forces, and with man and his history, you must count on personality and the will as the constant agents in this world of man, you can apprehend that the exercise of the will in communion with God, and its activity in prayer, may be one of the mighty forces making the world, controlling its history, and deciding its destiny.

We are, therefore, much better placed for praying than our fathers were. We can see the meaning of it. We can understand that we are engaged in real work, and that in teaching prayer we are teaching the use of the very weapon by which all things are made possible for the Kingdom of God.

But we are not confined to theoretical arguments in defense of intercession. There is fact upon fact, experience upon experience, showing to us, if we care to study the question, that no sane man can deny the positive effect of intercession. If there were time, I should like to give you many illustrations, but I must try to put into these few minutes enough suggestions of the kind of illustrations that should be collected to induce you to make this question a life-long study.

Let me give you a personal experience. Ten years ago I wrote a little book called "The Open Secret," a manual of devotion, and I left in it fly-leaves at the end of each day's prayer, to fill in with the names of those for whom I wish to pray, or the objectspublic or missionary objects-I wished to remember constantly before God. Ten years have gone. I take up that little book. I never read a word of the printed matter; the time for that has passed away, but those written words are the most marvelous record and the most conclusive demonstration that God answers prayer. Name after name upon those pages, for whom I pleaded, that they might be brought to God, I have had to tick off with the word "answered" written after them. Many things that seemed almost impossible to come to pass, but that had been brought to God week after week, I had to mark as answered. No one could shake me in the conviction that that daily prayer brought before God, remembering before Him the persons whom I desired to help or to bless, or those matters I desired to further, produced the answer; for the cause and the effect are there. I recommend you all to begin, if you have not done it, with a prayer-list, and to intercede with those names before you. In ten years you will have a conviction that no power on earth can shake, that the real thing in life is communion with God, and that the one way of doing anything is to ask Him to do it, and to leave yourself in His hands.

Let me give another illustration. In this hall, in this student movement, the name among human beings that most constantly occurs is the name of Dwight L. Moody, for he was the first president of a Convention of this kind in America. What do I not owe to Moody, for his great work in London was the first experience

I had of the mighty work and power of God in the conversion of souls?

Mr. Moody told in Glasgow the story of his progression until he became the apostle of the Anglo-Saxon world. While he was a pastor in Chicago, he was successful in an unusual degree. There were two godly women in that congregation who used to bow their heads and close their eyes, and pray whenever he was preaching, and he asked them once: "What are you praying for?"

"We are praying for you, Mr. Moody," they replied.

"Why don't you pray for the people?" he inquired, for he thought he was getting on pretty well, and that the work was prospering as far as he was concerned; but they replied: "You need it most."

He was a little annoyed, but let them continue to do it; he even asked them into the vestry to pray for him, and he told us that when they were praying for him there one day his whole heart seemed to break down; he found out the secret of his weakness, and saw that he needed their prayers more than any one. Shortly after that, he had that experience in prayer himself in which he said he had to ask God to hold his hand; he could stand no more; he seemed to have seen the glory of the Lord. From that time began to appear the Moody that every one knows, the Moody who first in New York and then in London shook the world, the man for whom those two godly women had interceded.

Which of us does not know the effect of intercession? If I speak to you to-day with any power, it is not because I have it, but because in London a little group of my people have calculated the time when I should be speaking to you, and are on their knees pleading that you will listen to the message that God chooses to send through me. It is intercession that accomplishes the evangelization of the world and brings the Kingdom of God.

Just one other illustration, which can be multiplied a thousandfold from the mission field. In 1836-'37, two missionaries, the Murrays, were in Tutuela, in the South Seas. They had worked with some success; several little churches had been established in different parts of the island, and all was favorable and promising; but suddenly, on a certain night, throughout the island in each place where there was a Church, an extraordinary spiritual movement began; the people came in asking for baptism; in the assemblies they arose confessing their sins; there was a great cry for God in these Churches. The people were gathered into the Church, and the work lasted-and is lasting still. These two missionaries were almost afraid; at first they thought the excitement was the result of some unwholesome disturbance. They could not account for it at all. But at last they saw that the power of God was manifesting itself, and they gathered in the fruit. Many months after this the news came from the old country that on that very day, in Jedburgh, Scot

land, the town from which these two had come, a great spiritual movement had developed; the people came together and prayed for Tutuela and the missionaries there at that very time. The prayer that ascended in Jedburgh for the coming of the Kingdom of God descended on Tutuela at the other side of the world. There could be no doubt that the intercession had prevailed.

THE PREPARATION DEMANDED FOR THE MODERN MISSIONARY CAREER

The Necessary Intellectual Equipment for Missionary Work Social Study and Social Service Indispensable in the Preparation of the Modern Missionary

The Springs of Spiritual Life

Soul-Winning in Student Days Essential in Preparing for a Fruitful Missionary Career