We must pray with faith, and with resignation to God's will, but we must also ask with perseverance. Our Lord gives us the warrant for this in the parables of the importunate friend (St. Luke xi), and of the unjust judge (St. Luke xviii). We are to "pray always, and not to faint." (St. Luke xviii. 1.) We are to: "praying always with all prayer and supplication." (Eph. vi. 18.) We are to "pray without ceasing." (1 Thess. v. 17.) We must not be content with asking once or twice, but we must keep asking again and again. Some blessing will come in answer to persevering prayer, though it may not always be the one we seek. There is one blessing, and that the greatest, which we may always ask in full confidence of receiving, and that is the gift of the Holy Spirit. Our Lord tells us that earthly parents are not so ready to give good gifts to their children, as His father and ours is to give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him. (St. Luke xi. 13.) And this very gift helps us to pray acceptably, for "the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities," interceding for us with "groanings which cannot be uttered." "And He that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because He maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God." (Rom. viii. 26, 27.) Ps. xxv. St. Luke xi. 1-14. _THIRD SATURDAY IN LENT._ _INTERCESSION._ WE are not to be selfish in our prayers. Our Lord teaches us this lesson in the very first words of the form of prayer which He Himself has given us: "When ye pray, say, Our Father." Of course, if God is "our" Father, He is "your" Father and "mine" as well. Nay, we must lay hold of this truth of God's individual care and love for His children, before we can pray as we ought. But our Lord would bring home to our minds that, as we are members of Christ, so we are members one of another. We are sons and daughters of the great King, and so brothers and sisters; and thence it follows that, as members of one family, we have duties to perform toward each other. It is the very definition of a member that it is part of an organism fitted to perform certain offices for the good of the whole. We see, in the human body, that the hand has one office, the eye another, and so on. So it is in the body of Christ, which is His Church—each member has his place and his duties. One of these duties is intercessory prayer.