Father has been delayed; but it shall not be precluded. That His solitude might be entire, He compels His disciples to get into the ship, and go before unto the other side, while He Himself upon the mountain offers His evening orison late into the night. And though, of course, no fallen creature has ever maintained the same nicely-adjusted balance between devotion and active service, which is observable in the mind and life of Christ, though some saints have been (like St. John) characterized rather by devout contemplativeness, and others (like St. Paul) by zealous activity,yet all His true people have preserved in different proportions the twofold character;-all have been men of service, and all have been likewise men of prayer.

We have spoken of service and prayer separately, as it is necessary to do in a disquisition. Yet we ought not to think of them as independent things, but rather as closely related and interpenetrating one another. Service and prayer are the web and woof of the Christian life, of which every part of it is composed. Both are in the groundwork of the stuff. Not even in point of time must they be too rigidly sundered from one another. Prayer at stated seasons is good and necessary; but a man aiming at sanctity in ever so low a degree, will find it impossible to confine his prayers to stated seasons. He will soon discover that prayer is literally, and not merely in a figure," the Christian's breath of life ;" and that to attempt to carry on the spiritual life without more prayer than the recital of a form on rising, and retiring to rest, is about the same absurdity as it would be for a man to open his casement morning and evening, and inhale the fresh air for a few minutes, and then say to himself on closing it, that that amount of breathing must suffice him for the rest of the day. The analogy suggested by this image is, I believe, a perfectly true one, and will hold good if examined. The air from the casement is very delicious, very healthful, very refreshing, very invigorating; it is a good thing to stand at the casement and inhale it; but there must be air in the shop,

in the factory, in the office, as well as at the casement, if the man, as he works, is to survive. Under this view of it, ejaculatory prayer is seen to be even a more essential thing than stated prayer. Both are necessary to the well-being of the Christian life; but the momentary lifting the heart to GOD,-the momentary realization of His presence amidst business or under temptation,-is necessary to its very being. The life is no more, when this work is suspended. For which reason probably it is that the great apostolic prayer-precept is given with a breadth which excludes all limitations of time and place, "Pray without ceasing." Ejaculatory prayer, however, must by-and-by form the subject of a distinct Chapter, which we will not now anticipate.

Reader, our subject assumes, as we progress with it, a more definite shape in our minds. Personal Religion, as we saw in our last Chapter, involves growth. Personal Religion, as we now see, involves prayer,—including under that term all the exercises of devotion, both public and private. Then are we men of prayer? Let the conscience take home this question and answer it faithfully. Let the conscience of men, and of men of business, take it home. It is a man's question, and a busy man's question, rather than a woman's. Women as a general rule have more leisure than men, and have certainly more of that constitutional temperament, which, when God's grace visits it, inclines to devotion. It is in a hard, busy, bustling life, a life which asks an active and unimaginative mind, and which chills all approach to sentiment,-in short, it is in the life of an Englishman of business habits that the temptation to live without prayer is felt. How then, in your case and in mine, can the searching question be met? Widely as in different ages and different countries the experiences of the children of God have differed, this has been the one universal experience, the one common characteristic without a single exception,-hoary-headed elders, and brave martyrs, and wise teachers, and weak women, and servants, and even little children, "the great multitude which no man could number, of all nations,

and kindreds, and people, and tongues,"-all have been people of prayer. Prayer is the very spot of His children; and the more we know of the power of Personal Religion, the more distinctly will the spot come out, as it were, upon the surface of the skin. Is the spot upon us? Do we enter often into the closet of the dwelling, oftener still into the closet of the heart, to commune with our Father which seeth in secret? Unless this be our case, all our interest in religion is superficial, not personal, and will appear to be so, to our confusion, in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to the Gospel.

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PART II.

THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE.

CHAPTER I.

OF THE MAGNIFICENCE OF PRAYER, AND THE PRACTICAL DEDUCTIONS FROM THAT DOCTRINE.

"He that cometh to God."-HEB. xi. 6.

THE Christian life, as we saw in our last Chapter, branches out like the life of the Seraphim, into the two divisions of Devotion and Action. We shall speak first of Devotion, endeavouring to furnish some thoughts which may be practically useful to the reader in his efforts to maintain communion with God; and then of Active Life, the spirit in which its duties should be fulfilled and its difficulties surmounted. And as ejaculatory prayer is, in fact, the intermingling of devotion with action, as it is the meeting-point of prayer and service, we shall give it a middle place between the two, and use it as a bridge, whereby to pass from the first to the second division of our subject.

First, then, to speak of Devotion, which for our present purpose may be all summed up in one word, Prayer. There would be less of formality in prayer, and far more of strength and enjoyment in it, if men did but grasp the idea of what prayer is. But simple as the idea is, it requires an effort of mind to master it; and while we are willing enough to pay mechanically our daily tribute of homage at the Throne of Grace,

natural slothfulness always recalcitrates against an effort of mind. Gradual ascent is as necessary to the mind, in order to its reaching a great idea, as it is to the body, in order to its reaching a great height. We cannot ascend to a pinnacle of a cathedral, which towers aloft in air, without either steps or an inclined plane. We cannot reach the summit of a mountain without first toiling up its base, then traversing its breast, and then, successively, crossing the limits where verdure passes into crag, and crag into a wilderness of snow. Even when we have gained the highest point, we are still, it is true, at an infinite distance from the blue vault of the firmament which stretches above our heads. Still we have a better and more exalted view of what that firmament is we have at least risen above the fogs and mists which obscure its glory; and the air which encompasses us is transparent to the eye, and invigorating to the frame. Now the law of man's bodily progress is also the law of his mental progress. Both must be gradual. No grand idea can be realized except by successive steps and stages, which the mind must use as landing-places in its ascent. But what if the mind, after all its toil, should prove unable fully to master the idea, as must be the case where the idea to be mastered is connected with God and things divine? It does not at all follow that therefore our labour has been lost. We have, at all events, risen to a higher level, where our view is more transparent, more elevating, more sublime, and where the play of the thoughts is invigorating to the inner man. And now let us apply these reflections to the subject in hand.

Prayer is nothing more or less than a "coming to God." Now the bare conception of this thing, "coming to God," is sublime and ennobling to the highest degree. But we are familiar with the idea, and our very familiarity with it-the currency of it among religious persons and in religious books-has worn off the sharp edges of it, until it has ceased to have any definite impress. Let us seek and pray that the idea may revive with some power in our minds. And this we will do