Intercessor

“ God seeks intercessors.—He sends His servants out to call them. Let ministers make this a part of their duty. Let them make their church a training school of intercession. Give the people definite objects for prayer. Encourage them to take a definite time to it, if it were only ten minutes every day. Help them to understand the boldness they may use with God. Teach them to expect and look out for answers. Show them what it is first to pray and get an answer in secret, and then carry the answer and impart the blessing. ”

“ The same speciality of purpose and limitation of subject is plainly implied in the appointment of a Mediator and Advocate; for although the establishment of this happy medium of approach authorizes and encourages even a boldness of access to the throne of the heavenly grace, it not less evidently imposes a restriction or peculiarity upon the intercourse between God and man. As the Intercessor exercises his office to obtain the bestowment of the benefits secured to mankind by his vicarious sufferings, the suppliant must surely have those benefits especially in view. ”

“ Their charms, whatever fault the fair commit, A thousand intercessors bring for it.
So she went up, and he after her; whilst he looked at her back and saw her buttocks smiting against each other, like the billows in the troubled sea; and he recited the following verses:
In her face an advocate harbours, who blots out her every fault From the hearts of mankind, for he is mighty to intercede. ”

“ It would follow, then, that intercessory prayer is not a work of extraordinary merit but a necessary element of devotion. It is the simple recognition in worship of the fundamental law of human life that no man lives or dies alone. But intercession rises to sublime heights when it claims the privilege and the power for each child of God to gather up in his arms the whole family to which he belongs, and carry it with its multifold needs and its glorious possibilities into the presence of the common Father for blessing and protection. ”

“ The second truth which I have sought to enforce is that we have far too little conception of the place that intercession, as distinguished from prayer for ourselves, ought to have in the Church and the Christian life. In intercession our King upon the throne finds His highest glory; in it we shall find our highest glory too. Through it He continues His saving work, and can do nothing without it; through it alone we can do our work, and nothing avails without it. In it He ever receives from the Father the Holy Spirit and all spiritual blessings to impart ”

“ The power of intercession, the intercession itself, and its invocation are an effect of the grace of Christ; therefore He remains our only mediator. God remains Our Lord and Father, although men share in His lordship and paternity; for all power and authority comes from God, who is pleased to operate in His creatures through other creatures. Hence, only a dependent mediatorship can be ascribed to the saints. Whoever admits that the living can pray for each other can not denounce the intercession of the saints as an usurpation of the mediatorship of Christ. ”

“ She had the most confident persuasion that she should be cured by his intercession. Her confessor, as he told me, set himself against it as much as he could—he had given over her case, and was going to administer the last sacraments to her on the next day. At her repeated request it was referred to the Supérieur Général, and he gave his consent that she should be carried on a couch to the church between four and five in the morning. The Supérieur said to himself, as he told us, the case is desperate; if she dies on the way it will be no worse than it is now. ”

“ They have a special claim on our intercession. Let it be a settled matter between God and you that you are to labour in prayer on its behalf. Pray for the minister and all leaders or workers in it. Pray for the believers according to their needs. Pray for conversions. Pray for the power of the Spirit to manifest itself. Band yourself with others to join in secret in definite petitions. Let intercession be a definite work, carried on as systematically as preaching or Sunday school. And pray, expecting an answer.
HOW TO PRAY.—
“Watchmen, that shall never hold their peace day nor night.”—Isa. ”

“ We desire the gift of intercession, grace and power to pray aright. Our hearts must be drawn away from other desires: we must give ourselves wholly to this one. We must be willing to live wholly in intercession for the kingdom. By fixing our eye on the blessedness and the need of this grace, by thinking of the certainty that God will give it us, by giving ourselves up to it, for the sake of the perishing world, desire may be strengthened, and the first step taken towards the possession of the coveted blessing. ”

“ It must surely be that the ministry of intercession has never been put before our students in Theological Halls and Missionary Training Homes as the most important part of their life-work. We have thought of our work in preaching or visiting as our real duty, and of prayer as a subordinate means to do this work successfully. Would not the whole position be changed if we regarded the ministry of intercession as the chief thing—getting the blessing and power of God for the souls entrusted to us? ”

“ But the intercession that we are now to speak of is not an intercession against but an intercession for a people: "He ever liveth to make intercession for them." The highpriests were ordained for, and not to be against the people: "Every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men, in things pertaining to God to make reconciliation for the sins of the people;" or that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sin. ”

“ If a minister were to invite some of his neighbouring brethren to join for some special requests along with the printed subjects for supplication, or a number of the more earnest members of his congregation to unite in prayer for revival, some might be trained to take their place in the great work of intercession, who now stand idle because no man hath hired them. ”

“ There we find the two offices of redemption and mediation joined together in Christ. "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous, and He is the propitiation for our sins." [1 John ii. 1, 2. Heb. ix. 12. vii. 25.] In the Epistle to the Hebrews, the same Saviour who is declared "by his own blood to have obtained eternal redemption," is announced also as the Mediator of Intercession. "Wherefore he is able to save them to the uttermost who come unto God through him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them." ”

“ It will be felt difficult by many to pray for such large spheres as are sometimes mentioned. Let it be understood that in each case we may make special intercession for our own circle of interest coming under that heading. ”

“ No person could bring any proof against him [182] of being other than he appeared, and in the eyes of the law he was as much Speid of Whanland as the man he had succeeded. He admired him all the more when he remembered that it was not an overwhelming affection for himself which had led him to take the step, but pure, abstract justice to a human being, who, through no fault of his own, had come into the world at a disadvantage. Nevertheless, whatever his legal position, he was an interloper, a pretender. ”

