But can I pray without ceasing?  Not if by prayer you mean only words of supplication and petition, but if by prayer you mean also a mental attitude of devotion, and a kind of sub-conscious reference to God in all that you do, such unceasing prayer is possible.  Do not let us blunt the edge of this commandment, and weaken our own consciousness of having failed to obey it, by getting entangled in the cobwebs of mere curious discussions as to whether the absolute ideal of perfectly unbroken communion with God is possible in this life.  At all events it is possible to us to approximate to that ideal a great deal more closely than our consciences tell us that we ever yet have done.  If we are trying to keep our hearts in the midst of daily duty in contact with God, and if, ever and anon in the press of our work, we cast a thought towards Him and a prayer, then joy and hope and patience will come to us, in a degree that we do not know much about yet, but might have known all about long, long ago.

There is a verse in the Old Testament which we may well lay to heart:  ‘They cried unto God in the battle, and He was entreated of them.’  Well, what sort of a prayer do you think that would be?  Suppose that you were standing in the thick of battle with the sword of an enemy at your throat, there would not be much time for many words of prayer, would there?  But the cry could go up, and the thought could go up, and as they went up, down would come the strong buckler which God puts between His servants and all evil.  That is the sort of prayer that you, in the battle of business, in your shops and counting-houses and warehouses and mills, we students in our studies, and you mothers in your families and your kitchens, can send up to heaven.  If thus we ‘pray without ceasing,’ then we shall ’rejoice evermore,’ and our souls will be kept in patience and filled with the peace of God.

STILL ANOTHER TRIPLET

’Distributing to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality. 14.  Bless them which persecute you:  bless, and curse not. 15.  Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.’—­ROMANS xii. 13-15.

In these verses we pass from the innermost region of communion with God into the wide field of duties in relation to men.  The solitary secrecies of rejoicing hope, endurance, and prayer unbroken, are exchanged for the publicities of benevolence and sympathy.  In the former verses the Christian soul is in ’the secret place of the Most High’; in those of our text he comes forth with the light of God on his face, and hands laden with blessings.  The juxtaposition of the two suggests the great principles to which the morality of the New Testament is ever true—­that devotion to God is the basis of all practical helpfulness to man, and that practical helpfulness to man is the expression and manifestation of devotion to God.