I believe there are very few persons, indeed, who realize at all the power which is attributed to intercessory prayer in the Bible and in Christianity. The Apostles frequently exhort the Christians to whom they are writing to pray for them. They enjoined it upon them as a duty to pray for one another. What does this mean? Had not St. Paul and St. Peter influence enough with Heaven to carry their wants directly to the throne of grace? Was not the way of access to God open and easy for every one? Did God require to be reminded of the woes and wants of any child of man, by the sympathizing cries of his fellow-creatures? Was not God's own heart as large as theirs? Could any thing He had made escape His knowledge, or any sorrow fail to awaken His compassion? Or, if it did, was the intercession of Christ insufficient that any other had to be called in to supplicate? No, certainly. None of these suppositions are true. God's goodness and knowledge are infinite. He needs not to be told what is in man. He loves the work of His hands. The meanest and the poorest are in the light of His Providence. Christ's merits are infinite and universal. But after all, there stands the fact. Intercessory prayer is an ordinance of God. It is a duty to pray for others, and it is useful to have others pray for us. You may call it a mystery if you like. To me, it does not seem so very wonderful. No man lives to himself. We are not the only Christians. Many others walk alongside of us on the road to Heaven. Many are ahead of us. Many have already reached their term. Shall there be no sympathy between us? Is that principle so deeply seated in our nature to have no play in Christianity? Are we to have no interest, no feeling for each other? Or, is that sympathy to be a barren sentiment, and to have no results? God, in religion, makes use of and commands this kindness and sympathy. He makes use of it to bind all men together in a bond of love. In order to [do] this, He makes it a law that we shall pray for one another, and suspends His gifts upon its execution. {393} It is, then, to meet that nature that He has framed--it is to exalt that nature craving for sympathy--it is to give rein to charity--it is to make us always sensible and mindful of that great human family to which we belong--it is for these reasons, I conceive, that God has instituted the ordinance of intercessory prayer. But, explain it as you will, the fact cannot be denied. It is an appointment of God, and an appointment of great efficacy. It plays a large part in the history of the Bible. Elias was a man subject to like passions with us, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain, and it rained not for three years and six months; and he prayed again, and the heavens gave rain. Abraham prayed for Abimelech, and God healed him. When Moses prayed for the Israelites suffering under the fire with which God had visited them for their sins, the fire was quenched.