It hath not been my use to pray

With moving lips or bended knees;
But silently, by slow degrees,
My spirit I to love compose,

In humble trust mine eyelids close,
With reverential resignation

No wish conceived, no thought expressed!
Only a sense of supplication,

A sense o'er all my soul imprest
That I am weak, yet not unblest,
Since in me, round me, everywhere,
Eternal Strength and Wisdom are.

Your deathless

[S. T. Coleridge.]

Can we know thee, O my God, and not love thee? Thee, who surpassest in greatness and power, and goodness and bounty, in magnificence, in all sorts of perfections, and what is more to me, in thy love for me. Thou permittest, thou commandest me to love thee. Shall the mad passions of the world be indulged with ardor, and we love thee with a cold and measured love? Oh, no! My God, let not the earthly be stronger than the divine love. Send thy spirit into my heart; it is open to thee; it is all known to thee. I can give only my love; increase it, Almighty God, and render it more worthy thee.

[Fenelon.]

All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant and his testimonies.

HOW TO PRAY.

First, when I feel that I am become cold and indisposed to prayer, by reason of other business and thoughts, I take my psalter and run into my chamber, or, if day and reason serve, into the church to the multitude, and begin to repeat to myself—just as children use the ten commandments, the creed, and, according as I have time, some sayings of Christ, or of Paul, or some psalms. Therefore it is well to let prayer be the first employment in the early morning, and the last in the evening. Avoid diligently those false and deceptive thoughts which say, Wait a little, I will pray an hour hence; I must first perform this or that. For, with such thoughts, a man quits prayer for business, which lays hold of and entangles him, so that he comes not to pray the whole day long.-[Martin Luther.]

"If thou love Him,
Walking truly in his ways;
Then no trouble, cross, or death
E'er shall silence faith and praise.
All things serve thee here beneath,
If thou love God!"

Wish to be a child of God, and then sunshine and frost, and friends and enemies, and youth and age, and business and pleasures, and all things will help to make you. The holy spirit is a spirit, and not one mood of the mind; it is not sabbatical, but daily; it is not a morning and an evening temper, but a perpetual presence in us.-[Euthanasy.]

"Thy way, not mine, O God!

However dark it be !

Lead me by thine own hand;

Choose out the path for me.

"The kingdom that I seek

Is thine; so let the way
That leads to it be thine,

Else I must surely stray.

"Take thou my cup, and it
With joy or sorrow fill;
Be Thou my guide, my strength,
My wisdom, and my all."

* *

*

It is so, that we must come to the sense of the deepness of the blessing of the life we live. Go into the heart of it, at whatever labor and pain; enter mightily into its duties; watch not for its shadow alone, as complainers do, but most of all for its light. We may well thank God, and take courage, and march on, when we know that the pillars of cloud by day and of fire by night, are set fast in the divine order, to guide us on our way. Let us be sure that all is well whatever comes, while we trust and stand fast and strive; and only hopeless, and rightly hopeless, when we want what we are in no wise willing to The glory and glow of life come by right living. [Robert Collyer.]

earn.

"Seek a convenient time to retire into thyself, and meditate often upon God's loving-kindnesses."

TO NIGHT.

Mysterious night! when our first parent knew
Thee from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
This glorious canopy of light and shade?
Yet 'neath the curtain of translucent dew,
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus with the host of heaven came;
And lo! creation widened in man's view.

Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O sun? or who could find,
While fly and leaf and insect lay revealed,

That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind?
Why do we then shun death with anxious strife?
If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life?

[Blanco White.]

It is in the calmness of the soul,-not when its passions are awake, not in its insensibility, but in its calmness,— that we become most conscious of the divine presence. Thus the prophet sought his cave, and the patriarch went out at eventide to meditate, and Jesus found on the solitary summit of the mountain a place where he might be alone to pray. * We need more than the patri

*

*

archs of old to go forth at eventide to meditate, and to seek in the quietness of the heart the presence of God. [Ephraim Peabody.]

The end of the commandment is love out of a pure heart. He that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.

[Paul.]

In the deep stillness of the voiceless night,

When, chased by airy dreams, the slumbers flee,
Whom in the darkness doth my spirit seek,
O God, but thee?

And if there be a weight upon my breast,
Some vague impression of the day foregone,
Scarce knowing what it is, I fly to thee,
And lay it down.

Or if it be the heaviness that comes
In token of anticipated ill,

My bosom takes no heed of what it is,
Since 'tis thy will.

For, oh, in spite of past and present care,
Or anything beside, how joyfully
Passes that almost solitary hour,
My God, with thee!

More tranquil than the still approach of eve,
More peaceful than the silent brooding hour,
More blest than aught beside, my spirit lies
Beneath thy power.

For what is there on earth that I desire,
Of all that it can give or take from me,
Or whom in heaven doth my spirit seek,
O God, but thee?

[Anonymous.]

Coleridge said he thought the act of praying to be, in its perfect form, the very highest energy of which the human heart was capable.

C