The eighth mention is in the tenth chapter of Luke.  He had organized a band of men, sending them out in two’s into the places he expected to visit.  They had returned with a joyful report of the power attending their work; and standing in their midst, His own heart overflowing with joy, He looked up and, as though the Father’s face was visible, spake out to Him the gladness of His heart.  He seemed to be always conscious of His Father’s presence, and the most natural thing was to speak to Him.  They were always within speaking distance of each other, and always on speaking terms.

The ninth mention is in the eleventh chapter of Luke, very similar to the sixth mention, “It came to pass as He was praying in a certain place that when He ceased one of His disciples said unto Him, ’Lord, teach us to pray.’” Without doubt these disciples were praying men.  He had already talked to them a great deal about prayer.  But as they noticed how large a place prayer had in His life, and some of the marvellous results, the fact came home to them with great force that there must be some fascination, some power, some secret in prayer, of which they were ignorant. This Man was a master in the fine art of prayer. They really did not know how to pray, they thought.  How their request must have delighted Him!  At last they were being aroused concerning the great secret of power.  May it be that this simple recital of His habits of prayer may move every one of us to get alone with Him and make the same earnest request.  For the first step in learning to pray is to pray,—­“Lord, teach me to pray.”  And who can teach like Him?

The tenth mention is found in John, chapter eleven, and is the second of the four instances of ejaculatory prayer.  A large company is gathered outside the village of Bethany, around a tomb in which four days before the body of a young man had been laid away.  There is Mary, still weeping, and Martha, always keenly alive to the proprieties, trying to be more composed, and their personal friends, and the villagers, and the company of acquaintances and others from Jerusalem.  At His word, after some hesitation, the stone at the mouth of the tomb is rolled aside.  And Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, “Father, I thank Thee that Thou heardest Me; and I knew that Thou hearest Me always; but because of the multitude that standeth around I said it that they may believe that Thou didst send Me!” Clearly before coming to the tomb He had been praying in secret about the raising of Lazarus, and what followed was in answer to His prayer.  How plain it becomes that all the marvellous power displayed in His brief earthly career came through prayer.  What inseparable intimacy between His life of activity at which the multitude then and ever since has marvelled, and His hidden closet-life of which only these passing glimpses are obtained.  Surely the greatest power entrusted to man is prayer-power.  But how many of us are untrue to the trust, while this strangely omnipotent power put into our hands lies so largely unused.