_How God needs, how the world needs, how the Church needs the flow of the mighty river, more blessed than the Nile, deeper, broader and more overflowing than the Amazon’s mighty current! and yet what mere rills we are! We need, the age needs, the Church needs, memorials of God’s mighty power, which will silence the enemy and the avenger, dumbfound God’s foes, strengthen weak saints, and fill strong ones with triumphant raptures._ —EDWARD BOUNDS. The dispensation of the Holy Ghost was ushered in by prayer. Read these words from Acts 1:13—“And when they were come in, they went up into an upper room where abode both Peter and James and John and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James, the son of Alpheus, and Simon Zelotes, and Judas, the brother of James. These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren.” This was the attitude which the disciples assumed after Jesus had ascended to Heaven. That meeting for prayer ushered in the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, to which prophets had looked forward with entranced vision. And to prayer in a marked way has this dispensation, which holds in its keeping the fortune of the Gospel, been committed. Apostolic men knew well the worth of prayer and were jealous of the most sacred offices which infringed on their time and strength and hindered them from “giving themselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the Word.” They put prayer first. The Word depends on prayer that it “may have free course and be glorified.” Praying apostles make preaching apostles. Prayer gives edge, entrance and weight to the Word. Sermons conceived by prayer and saturated with prayer are weighty sermons. Sermons may be ponderous with thought, sparkle with the gems of genius and of taste, pleasing and popular, but without they have their birth and life in prayer, for God’s uses, they are trifles, dull and dead. The Lord of the harvest sends out labourers, full in number and perfect in kind, in answer to prayer. It needs no prophetic ken to declare that if the Church had used prayer force to its utmost the light of the gospel would have long since girdled the world. God’s Gospel has always waited more on prayer than on anything else for its successes. A praying Church is strong though poor in all besides. A prayerless Church is weak though rich in all besides. Praying hearts only will build God’s Kingdom. Praying hands only will put the crown on the Saviour’s head.