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Our power to help and bless each other is primarily the power of prayer. Prayer directs and impels to services of love; secures the efficiency and success of all other ministrations; appeals to the foundation of good, and fills the channel of blessing sometimes to overflowing. And Paul knowing all this writes not merely, "I preach, teach, warn, labour," but "I pray." He prays in harmony with the words of the Lord Jesus that they may abound "more and more" in love. Some people seem to have enough religion, and very little that enough is. Paul's cry was ever for "more" — if he had light, if he felt himself unusually strong, if he felt his inner life enriched from God's fulness, his cry still was "more." So he prayed — not that the Philippians were marrow-minded, thin-souled, cold-hearted people.

I. THERE WAS LOVE IN THE HEARTS OF THE SAINTS AT PHILIPPI. This was the chief evidence of their being saints. The absence of this, no matter what had been present, would have cast a cloud on their Christian profession.

II. THIS LOVE WAS MANIFESTED. It was not stagnant like the waters of a tarn, but flowed as a stream which, descending from the hills, runs through the valleys. Christian benevolence must not Sleep in the depths of your nature. What if God's pity had slept in His! If it be there then make ways for it, so that the living water may reach a thirsty world.

III. THE LOVE OF OTHERS MAY BE AFFECTED BY OUR PRAYERS. Sometimes no other agency will succeed, as in the case of a crabbed professing Christian who is impervious to speech, example, and other acts of loving kindness. We can pray that God would expand that Harrow soul.

IV. THE LOVE OF A TRUE CHRISTIAN IS NOT A STATIONARY PRINCIPLE: because life underlies it.

(S. Martin.)

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KJV: And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment;

WEB: This I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and all discernment;