eagerly blurts out, “Master, there’s a big crowd down there, all asking for you.”  But the Master’s quiet decisive tones reply, “Let us go into the next towns that I may preach there also; for to this end came I forth.”  Much easier to go back and deal again with the old crowd of yesterday; harder to meet the new crowds with their new skepticism, but there’s no doubt about what should be done.  Prayer wonderfully clears the vision; steadies the nerves; defines duty; stiffens the purpose; sweetens and strengthens the spirit.  The busier the day for Him the more surely must the morning appointment be kept,[43] and even an earlier start made, apparently.  The more virtue went forth from Him, the more certainly must He spend time, and even more time, alone with Him who is the source of power.

The third mention is in Luke, chapter five.  Not a great while after the scene just described, possibly while on the trip suggested by His answer to Peter, in some one of the numerous Galilean villages, moved with the compassion that ever burned His heart, He had healed a badly diseased leper, who, disregarding His express command, so widely published the fact of His remarkable healing that great crowds blocked Jesus’ way in the village and compelled Him to go out to the country district, where the crowds which the village could not hold now throng about Him.  Now note what the Master does.  The authorized version says, “He withdrew into the wilderness and prayed.”  A more nearly literal reading would be, “He was retiring in the deserts and praying”; suggesting not a single act, but rather a habit of action running through several days or even weeks.  That is, being compelled by the greatness of the crowds to go into the deserts or country, districts, and being constantly thronged there by the people, He had less opportunity to get alone, and yet more need, and so while He patiently continues His work among them He studiously seeks opportunity to retire at intervals from the crowds to pray.

How much His life was like ours.  Pressed by duties, by opportunities for service, by the great need around us, we are strongly tempted to give less time to the inner chamber, with door shut.  “Surely this work must be done,” we think, “though it does crowd and flurry our prayer time some.” “No,” the Master’s practice here says with intense emphasis.  Not work first, and prayer to bless it.  But the first place given to prayer and then the service growing out of such prayer will be charged with unmeasured power.  The greater the outer pressure on His closet-life, the more jealously He guarded against either a shortening of its time or a flurrying of its spirit.  The tighter the tension, the more time must there be for unhurried prayer.