m of Grace that Jesus Christ cannot
give to a mere wish. There must be my own personal effort if I am to
secure that which I desire. That is the reason why so many prayers seem
to go unanswered. Think of the thousands of supplications that will go
up in churches and chapels to-day for spiritual blessings. How comes it
that such an enormous proportion of these prayers will never be answered
at all? Well, if a man stand at the butts and shoot his arrow at a
target, and does not care enough for its fate to stand there long enough
to see whether it hits the bull's eye, the probability is that it will
never reach its aim. And if men pray, and pray, and pray, in public, and
then come out of their churches and chapels and not only forget all
about their prayers but never expect an answer to them, and do nothing
in their lives in accordance therewith, is there any wonder that they
are not answered? Men repeat the Lord's Prayer every morning, and ask
God day by day 'lead us not into temptation,' and then go out into daily
life, and are willing to fling themselves into temptation, and go
through the very thick of the fire of it, if there is a ten pound note
on the other side of the flame. And men ask God that He will help them
to 'grow in grace' and Christian character, and seldom do a single thing
that they know will promote that growth. All such prayer is vain and
unresponded to. With prayer there must go effort.

And then, lastly, the third condition is continuity or persistence.
'Knock, and it shall be opened unto you,' 'Then there is such a thing as
a delay in these answers that you have been speaking about,' you say.
No! there is no delay, but there is such a thing as the beginning of a
long task; and therefore there is such a thing as the necessity for
persistent and continuous perseverance even in the offering of the
desires, which to express is to have satisfied; and in putting forth of
the efforts in which to seek is to find. ''Tis a lifelong task ere the
lump be leavened.' Eternal life is a gift, but the building of a
Christian character is the result of patient, continuous, well-directed
efforts to the appropriation and employment of the gift that we have
received. 'Forty-and-six years was this temple in building,' they said,
and it was not finished then. It will take more than forty-and-six years
to build up in my poor heart, full of rubbish and of evil, a temple to
the Holy Ghost.

I need not insist upon the virtue