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 perplexing as a gift to royalty than the other two. That gold and incense should be offered a King is clearly His royal right; but what has he to do with the bitterness of myrrh? But to this King myrrh is a peculiarly appropriate gift, for it is the symbol of complete self-abandonment. He who came to do not His own will but the will of Him that sent Him; Who laid aside the robes of His glory, issuing from the uncreated light that He might clothe Himself with the humility of the flesh, is properly honoured with the gift of myrrh.