, however, the pastor of the church of which this girl was a member, met him and asked him to preach for him. He consented, and after the evening service he asked those who would decide for Christ to rise, and hundreds did so. He was surprised, and imagined that his request had been misunderstood. He repeated it more clearly, and again the response was the same. Meetings were continued throughout the following ten days, and four hundred members were taken into the church. In telling me this story Moody said, “I wanted to know what this meant. I began making inquiries and never rested until I found a bed-ridden girl praying that God would bring me to that Church. He had heard her, and brought me over four thousand miles of land and sea in answer to her request.” This story is told in the life of D. L. Moody by his son: but now let me continue it. That girl was a member of my church when I was pastor at New Court. She is still a member, still suffering, still confined to her own room. When in 1901 I was leaving England for America I went to see her. She said to me, “I want you to reach that birthday book.” I did so and turning to February 5th, I saw in the handwriting I knew so well, “D. L, Moody, Psalm 91.” Then Marianne Adlard said to me, “He wrote that for me when he came to see me in 1872, and I prayed for him every day till he went home to God.” Continuing, she said, “Now, will you write your name on your birthday page, and let me pray for you until either you or I go home.” I shall never forget writing my name in that book. To me the room was full of the Presence. I have often thought of that hour in the rush of busy life, in the place of toil and strain, and even yet by God’s good grace I know that Marianne Adlard is praying for me, and it is for this reason that to her in sincere love and admiration I have dedicated this book. These are the labourers of force in the fields of God. It is the heroes and heroines who are out of sight, and who labour in prayer, who make it possible for those who are in sight to do their work and win. The force of it to such as are called upon to exercise the ministry can never be measured.
The personal word must again be forgiven. I never stand up in any assembly at home or abroad without knowing that three people nearer to me than any others will pray for me, my wife, my mother and my father. Oh, the power of it, and the humbling of it! It makes a man feel that he must be in line with such praying, and he is afraid. Yet it makes him strong for he knows that “more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.” Oh, for the multiplication of those who will devote themselves to this special labour of intercession.
With all that we have attempted to consider in our minds, we lift our faces to the face of our Lord as did the men who watched Him pray in the olden days, and say to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray.”