August 22

"Now these are Thy servants and Thy people, whom Thou hast redeemed by Thy great power and by Thy strong hand."—Nehemiah 1:10.

I OUGHT to be public-spirited in my prayers.

There is my native land—this "precious stone set in the silver sea." It should be as dear to me as Jerusalem was to Nehemiah. In front of me should hang the vision which filled the eyes and the hearts of the English Puritans and the Scottish Covenanters and the Pilgrim Fathers on the western side of the sea: the vision of a consecrated realm ruled by the Lord Jesus Christ, and loyal to Him. To translate the vision into reality, I ought to plead and toil.

There is the Church of Christ. She is too like that old Jerusalem, her beauty marred, her power exchanged for feebleness, the diadem fallen from her brow. She needs regenerating, reviving, rebuilding. Would that she were clear as the sun, and fair as the moon, and terrible as an army with banners! Would that a tide of Pentecostal life surged in her and flowed out from her! For this let me entreat my God with strong cryings and tears.

There is the world which stretches afar. Where there is no knowledge of salvation and heaven, the people perish; East and West, gross darkness still covers many a fair and fruitful land. If I had prayed more, perhaps doors which are yet closed would have been opened ere now; perhaps into the wide and white harvest-field the Lord of the harvest would have thrust more labourers. Others depend for their inheritance of blessing on my intercession with the Father.

Let me have a larger heart when I am before the throne.