My Father, it is dark. "Child, take my hand, 'Mid glory bright above." My footsteps seem to slide. "Child, only raise Thine eyes to me; then in these slippery ways [Day unto Day.] "Walk before me, and be thou perfect.' These are the words of God to faithful Abraham. Whoever walks in thy presence, O Lord, is in the path to perfection. We never depart from this holy way but we lose sight of thee and cease to behold thee in everything. Alas, where shall we go when we no longer see thee; thee who art our light and the only goal to which our steps should tend? To have our eyes fixed on thee in every step we take is our only security that we shall never go astray. O God, I will fix my eyes on thee; I will behold thee in everything that is around me. The order of thy providence shall arrest my attention. My heart shall still see thee in the midst of the busy cares of life, in all its duties, all its concerns; for they shall all be fulfilled in obedience to thy will. Temptations are without and within us; we should be lost, O Lord, without thee. To thee I raise my eyes, upon thee I rest my heart; my own weakness frightens me. Thy all-powerful mercy will support my infirmity. [Fenelon.] One means of winning the divine life is the cultivation of a devotional temper, of prayerful aspiration and desire; a purposeful throwing open of the avenues of the soul, and an earnest imploring of truth, goodness, beauty and repose; a penitent praying to God for pardon, and a beseeching of him to come in with his blessing,-come dwell in a breast that fain would love him. Cherish humility, godly sorrow, trustful uplooking; for the Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart. When you walk abroad, sometimes cast your eyes into the far blue heaven with speechless longings. They will not be in vain, but will procure tokens of celestial favor. Kneel in your closet and say, "O God! I have not known thee: deign to reveal thyself to me; teach me to love and obey thee; by all thy goodness, oh, forgive my wanderings, and let me feel. the tranquillity of a life hid in thy blessedness." Such petitions will not be unheard, nor fail to bring down answers of growing fulfilment.-[Alger.] God is known and seen and trusted by thousands of souls who need no other evidence of his being or his will than what is directly revealed to their hearts. There is that within us more sacred than cathedral altar, or stained window, or sacred writing. It is the soul itself. [Bellows.] Send down thy constant aid, we pray, Be thy pure angels with us still; Thy truth, be that our firmest stay, Our only rest to do Thy will. [O. B. Frothingham.] With trans "Alone, of all earthly beings, man prays. port or with trembling, publicly or in the privacy of his heart, man betakes himself to prayer in the last resort, to fill the emptiness of his soul, or to relieve the burdens of his lot it is in prayer that he seeks, when everything else fails him, support in his feebleness, consolation in his griefs, and hope for his virtue." This is one * of the eminent blessings of prayer: it gives serenity, calmness, peace, trust, after the anxieties of expectancy, the exultations of success, the agonies of sorrow and bereavement. What is prayer, that it will make us thus tranquil and joyous, thus calm and trustful? What is prayer, that it purifies and exalts us, helps us to live worthily and hopefully? It is an irrepressible sense of want seeking supplies from the Infinite Fullness. It is aspiration climbing along the craggy pathways to the Fountain of all joys and fruitions.-[Simmons.] Must we not fight every hour, with these besetting foes of the spirit? In the depths of the heart, in deepest silence where praise comes not; with solitary prayer and patience, must we not strive? And here in this post within, to be held against all the world, deeds are to be done and victories to be gained, compared with which the prowess of battles and the splendor of triumphs fade away! [Dewey.] If we but lived as we ought to live, and as we might live, a power would go out from us that would make every day a lyric sermon that should be seen and felt by an everenlarging audience.-[Starr King.] Father divine, this deadening power control, My heaven in thee! O God, no other heaven My heaven in thee! O Father, let me find "The power of religious influence and the essential value of religious activity are in proportion to the quality and the amount of secret religious life. The nearer the spirit dwells to the Father, the more bright and clear its light. And our Father is in secret; dwelleth in secret, and in secret is to be sought and found. In secret,-in spirit, in silence, in thought, in meditation, in prayer, in feeling. Through the door of the heart that opens inwards and upwards his communications of grace come in, his spirit enters to visit the soul, the divine life flows down. Through this door leads the path to highest truth. Through this door the soul correspondeth with the Deity, and in proportion to this correspondence is faith and love, is wisdom and might, is true life." To love and serve all men is to delight in God. [Mencius (Chinese.)] PRAYER OF MARTINEAU. O God! thou spirit of our secret life, apart from whom our nature faints! Weary of ourselves we come to thy shelter. Our span of troubled days we bring within thy calm eternity; over our path of pilgrimage we feel the spaces of thine immensity; on the dimness of our pure desires we seek the glow of thy paternal smile; in the strife of sin and the sadness of mortality, we find a spirit of power and of hope in the memory of thy holy providence. Infinite Ruler of creation, whose spirit dwells in every world! We look not to the solemn heavens for thee, though thou art there; we search not in the ocean for thy presence, though it murmurs with thy voice; we wait not for the wings of the wind to bring thee nigh, though they are thy messengers; for thou art in our hearts, O God, and makest thy abode in the deep places of our thought and love and into each gentle affection, each contrite sorrow, each noble aspiration, we would retire to worship thee. Lord of our living conscience, who speakest thus in the secret voice of duty, and pleadest with us in the grief of sin! Thy creatures that know thee not have more truly served thee than our conscious minds; and while seasons and waves obey thy word, our vacillating desires forget to finish thy work, our restless passions keep not the order of thy will. O God! thou knowest the soul within us, that it is not built up as an immortal sanctuary for thy praise, but is a wreck of broken purposes and fallen aspirations and desecrated affections. Fountain of purity and peace! shed on us the influence of a new hope and holier sympathies; refresh our dry souls with the dews of a true penitence. Oh that our strength might fail, and our wills be |