nd honoured intercessors, for whose sake He spared or blessed His
people. When our Lord left the earth He said to the inner circle He had
gathered around Him--an inner circle of special devotion to His service,
to which access is still free to every disciple: "I chose you, and
appointed you, that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in My Name, He
may give it you." We have already noticed the six times repeated three
wonderful words--_Whatsoever_--_In My Name_--_It shall be done_. In them
Christ placed the powers of the heavenly world at their disposal--not
for their own selfish use, but in the interests of His kingdom. How
wondrously they used it we know. And since that time, down through the
ages, these men have had their successors, men who have proved how
surely God works in answer to prayer. And we may praise God that, in our
days too, there is an ever-increasing number who begin to see and prove
that in church and mission, in large societies and little circles and
individual effort, intercession is the chief thing, the power that moves
God and opens heaven. They are learning, and long to learn better, and
that all may learn, that in all work for souls intercession must take
the first place, and that those who in it have received from heaven, in
the power of the Holy Ghost, what they are to communicate to others,
will be best able to do the Lord's work.

_God seeks intercessors._--Though God had His appointed servants in
Israel, watchmen set by Himself to cry to Him day and night and give Him
no rest, He often had to wonder and complain that there was no
intercessor, none to stir himself up to take hold of His strength. And
He still waits and wonders in our day, that there are not more
intercessors, that all His children do not give themselves to this
highest and holiest work, that many of them who do so, do not engage in
it more intensely and perseveringly. He wonders to find ministers of His
gospel complaining that their duties do not allow them to find time for
this, which He counts their first, their highest, their most delightful,
their alone effective work. He wonders to find His sons and daughters,
who have forsaken home and friends for His sake and the gospel's, come
so short in what He meant to be their abiding strength--receiving day by
day all they needed to impart to the dark heathen. He wonders to find
multitudes of His children who have hardly any conception of what
intercession is. He wonders to find