May 10

"Watch unto prayer."—1 Peter 4:7.

I TRUST that I watch during prayer, against all irreverence and carelessness and unbelief. I trust that I watch after prayer also, looking up and expecting the answer to my cry. But do I obey St. Peter's injunction, and watch unto prayer—watch beforehand, watch in preparation for my entreaties and requests?

There is so much that I might watch. There is the beautiful world outside me; its sights and sounds should call me to thanksgiving and adoration and awe. There is the condition of my secret soul: its health or its sickness, its growth or its decay, its encouragements or its alarms; its necessities demand of me a constant intercourse with the saving and sanctifying Lord. There are the circumstances and events of my daily history; they are ever inviting me to lift up heart and voice to my Father in heaven. There are the chapters and verses of the Holy Book; I should discover in them a thousand potent arguments which I can plead with God. There are the needs of neighbours and friends; often I can see my brother's necessity before he is aware of it himself, and can supplicate for him the succour and the salvation he requires.

"I cannot go to cure the body of my patient," said Sir Thomas Browne, "but I forget my profession, and call unto God for his soul." So let me be on the outlook for motives and occasions to pray, and for helps in prayer. My converse with God will not be so haphazard then, so rambling, so ineffective, as it too often is. It will set out from a fixed and definite mark, and it will journey towards a fixed and definite goal.