(3) Let me ask you to notice that this prayer is a _model as to Spirit_. After all, the power of a prayer depends not upon the words we use, but upon the spirit in which we offer it. “According to your faith it shall be unto you.” Our prayers may be beautiful in their language, correct in their theology, brief, simple, direct; and yet they may rise no higher than the ceiling of the room in which they are uttered. Yes! even this Pearl of Prayers, as uttered by some of us, may be nothing but a barren form. Before prayer becomes living, throbbing, vital, before it can take to itself wings, before it can reach the ear of God, we must pray in the spirit. And the spirit which alone gives prayer its efficacy and power, is the spirit of childlike confidence and trust. This Model Prayer is full of that spirit. Notice how it begins, “_Our Father_” That implies that we come to God as His children, believing He is readier to give good things to us than we are to give good things to our children. It is “after that manner”—in childlike faith in God’s love—that we are always to pray. The measure of our trust in God will be the measure of our power in prayer. “According to our faith it shall be unto us.” Christ’s prayers were prevailing prayers, because He had a perfect faith. He called God “Father,” and He honoured God’s Fatherhood by placing an absolute and utter trust in Him. We want the Christ spirit to make our prayers effectual. It is not the words that are wrong, it is not the order that is amiss, it is the faith that is lacking. If only Christ’s spirit of loving confidence in God were breathed into our prayers, how irresistible they would be. Dr. Stanford, in his little volume on the Lord’s Prayer, quotes those exquisite lines, in which George Macdonald applies the legend of how the boy Jesus once made some clay birds fly to the prayers men offer— My prayer-bird was cold—would not away, Although I set it on the edge of the nest, Then I bethought me of the story old, Love-fact, or loving fable, thou knowest best, How, when the children had made sparrows of clay, Thou mad’st them birds, with wings to flutter and fold; Take, Lord my prayer in Thy hand, and make it pray.