essential to mental happiness, and to the progressive purification of the impetuous affections which live in the soul's sanctuary. We should worship God in His immensity. Every time we engage in acts of devotion, a magnetic power will breathe upon the soul, to purify and elevate its inner life. The effect of earnest prayer is salutary. It is not the delusive enthusiasm which causes the individual to repose indolently upon the bosom of God, to the neglect of those exertions by which men help themselves :

When is the time for prayer?

With the first beams that light the morning sky,
Ere for the toils of day thou dost prepare,

Lift up thy thoughts on high;

Commend thy loved ones to His watchful care :
Morn is the time for prayer.

And in the noontide hour,

If worn by toil, or by sad cares oppressed,
Then unto God thy spirit's sorrow pour,

And He will give thee rest.

Thy voice shall reach him through the fields of air:
Noon is the time for prayer.

When the bright sun hath set,

Whil'st yet eve's glowing colors deck the skies;
When with the loved at home again thou'st met,
Then let thy prayer arise

For those who in thy joys and sorrows share :
Eve is the time for prayer.

And when the stars come forth,

When to the trusting heart sweet hopes are given,

And the deep stillness of the hour gives birth

To pure, bright dreams of heaven,

Kneel to thy God, ask strength life's ills to bear:

Night is the time for prayer.

When is the time for prayer?

In every hour while life is spared to thee,

In crowds or solitude, in joy or care,

Thy thoughts should heavenward flee;

At home, at morn and eve, with loved ones there,
Bend thou the knee in prayer.

Enter, Father, all our hearts, and may our lives show forth Thy praise. May prayer now lift her sacred wing! May we be convinced, O our Father, that till we know Thee we know nothing aright; that without Thee we have nothing of any worth, and that in wandering from Thee we leave all that is truly good. May our conceptions of Thee produce in us the sentiments of veneration, gratitude and obligation, and lead us to a diligent imitation of Thy moral perfections, and a constant obedience to Thy laws:

Lord of Life, oh, let us be

Rooted, grafted, built on Thee!

What we know not, teach Thou us to perform; whatever in us is good, assist us to carry forward to perfection. To Thy power we humbly submit; of Thy goodness devoutly we implore protection. May we perfectly love Thee, and worthily magnify Thy holy name. May we continue praising, venerating, worshiping Thee more and more, through worlds without number and ages without end.

Eternal God, Almighty cause

Of earth and seas and worlds unknown,
All things are subject to Thy laws,

All things depend on Thee alone.

Worship to Thee alone belongs;

Worship to Thee alone we give;

Thine be our hearts and thine our songs,

And to Thy glory may we live.

WE SHOULD THINK DEEPLY AND INTENSELY UPON THE

GLORIES OF THE UNIVERSE.

All great minds have in some degree the gift of inspiration. It would not be time lost should the thinker spend a hundred minutes out of every twenty-four hours in contemplating divine things. Every mind that could do so would rise from each meditation with thoughts suggestive of

ideas. Many truths are obtained, even unconsciously to those persons who receive them, by implication, induction and progressive thought. The influx of principles into the mind of a person is the result of peculiar development, condition and spiritual elevation.

Divine consciousness is something that grows up in the soul by prayer and divine communion. It is the crowning development of the religious sentiment. Dignity and power reside in thought and reflection. The more the soul dwells

and meditates upon divine themes, the more will its capacity be enlarged and the affections refined and chastened. The mind thus expanded, entertains correspondingly enlarged perceptions of time and space, and of those things which pertain to an immortal existence. It is not worldly good that is wanted so much as spiritual magnetism, waking us up, strengthening and elevating us, and so preparing us for all duty, and placing us in such harmony with all the laws that whatever is good for us we shall obtain.

Duty makes us more spiritual; self-denial, the practice of any virtue, makes us spiritual. To do a good deed unselfishly for its own sake, is to make our life better. The great want of our time is a high spiritual ideal of life and character, as the object of our striving and the end of our worship and work; a character that grows by the expansion of inward forces; that is not sour, nor thin, nor narrow, nor without play and movement; whose positive qualities we seem only to be able to trace in their effect upon others. We know that something about a person stimulates us and stirs every energy, or that it soothes and softens us, dulling our sensitiveness to the sharp angles, or that it elevates us, putting small cares and insignificant objects under our feet for the time, and disencumbering the overpressed mind; or that it delicately moderates an excessive and turbulent ardor. An

atmosphere emanates from men and women of this sort, which gives to the moral climate of more ordinary people just the bracing or softening influence which they need.

The cultivation of the spiritual inspires the mind with activity and power, and a longing for culture, refinement, beauty, personal purity and perfection. The soul that catches a glimpse of its eternal realities, and tastes its divine satisfactions, is not content with any but the finest ordering of existence, and impatiently turns away from even the noblest doing to commune with things invisible, and retreats from the busy mart to the solitary places for prayer and inspiration.

Fountain of mercy! whose pervading eye

Can look within and read what passes there,
Accept my thoughts for thanks: I have no words.
My soul, o'erfraught with gratitude, rejects
The aid of language-Lord, behold my heart.

Spirit ap

Spiritual things are spiritually discerned. proaches spirit only by sympathy of a spiritual condition. Divine consciousness is something too fine and grand and comprehensive and lofty and holy to be entirely expressed in the ordinary affairs of life, or to be perfectly content with any merely earthly transactions. Still, the power of relig ion must be this life-orderer and world-mender. The cultivation of the spiritual need not interfere either with innocent recreation or necessary labor. The alternating series of work and play, of amusement and business, of pleasures and enjoyment, makes the circle of our existence.

Very few are strangers to the mysterious whisperings of consciousness. But, in the haste and confusion of common life and business exactions, it is not often that any one enters into the golden silence long enough to interrogate them. Human affairs have been so rapidly and immeasurably

developed that they come upon man with an overwhelming power, out of society's moral preparation for them, with a force unable to be met by moral maxims and principles. Happy they who penetrate into the interior of things, and endeavor to prepare themselves more and more by daily exercise to the attainments of heavenly secrets.

If to the right or left I stray,
That moment, Lord, reprove;
And let me weep my life away,
For having grieved Thy love.
O, may the least omission pain
My well-instructed soul;

And drive me to that love again

Which makes the wounded whole.

Prayer breaks forth from the pious and poetically reverential; each soul pleads in his own way for the enfolding love-arms of Providence, for the wise, good and affectionate guidance of a paternal power. Responsive to every real need, infinite sources of love and wisdom perpetually flow into and fill the individual receptive spirit, with consolation, courage and undying hope. Religions may change, but the religious sense, which creates them, never. It is indestructibly established in the universe and in the soul of man.

DESPAIR IS NO MUSE-HOPE IS THE UPLIFTING POWER.

The highest window of the soul lets in the beams of sunshiny hope. Without hope there is no activity, no motive that exalts to bettering, no life, no joy, no inspiration.

There is no other breeze to fling one ripple o'er being's stagnant sea.

The horizon broadens as the soul aspires. Hope on a low scale never feels sure of anything. Hope, like every other organ, is capable of cultivation; and in its normal action it puts us in working order.