ecause they do not know
their need, will he not answer the prayers that others, who do know,
make for them? Jesus at all events made a practice of
intercession--"I prayed for thee," he said to Peter (Luke
22:32)--and the writers of the New Testament feel that it is only
natural for Jesus, Risen, Ascended, and Glorified, to make
intercession for us still (Rom. 8:34; Heb. 7:25).

We have again to think out what God's Fatherhood implies and carries
with it for Jesus.

"The recurrence of the sweet and deep name, Father, unveils the
secret of his being. His heart is at rest in God."[23] Rest in God
is the very note of all his being, of all his teaching--the keynote
of all prayer in his thought. "Our Father, who art in heaven," our
prayers are to begin--and perhaps they are not to go on till we
realize what we are saying in that great form of speech. It is
certain that as these words grow for us into the full stature of
their meaning for Jesus, we shall understand in a more intimate way
what the whole Gospel is in reality.

The writer to the Hebrews has here an interesting suggestion for us.
Using the symbolism of the Hebrew religion and its tabernacle, he
compares Jesus to the High Priest, but Jesus, he says, does not
enter into the holiest alone. "Having therefore, brethren, boldness
to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living
way, which he hath consecrated for us ... let us draw near with a
true heart in full assurance of faith" (Heb. 10:19). In the previous
chapter he discards the symbol and "speaks things"--"Christ is not
entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures
of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence
of God for us" (Heb. 9:24). There he touches what has been the faith
of the Church throughout--that in Christ we reach the presence of
God. Without saying so much in so many words, Jesus implies this in
all his attitude to prayer. God is there, and God loves you, and
loves to have you speak with him. No one has ever believed this very
much outside the radius of Christ's person and influence. It is,
when we give the words full weight, an essentially Christian faith,
and it depends on our relation to Jesus Christ.

Jesus was quite explicit with his friends in telling them they did
not know what to ask, but he showed them himself what they should
ask. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness" (Matt.
6:33), he says, and tells us