^ " It has been the greatest error of my life," said a great man in his old age, "not learning to avail myself as I should have done of the help of prayer." And what moral loss and failure proceed from this neglect ! It is an ethical as well as a religious mistake. Superficial are we in all our observation and experience of life if we fail to see the moral uplift of religious worship ; how goodness and integrity are hallowed and protected by intense religious feeling — regarded and cherished as part of the service we owe to God; and how faith, instead of being a substitute for right living, is in truth its supreme aid and inspiration, moving one to greater effort and attainment, and preserving and nourishing in the soul those finer virtues and graces which are the flower and crown of human character.*
O only Source of all our light and life, Whom as our truth, our strength, we see and feel.
But whom the hours of mortal moral strife Alone aright reveal !
• Pilgrim's Progresi, Clar. Press ed. , 32. ■ John Hunter.
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Mine inmost soul, before Thee inly brought,
Thy presence owns inefifable, divine; Chastised each rebel self-encentered thought,
My will adoreth Thine.
With eye down-dropt, if then this earthly mind Speechless remain, or speechless e'en depart;
Nor seek to see — for what of earthly kind Can see Thee as Thou art? —
If sure-assured 'tis but profanely bold
In thought's abstractest forms to seem to see,
It dare not dare the dread communion hold In ways unworthy Thee.
0 not unowned, Thou shalt unnamed forgive, In worldly walks the prayerless heart prepare;
And if in work its life it seem to live, Shalt make that work be prayer.
Nor times shall lack, when while the work it plies, Unsummoned powers the blinding film shall part,
And scarce by happy tears made dim, the eyes In recognition start.
As wills Thy will, or give or e'en forbear
The beatific supersensual sight, So, with Thy blessing blest, that himibler prayer
Approach Thee morn and night.^
^ Many in these days who eulogize the devotion of Jesus to the service of mankind forget that from the beginning to the close of His earthly ministry He drew strength for that service from communion with God. "I live by the Father," He once said, and in these words we have the secret of His life and work, of His unwearying self-devotion to the cause of man and God.*
Forasmuch as they who love, and lean in love upon His
breast, Reap the richer bliss of being, drink the dews of a deeper
rest, Rise renewed in soul and sinew, greeting life with a keener
zest, I will seek Him.
> Cloogh. * John Hunter.
346 THE CONTINUAL FIRL
^ It is told of Wilberforce that when an over-zealous friend asked him about the state of his soul, he replied : " I have been so busy thinking about poor slaves that I have forgotten that I had a soul." He, perhaps, could afford to take for a time that attitude, for he had stored up in himself the results of years of severe spiritual discipline and culture. But his words, or words like them, are often used by persons to justify philanthropic activities which leave little or no leisure in their crowded days for the quiet thought which their needy souls require, and their work also, in order to make it nobly fruitful. The work cannot be better than the workman, and what we accomplish depends ultimately upon what we are. To give we must have; to do we must be.
If we with earnest effort could succeed
To make our life one long connected prayer.
As lives of some perhaps have been and are:
If never leaving Thee, we had no need
Our wandering spirits back again to lead
Into Thy presence, but continued there.
Like angels standing on the highest stair
Of the sapphire throne, — this were to pray indeed.
But if distractions manifold prevail, And if in this we must confess we fail. Grant us to keep at least a prompt desire, Continual readiness for prayer and praise, An altar heaped and waiting to take fire With the least spark, and leap into a blaze.*
(2) Study of the Word. — Lay on, secondly, the fuel of the Word. If you want to see what kind of wood that is, study Psalm cxix. It is the Word of God intelligently read and above all meditated upon : " While I was musing, the fire kindled, and at the last I spoke with my tongue." And for this reason, because the Word of God unveils to us Him who is the incarnate Word, foreshadowed in the law, foretold in the prophets, recorded in the Gospels, explained in the Epistles. And as we are brought into contact with our Lord there, as with the study of the Word we grow in the knowledge of Him, the altogether lovely One, the object of supreme desire, and while our whole nature feels the touch of the fire that conies through the Word, our mind basks
> R. 0. Trench.
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in the light, our heart rejoices in beauty, our conscience is gladdened with peace, and our own will within us consciously thrills beneath the touch of that most blessed Word.