2. Acts of prayer. — But the prayerful spirit cannot exist unless special acts of prayer are practised. A passive desire to live in the atmosphere of prayer is dangerous, unless it finds its proper activity in definite exercises of prayer. We shall succeed in maintaining the spirit of constant prayer only when we foster it by stated periods of devotion.
^ If a man is right, and puts the practice of praying in its right place, then his serving and giving and speaking will be fairly fragrant with the presence of God. The great people of the earth to-day are the people who pray. I do not mean those who talk about prayer ; nor those who say they believe in prayer ; nor yet those who can explain about prayer ; but I mean those people who take time to pray. They have not time. It must be taken from something else. This something else is important. Very important, and pressing, but less important and less pressing than prayer.^
* S. D. Grordon, Quiei Talks on Prayer, 12.
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3. Such continuance will not be without its effects. Its effects will be twofold.
(1) The effect on the man who prays. — No one denies that prayer has a subjective effect. It has an intellectual effect. Thus it has been observed that persons without natural ability have, through the earnestness of their devotional habits, acquired in time powers of sustained thought, and an accuracy and delicacy of intellectual touch, which would not otherwise have belonged to them. The intellect being the instrument by which the soul handles religious truth, a real interest in religious truth will of itself often furnish an educational discipline; it alone educates an intellect which would otherwise be uneducated.
It has also a moral effect. Habitual prayer constantly confers decision on the wavering, and energy on the listless, and calmness on the excitable, and disinterestedness on the selfish. It braces the moral nature by transporting it into a clear, invigorating, unearthly atmosphere ; it builds up the moral life, insensibly but surely remedying its deficiencies, and strengthening its weak points, till there emerges a comparatively symmetrical and con- sistent whole, the excellence of which all must admit, though its secret is known only to those who know it by experience.
It has a social effect. Prayer makes men, as members of society, different in their whole bearing from those who do not pray. It gilds social intercourse and conduct with a tender- ness, an unobtrusiveness, a sincerity, a frankness, an evenness of temper, a cheerfulness, a collectedness, a constant consideration for others, united to a simple loyalty to truth and duty, which leavens and strengthens society.
It is not too much to say that prayer has even physical results. The countenance of a Fra Angelico reflects his spirit no less than does his art; the bright eye, the pure elevated expression speak for themselves- It was said of Keble that in his later years his face was like that of an illuminated clock; the colour and gilding had long faded away from the hands and figures, but the ravages of time were more than compensated for by the light which shone from within.
(2) The effect on those prayed for. — The subjective effect of prayer does not cover the whole ground. Prayer has also an objective effect. A man may say, " I can quite understand the
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good of praying for oneself; I can quite see that, according to God's will, these gifts of grace are to be worked for by prayer, like the gifts of God in nature ; but where is the evidence that there is the slightest good in praying for others ? " He might even take this line — he might say, " It is presumptuous for me to imagine that I can affect the destiny of another soul ! It is against what I read of the struggle for existence by each indi- vidual in nature. It is unfair, for what is to happen to those for whom no one prays? And where is the evidence that intercession for others does any good at all?"
^ Gilmour of Mongolia said : " Unprayed for, I feel like a diver at the bottom of a river, with no air to breathe ; or like a fireman with an empty hose in a blazing building."
^ For nearly twenty years it was the daily practice of Cardinal Vaughan's mother to spend an hour — from five to six in the afternoon — in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament asking this favour — that God would call every one of her children to serve Him in the Choir or in the Sanctuary. In the event all her five daughters entered convents, and of her eight sons six became priests; even the two who have remained in the world for a time entered ecclesiastical seminaries to try their vocations.^
4. The encouragement. — Be sure that no true prayer remains imanswered, though thousands of prayers remain ungranted. He who alone knows all the things we have need of sees fit again and again to refuse the thing we ask, or to deny even the most unselfish of requests, and to delay satisfaction of the purest desires on behalf of those whose sins or sorrows we have carried to His Throne of Grace. And yet, assuredly, all such prayer enters into His ears, and all suah prayer is duly answered, if not granted, by Him. Do we not sometimes discover, it may be long after, how, in ways we little dreamt of, through channels of which we knew nothing, the blessing for which we pleaded in vain was vouchsafed at last? And when there is no such dis- covery, where the refusal of the good we asked seems absolutely decreed and final, is it not our wisdom to leave all in the Father's hands, and believe that what we know not now we shall know hereafter ? No disclosure which awaits us behind the veil could surpass in interest the revelation of what has