u have not sown. And it is just this
same law which you recognise and accept in other matters that our Lord is
here declaring to us as the law of spiritual power.

Do we desire to cast any evil influence or any weakness out of our life?
Do we ask despairingly how it is that we have not been able to cast it
out? Our Lord's answer comes to us in these emphatic words--"This kind
can come forth by nothing, but by prayer."

In other words, if we really desire that our soul shall be cleansed and
strengthened, we must surrender it to Him in prayer and self-denial, in
spiritual exercises and communion, that He may cure it of its sin or its
weakness, and inspire us with new life.

Prayer and fasting are in this word of His the symbol of all special
exercises of the spirit, as it strives to get free from the burden of the
flesh and to come nearer to God; and without such exercises, He presses
it on us if we stand in need of such reminders, we cannot hope for any
harvest of spiritual strength.

And we can hardly have failed to notice how His own practice corresponds
with His warnings and injunctions.

Before He began His ministry we read of His forty days' fast in the
wilderness; and at every turn, in the course of it, we read again and
again incidentally of His constant withdrawals into privacy with God.

His short life on earth was a life of spiritual ministry. All the
common things of life were to Him so many illustrations of some spiritual
lesson of the Father's love and care, or of man's dependence on Him. In
every voice of the world there was the undertone of some spiritual
suggestion. So that we might say--Surely His days were one unbroken
course of spiritual work and communion, and He could need no special
seasons or exercises; but His example teaches us a different lesson.

As if to bring it home to us beyond all possibility of doubt or question,
that the most devoted, the most active, and most powerful spiritual
characters, will always be those whose communion with God in private
prayer and exercise is most constant and intense, He Himself was
continually withdrawing for such communion; and there are no more
suggestive passages in the Gospels for our guidance than those incidental
references which tell us, as if by chance, giving us passing glimpses
into the unrecorded portions of His life, how on one occasion He retired
into a mountain apart to pray, or how on another he spent the whole night
apart in praye