“ The {234} redemption wrought by Christ, and the intercession still made in our behalf by Christ, are both equally declared to us by the most sure warrant of Holy Scripture; of any other intercession by saints in glory, by angels, or Virgin, to be sought by our suppliant invocations to them, the covenant of God speaks not. ”

“ The inquisitor would, perhaps, make me this reply: “There is a very wide difference; here the salvation of your soul is concerned; and it is entirely for your good that the directory of the inquisition ordains that you shall be seized, upon the deposition of a single person, though of the most infamous character; that you shall have no person to plead for you, nor even be acquainted with the name of your accuser; that the inquisitor shall promise you favor, and afterwards condemn you ”

“ You are in Intermere."
"And where is Intermere?"
[18]
"It lies at your feet and expands on every hand about you. Let that suffice.
"No, this is not the Heaven to which your mother taught you to aspire. It is a part of your own planet, inhabited by beings sprung from the same parent stock as yourself, but differing from all other nations and peoples; a people who are many steps nearer to the higher and better life, and is, by comparison, the Paradise or Eden that masks the gateway of the true Heaven, in a sphere beyond in the great Universe." ”

“ And yet he is one of those for the benefit of whose intercession the Church of Rome teaches her members to pray to God, and from whose merits they are taught to hope for succour.
On the 19th of March the following Collect is offered to the Saviour of the world:—
"We beseech thee, O Lord, that we may be succoured by the merits of the husband of thy most holy mother, {253} so that what we cannot obtain by our own power, may be granted to us by his intercession. Who livest," &c. ”

“ Hast thou not signed an interdict, that every man that shall make petition unto any god or man within thirty days, save unto thee, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions? The king answered and said, The thing is true, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not.
13 Then answered they and said before the king, That Daniel, who is of the children of the captivity of Judah, regardeth not thee, O king, nor the interdict that thou hast signed, but maketh his petition three times a day. ”

“ In every province of Spain there ought to be two or three inquisitors, one judge of the forfeited effects, one executor, three notaries, one keeper of the prison, one messenger, one door-keeper, and one physician. ”

“ Intercession relates more distinctly to those without us—the families represented in the congregation, the Sunday-school and its work, the afflicted, the unconverted, other Christian congregations in the vicinity, the community with its varied interests, the nation and its rulers, and the great missionary work in its various departments and spheres of effort. ”

“ The interloper is a young man who returns to his mother’s old home from a sojourn in Spain with the man who has always passed as his father,—all unconscious of the blot on his birth, the suspicions of the neighbors, and the presence of his real father in the vicinity. ”

“ As one of the clergy who had officiated for the king during the interdict, he was in this year suspended, and sent to Rome (Ann. Mon. iii. 40) ; while at Rome he took part in the negotiations for the relaxation of the interdict. ”

“ An experienced inquisitor drew up for the guidance of his successors a specimen examination of a heretic, to show them the quibbles and tergiversations for which they must be prepared when dealing with those who shrank from boldly denying their faith. ”

“ Though the chief town of each province came to be regarded as the seat of the Inquisition, with its building and prisons, yet it was the duty of the inquisitor to go in pursuit of the heretics, to visit all places where heresy might be suspected to exist, and to summon the people to assemble, exactly as the bishops formerly did in their visitations, with the added inducement of an indulgence of twenty or forty days for all who attended. ”

“ When an inquisitor came to assume his functions the officials took an oath to assist him, to exterminate all whom he might designate as heretics and to observe and compel the observance by all of the decretals Ad abolendum, Excommunicamus, Ut officium Inquisitionis and Ut Inquisitionis negotium—the papal legislation of the thirteenth century which made the state wholly subservient to the Holy Office and rendered incapable of official position any one suspect in the faith or who favored heretics. ”

“ Peculiarly is it true, that wherever we find the idea of an absolute merging of two natures into one, or of an inter-union or an inter-changing of two personalities in loving relation, there is reason for suspecting a connection with the primitive rite of inter-union through a common blood flow. ”

“ An interjection is a word thrown in between other words to express emotion or feeling.
5. An interloper is one who runs in between two parties to get the advantage which one would obtain from the other. One who intercepts and buys a basket of eggs between a farmer's wagon and a grocery store would, from the standpoint of the merchant, be an interloper. ”

“ Let us in the beginning frankly face the fact that there is no call which involves more of unwithholding consecration than the life of intercession. There is no service which demands so much of a man, which digs down so deep into his life, which floods with such a searching light all the methods and principles by which men govern their lives. ”

“ The Grand Inquisitor Before setting you at liberty, the Holy Office must be sure that the means you employ are natural—
Fontanares Father, if I had made a compact with the Evil One, would he have let me languish here?
The Grand Inquisitor Your words are impious; the devil has a master whose existence is proved by our burning of heretics. ”

“ The typical purpose of the law of interchange is, of course, to teach us how opposite natures may be helped and strengthened by receiving each, as far as they can, some impress or imparted power, from the other. ”

“ Mediation and intercession is of Divine truth, because this is next to Divine good, which is the Lord Himself. That Divine truth is next to Divine good, which is the Lord, is because it immediately proceeds from Him. ”

“ Interdicts and excommunications, weapons in themselves so terrible, would, he foresaw, be armed with double force, when employed in a cause so much calculated to work on the human passions, and so peculiarly adapted to the eloquence of popular preachers and declaimers. ”