Christ prayed as a child. The spirit of a child was found in Him. At the grave of Lazarus “Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, Father.” Again we hear Him begin His prayer after this fashion: “In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father.” So also on other occasions we find Him in praying addressing God as His Father, assuming the attitude of the child asking something of the Father. What confidence, simplicity and artlessness! What readiness, freeness and fullness of approach are all involved in the spirit of a child! What confiding trust, what assurance, what tender interest! What profound solicitudes, and tender sympathy on the Father’s part! What respect deepening into reverence! What loving obedience and grateful emotions glow in the child’s heart! What Divine fellowship and royal intimacy! What sacred and sweet emotions! All these meet in the hour of prayer when the child of God meets His Father in Heaven, and when the Father meets His child! We must live as children if we would ask as children. We must act as children if we would pray as children. The spirit of prayer is born of the child spirit. The profound reverence in this relation of paternity must forever exclude all lightness, frivolity and pertness, as well as all undue familiarity. Solemnity and gravity become the hour of prayer. It has been well said: “The worshipper who invokes God under the name of Father and realises the gracious and beneficent love of God, must at the same time remember and recognise God’s glorious majesty, which is neither annulled nor impaired, but rather supremely intensified through His fatherly love. An appeal to God as Father, if not associated with reverence and homage before the Divine Majesty, would betray a want of understanding of the character of God.” And, we might add, would show a lack of the attributes of a child. Patriarchs and prophets knew something of the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God to God’s family. They “saw it afar off, were persuaded of it, and embraced it,” but understood it not, in all its fullness, “God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.” “Behold he prayeth!” was God’s statement of wonderment and surprise to the timid Ananias in regard to Saul of Tarsus. “Behold he prayeth!” applied to Christ has in it far more of wonderment and mystery and surprise. He, the Maker of all worlds, the Lord of angels and of men, co-equal and co-eternal with the Everlasting God; the “brightness of the Father’s glory and the express image of his person”; “fresh from his Father’s glory and from his Father’s throne.”—“Behold he prayeth!” To find Him in lowly, dependent attitude of prayer, the suppliant of all suppliants, His richest legacy and His royal privilege to pray—this is the mystery of all mysteries, the wonder of all wonders.