"Yes," you say, "He is good and kind; but He makes us wait." It is so; and why? We are feeble in our desires, and changeful in our purposes. We soon give up. We want faith, patience, perseverance. The uniformly immediate fulfilment of our petitions would leave no room for the cultivation of these quiet, unobtrusive virtues of the Divine life within us. God makes us wait, that we may become importunate, and that importunity may nourish the virtues which are as yet too feeble. Besides, delay gives purity to our motives, and intensity to our desires. A blessing which is easily won is likely to be unappreciated. God would not have us treat His gold as though it were stones. Delay is not refusal; it is discipline. Moreover why speak we of delay at all? What we so designate is not delay from the Divine point of view. He never postpones any asked-for good for one moment beyond the fit time for bestowing it. God's help is always sure, His methods seldom guessed; Delay will make our pleasure pure, Surprise will give it zest. His wisdom is sublime, His heart profoundly kind; God never is before His time, And never is behind. VII. What, then, is the character of the prayer which avails? That some prayers are "hindered"--so hindered as to be unsuccessful--we know full well. This may be accounted for partly by mistaken notions about the Scripture theory of prayer. For example, Jesus says, "What things ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them." The teaching of these words is that the inspiration to true prayer is God's pledge of the blessings sought, and that we must be prepared to take it as such. The prayer of a man who has not full faith in prayer falls short of its mark. Hindrance may also arise from mistaken notions as to the primary use of prayer. Prayer is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. It is true that the holier we become the more shall we find ourselves accustomed to an atmosphere of prayerfulness as the normal condition of the soul. But we shall not pray aright, if we pray under the impression that we are holy because we pray. We must rather pray in order to be holy. The hindrance may also arise from the absence of a supreme anxiety and of a constant effort to honour God in all our relations. Peter speaks of obedience to the duties which spring from the conjugal relation as being necessary to prevent the "hindrance"--the ineffectualness--of family prayer. This is but a special application of a great general principle--namely, the connection between holy conduct in society and the efficiency of our social devotional exercises. These two act and re-act upon each other. To secure the true, full benefit of prayer, we must strive to live holily in all the society with which we mingle. This point touches upon the value of intercessory prayer. Suppose that there is a want of correspondence between the interest in the welfare