to enter to those who are
hesitating on the threshold of the Holy of Holies.

And there is no danger of tiring God: we come ceaselessly, endlessly.
The cries of earth go up to Him, pitiful, ignorant, foolish cries; but
they find God ready to hear and answer, fortunately not according to our
ignorance but according to His great mercy. We think of the clouds of
prayer in all ages, from all nations, in all tongues, and the very
vastness of them gives us an index of the divine love.

And it is not simply for ourselves that we pray, nor do we pray by
ourselves; it is of God's love that in the work of prayer we are
associated with one another. There is nothing further from the divine
plan of life than our present individualism. Our temptation is to be
egotistic and self-centred; to want to approach God alone with our
private needs and wishes. We incline to travel the spiritual way by
ourselves; we want no company; we want no one between our souls and God.
But that precisely is not the divine method. We come to God through
Christ; we come in association with the members of the Body. Our
standing as Christians before Him is dependent upon our corporate
relation to one another in His Son.

Important issues are involved. We attain through this associated life of
the Christian the power of mutual intercession. We find that it is our
privilege to share our prayers with others, and to be interested in one
another's lives. We have common interests and we work them out in
common. Therefore when we try to put before us an ideal picture of the
power of prayer, it will not be the solitary individual offering his
personal supplications to the Father, but it will be the community of
the faithful assembled for the offering of the divine Sacrifice. It is
the praying Body that best satisfies our ideal of prayer, where we are
conscious of helping one another in the work of intercession. We
remember, too, when we think of prayer as prayer of the Body of Christ,
that it is not just the visible congregation that is participating in
it, but that all the Body share in the intercessions, wherever they may
individually be. Our thoughts go up from the little assembly in the
humble church and lose themselves in the splendour of the heavenly
intercession where we are associated with prophets and apostles and
martyrs, and with Mary the Mother of God.

There was a third gift that the Magi brought to Him Whom they hailed
King, a gift that is more perpl