prayer is apt to be repetitious. A child keeps asking his mother for something in the same words; he keeps pushing his single request, until she decisively refuses or surrenders. We are to urge our plea in prayer in the same way. Jesus in the Garden prayed, "saying again the same words" (Matt. 26. 44). His prayer was repetitious, but not vainly so. It expressed the white-heat of intense desire.

There is much aimless prayer; prayer without premeditation; prayer that is from the teeth outward; prayer that consists in "eloquent and unctious phrases," which signify nothing to the one who utters them. These prayers do not bear the hall-mark of reality. They are words and nothing more. Augustine makes a distinction between much speaking and much praying. He says, "We may pray most when we say least, and we may pray least when we say most." The Gentiles thought they would be heard for the multiplication of words rather than for the multiplication of prayers. Their mistake was a common one. Luther remarks, "Few words and much meaning is Christian; many words and little meaning is heathenish." We smile at the Tibetan and his prayer-wheel, while praying ourselves in the same mechanical fashion. We have need to remember that it is not the length but the strength of prayers; not their size but their spiritual content; not their quantity but their quality, that renders them acceptable to God.

3. With a Forgiving Spirit.

"Whensoever ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have aught against anyone; that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses" (Mark 11. 25). "If ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses" (Matt. 6. 14, 15). A forgiving spirit is a prime condition of acceptable approach to God. It is one of the distinctive marks of a Christian. The man who does not possess it has not the spirit of Christ, and has no standing before the Father as his spiritual child. It is expected that one who has been forgiven of God will forgive his brother.

The sandal tree perfumes when riven

The ax that laid it low,

Let him who hopes to be forgiven,

Forgive and bless his foe.

A spirit of forgiveness is one of the first fruits of Christian experience. "What can Jesus Christ do for you now?" exclaimed a cruel taskmaster, who was inflicting severe and unmerited punishment upon a slave. "He can help me to forgive you,” was the reply. Whoever has not learned to forgive his brother man has not received his first lesson in the school of Christ; and when he prays the heavens above him will be as brass, and his prayers will come bounding back upon his own spirit, while he himself stands outside the circle within which divine mercy operates.

4. With Self-Denial.

"Worshiping with fastings and supplications night and day" (Luke 2. 37). "This kind can come out by nothing, save by prayer and fasting" (Mark 9. 29). The two words "and fasting," in the latter text, are omitted from some of the best manuscripts, but many ancient authorities contain them. They are probably authentic; and they are certainly in harmony with subsequent apostolic teaching. Prayer and fasting are often connected in the writings of the apostles; and, what is still more significant, they have been connected in practice throughout the Christian centuries. The great saints have prayed with fasting.

Jesus himself neither enjoins nor forbids fasting, but he often assumes its practice by his followers. He was no ascetic. "He came eating and drinking," yet he recognized fasting as appropriate to times of sorrow, and as profitable in securing certain spiritual ends in Christian experience. He did not look upon it as a thing meritorious in itself, but simply as a means of obtaining self-conquest. By detachment from the physical, closer attachment to the spiritual was to be won; by keeping the body under the spirit was to be kept on the top; by unloosing the hold upon earth-life the soul was to be able to rise on the wings of prayer to its native heaven, and become open to a new infilling of divine power.

5. With Watchfulness.

"Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation" (Mark 14. 38). "Watch ye at every season, making supplication, that ye may prevail to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man" (Luke 21. 36). "Take ye heed, watch and pray; for ye know not when the time is" (Mark 13. 33).

Prayer is no substitute for action. It is effective when it works itself out. The answer to it generally comes when man himself cooperates with God in bringing it to pass. We are not warranted in asking God to do anything for us that we can do ourselves; but we are warranted in asking him for help to do our own work efficiently. Nothing is accomplished without his aid, and nothing is accomplished without the use of means. "I turn my camel loose, and commit him to God," said one of his followers to Mohammed. "First tie up your camel and then commit him to God," was the reply of the prophet.

The conjunction of watchfulness and prayer in the texts quoted implies that the one who prays will shun the temptations from which he asks God to keep him; that he will have a sharp eye for any loophole of escape; and that while faithful to his appointed task, he will maintain a sleepless outlook for the return of “the Lord of the house." He will use prayer as a safeguard of the soul, preparing by it beforehand for the sifting of soul that

may come in the duties and temptations of the day. Never will he reach a position in which the need for prayer and watchfulness is outgrown. Madam Guyon professed the doctrine of complete sanctification, yet she admits that she found it necessary to watch and pray, and to guard against spiritual pride, inasmuch as her state was only one of "comparative immutability." The introduction of the word "comparative" saved her intellectual and spiritual sanity. There is no one, however firmly founded, who cannot be moved from his base; and because of that fact he dare not at any time cease to watch and pray.

6. With Importunity.

"And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine is come to me from a journey, and I have nothing to set before him; and he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee? I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him because he is a friend, yet because of his importunity he will arise and give him as many as he needeth" (Luke 11. 5-8). This dramatic parable, which Luke places at the close of the Model Prayer, has for its lesson the true grounds of urgency in prayer. It is a parable of contrast, and illustrates the difference between selfish compliance and benevolent respon