ith, not only as a trust in God's goodness or power,
but as the definite assurance that we have received the very thing we
ask. And then, in view of the delay in the answer, He insisted on
perseverance and urgency. We must be followers of those "who through
faith and patience inherit the promises"--the faith that accepts the
promise, and knows it has what it has asked--the patience that obtains
the promise and inherits the blessing. We shall then learn to understand
why God, who promises to avenge His elect speedily, bears with them in
seeming delay. It is that their faith may be purified from all that is
of the flesh, and tested and strengthened to become that spiritual power
that can do all things--can even cast mountains into the heart of the
sea.

CHRIST AS OUR INTERCESSOR.

We have gazed on Christ in His prayers; we have listened to His teaching
as to how we must pray; to know fully what it is to pray in His Name, we
must know Him too in His heavenly intercession.

Just think what it means: that all His saving work wrought from heaven
is still carried on, just as on earth, in unceasing communication with,
and direct intercession to the Father, who worketh all in all, who is
All in All. Every act of grace in Christ has been preceded by, and owes
its power to, intercession. God has been honoured and acknowledged as
its Author. On the throne of God, Christ's highest fellowship with the
Father, and His partnership in His rule of the world, is in
intercession. Every blessing that comes down to us from above bears upon
it the stamp from God: through Christ's intercession. His intercession
is nothing but the fruit and the glory of His atonement. When He gave
Himself a sacrifice to God for men, He proved that His whole heart had
the one object: the glory of God, in the salvation of men. In His
intercession this great purpose is realised: He glorifies the Father by
asking and receiving all of Him; He saves men by bestowing what He has
obtained from the Father. Christ's intercession is the Father's glory,
His own glory, our glory.

And now, this Christ, the Intercessor, is our life; He is our Head, and
we are His body; His Spirit and life breathe in us. As in heaven so on
earth, intercession is God's chosen, God's only channel of blessing. Let
us learn from Christ what glory there is in it; what the way to exercise
this wondrous power; what the part it is to take in work for God.

_The glory of it._--By it, beyond any