lesson of the Father's love and care, or of man's dependence on Him. In
every voice of the world there was the undertone of some spiritual
suggestion. So that we might say--Surely His days were one unbroken
course of spiritual work and communion, and He could need no special
seasons or exercises; but His example teaches us a different lesson.

As if to bring it home to us beyond all possibility of doubt or question,
that the most devoted, the most active, and most powerful spiritual
characters, will always be those whose communion with God in private
prayer and exercise is most constant and intense, He Himself was
continually withdrawing for such communion; and there are no more
suggestive passages in the Gospels for our guidance than those incidental
references which tell us, as if by chance, giving us passing glimpses
into the unrecorded portions of His life, how on one occasion He retired
into a mountain apart to pray, or how on another he spent the whole night
apart in prayer, or how he was in a desert place apart in prayer.

These withdrawals of Jesus into the solitude of the desert or the
mountain, these hours in which He was alone with the Father, are but
another name for those exercises of prayer, fasting, meditation,
communion with God, without which, as He tells His followers in the text
I have read to you, it is not possible to eradicate from the soul those
influences of sin which destroy its harmony and undermine its strength.

These withdrawals were His times of spiritual refreshment; and by His
practice He declares to us His need of them. And if in His case they
were necessary, much more are they necessary for you and me, entangled as
we are amidst all the varied influences of our common life, and with
natures prone to sin.