rs
over every human being. And yet He does not help. And there they perish,
a million a month in China alone, and it is as if God does not move. If
He does so love and long to bless, there must be some inscrutable reason
for His holding back. What can it be? Scripture says, because of your
unbelief. It is the faithlessness and consequent unfaithfulness of God's
people. He has taken them up into partnership with Himself; He has
honoured them, and bound Himself, by making their prayers one of the
standard measures of the working of His power. Lack of intercession is
one of the chief causes of lack of blessing. Oh, that we would turn eye
and heart from everything else and fix them upon this God who hears
prayer, until the magnificence of His promises, and His power, and His
purpose of love overwhelmed us! How our whole life and heart would
become intercession.

_God seeks intercessors._--There is a third magnitude to which our eyes
must be opened: the wondrous privilege and power of the intercessors.
There is a false humility, which makes a great virtue of
self-depreciation, because it has never seen its utter nothingness. If
it knew that, it would never apologise for its feebleness, but glory in
its utter weakness, as the one condition of Christ's power resting on
it. It would judge of itself, its power and influence before God in
prayer, as little by what it sees or feels, as we judge of the size of
the sun or stars by what the eye can see. Faith sees man created in
God's image and likeness to be God's representative in this world and
have dominion over it. Faith sees man redeemed and lifted into union
with Christ, abiding in Him, identified with Him, and clothed with His
power in intercession. Faith sees the Holy Spirit dwelling and praying
in the heart, making, in our sighings, intercession according to God.
Faith sees the intercession of the saints to be part of the life of the
Holy Trinity--the believer as God's child asking of the Father, in the
Son, through the Spirit. Faith sees something of the Divine fitness and
beauty of this scheme of salvation through intercession, wakens the soul
to a consciousness of its wondrous destiny, and girds it with strength
for the blessed self-sacrifice it calls to.

_God seeks intercessors._--When He called His people out of Egypt, He
separated the priestly tribe, to draw nigh to Him, and stand before Him,
and bless the people in His name. From time to time He sought and found
a