the Holy Three in One; and prayer is that exercise on earth which shall best prepare us for that life with God. The education of the soul and the practice of the spirit are the acts which bring us into communion with Him. But here, as in all that helps to raise us above earthly things, we are sore let and hindered, chiefly, perhaps, from wandering and distracting thoughts. These are a sore trial to the soul, but they do not always spring from the

same source.

Some are caused by disorderly affections, some proceed from levity or thoughtlessness, some are trials permitted for our greater perfection.

If then the affections be unmortified the soul must suffer. No one who is the slave of any passion can be recollected; you cannot listen to God nor speak to Him when something else is your idol. These men have idols in their heart; should I be enquired of by them? Where your treasure is there will your heart 'be also. The remedy here is to strive against that passion, and to sacrifice it resolutely to God. Whatever the passion may be, the love of praise, self-will, some inordinate affection, though as dear to you as the right hand or the right eye, it must be renounced, or the prayer will be as though it had not been said. In truth, there are very few wandering thoughts that need distress us if we have brought all our affections into captivity to the obedience of Christ. For then when you have been distracted by something, your very_wandering thoughts will recall you to your Lord. The more modified and detached we are from earthly things the better we shall pray.

But before we blame the difficulties of prayer for our coldness and indifference to that exercise, let us see that we have not encouraged these wandering thoughts by dissipation, the dissipation of soul if not of mind and body, being cumbered about many things, by an illregulated and dissipated life altogether opposed to the spirit of prayer. Life is a busy life in these days; men have run to and fro, and knowledge has increased, and so the hours given to prayer and meditation threaten to get fewer and fewer. Hurry is the ruin of many souls, as St. Francis de Sales says; our overburdening the mind with unnecessary occupation, with a multitude of things not really laid upon us, nor rightly given to us, as our vocation, do more to create difficulties in prayer than anything else, and to make people unrecollected in prayer. These, after all, underlie much of the want of faith in prayer, and all the weariness which too often attends our spiritual exercises. I would say generally, if you cannot pray as you would, pray as you can. It may be, and with earnest souls always is so, our gracious Lord sends us trials in the shape of wandering thoughts; He would thus teach us that He is master of His own gifts, and make us cling to Him and Him alone. In times of woe and desolation the soul abandons itself, and flees as a bird to the hills to the loving heart of Jesus, while as the hart pants for the water-brooks, the soul longs for free and uninterrupted intercourse with God, and asks, Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? It learns by this very loneliness to put the trust

in God, which is the help of the countenance and our God. Accept the trial, and with the sacrifice of self the prayer will be answered, though to you indeed it seems hardly said; frequently make an act of self-renunciation and of submission to God's will; say often, 'I 'am here, Lord, because it is Thy will.' Do not allow the thought that spiritual consolations are of the highest moment, or indeed of any moment compared with obedience. Do not weary to think whether you have consolations or desolations, for God is as much to be thanked when He sends the one as when He orders the other. We may remember that bitter medicines are often more wholesome and more lasting in their effects than those which perhaps are most agreeable to taste; dryness and desolation are the heaviness of night to make way for the seasons of grace, the joy that is sure to come in the morning. It is ever true of all spiritual acts, especially true of prayer, that he that now goeth on his way weeping and beareth good seed, shall doubtless come again with joy and bring his sheaves with him. These spiritual trials are calls to trust in God, and an earnest that 'whoso trusteth in Him shall not be con'founded.' God awaits our desires; He expects to be invited even as He invites; He wills to be sought even as He seeks; He kindles our desires, and through fresh grace given ever more and more enlarges the craving for greater gifts. Daniel was blest as being the man of desires. All his prophetic power, all his sustained and calm, restful life through his trials, was the answer to his constant desire for

God. He enlargeth the desire by showing us the want. He that brought water out of the stony rock, and water springs of a dry ground, that made the wilderness to blossom as the rose can and will, if we pray on make the desolation of our souls refreshment, and the wilderness of our souls a garden of the Lord.

I would say that here especially, in the hours of dryness and desolation, when we fall on our knees and seem voiceless, and unable to say a word or think a thought that shall bring us nearer to the presence of God or make us tell our wants, the Lord's Prayer is the help. He who said When ye pray,' knew what He meant, knew what would be the struggle of the spiritual man often and often, knew how the soul would lie waiting for the moving of the waters, and unknowing that Christ was close at hand, then he must say our Father.' Begin thus having placed yourself in the presence of God, silently offering yourself, body, soul and spirit, to Him; then, saying 'our Father' very slowly, pausing after every sentence, to call the Holy Spirit to give the words power, allow the thoughts that will then rise to take the form of words. What bliss 'to be Thy child, the child of Thy adoption, 'the child of Thy love!' Keep by thee a verse or so of the Psalms to interweave into the pleadings of the Divine prayer. 'Save me, O God,' only that; that were enough. Save me, Thou that art my Father.' 'Thou Whose Fatherly 'hand is stretched out to save Thy creatures, 'save me.' Father, Thou desirest my salvation far more than I myself can desire it. Thou, my Father, canst not shut Thy merciful ears

to the prayer of Thy child. Save me, O God. It is the pausing, the dwelling on the particulars of each petition as it touches thy state, as it affects thy present life, that chases away the weariness and the wandering in thought and rekindles the affections, surprises us with the joy that we do indeed love Him when we feared we were dead and cold.

All this will go to prove that, both in the faith to pray and in the sustained power of prayer, the soul has hindrances, and that there is much to learn.

I would not leave this part of the subject without a word more on this spirit which should move the soul to prayer. The Lord's Prayer is an assurance of trust. He hath taught us thus that we are saved. He hath given to us the assurance of our acceptance in the Beloved. So the spirit is that of the child in self-abandonment and surrender. My 'Beloved is mine, and I am His.' 'He loved me 'and gave Himself for me.' So then you place yourself in His great Presence and you make an act of trust. You call to mind what our dear Lord has said, and done, and suffered for you; you remember how sure His promises are since He has sworn by Himself and confirmed them with an oath, and how all-powerful and efficacious His sufferings are, since He has willed to shed His own Blood for us, and all this for each one of us in particular. You realize that He has done this for you. It is a personal act, a personal love, and that act and that love is the link that binds you to Him. You call to mind all the mercies which God day by day heaps upon you as a consequence of this