This is not spoken extravagantly.  I ask of any one who has ever prayed in earnest, whether for that time, and while he was so praying, he did not feel, as it were, another man; a man able to do the things which he would; a man redeemed and free.  But most true is it that this feeling passes away but too soon, when the prayer is done.  Still for the time, there is the effect; we know what it is to put ourselves, in a manner, beneath the rays of God’s grace; but we do not abide there long, and then we feel the damp and the cold of earth again.

Therefore says the Apostle, “Pray without ceasing.”  If we could literally pray always, it is clear that we should sin never:  it may be thus that Christ’s redeemed, at his coming, as they will be for ever with him and with the Father, can therefore sin no more.  For where God is, there is no place left for sin.  But we cannot pray always:  we cannot pray the greatest portion of our time; nay, we can pray, in the common sense of the term, only a very small portion of it.  Yet, at least, we can take heed that we do pray sometimes, and that our prayer be truly in earnest.  We can pray then for God’s help to abide with us when we are not praying:  we can commit to his care, not only our hours of sleep, but our hours of worldly waking.  “I have work to do, I have a busy world around me; eye, ear, and thought will be all needed for that work, done in and amidst that busy world; now, ere I enter upon it, I would commit eye, ear, thought and wish to Thee.  Do thou bless them, and keep their work thine; that as, through thy natural laws, my heart beats and my blood flows without my thought for them, so my spiritual life may hold on its course, through, thy help, at those times when my mind cannot consciously turn to Thee to commit each particular thought to thy service.”

But I dare not say that by any the most urgent prayers, uttered only at night and morning, God’s blessing can thus be gained for the whole intervening day.  For, in truth, if we did nothing more, the prayers would soon cease to be urgent; they would become formal, that is, they would be no prayers at all.  For prayer lives in the heart, and not in the mouth; it consists not of words, but wishes.  And no man can set himself heartily to wish twice a day for things, of which he never thinks at other times in the day.  So that prayer requires in a manner to be fed, and its food is to be found in reading and thinking; in reading God’s word, and in thinking about him, and about the world as being his work.

Young men and boys are generally, we know, not fond of reading for its own sake; and when they do read for their own pleasure, they naturally read something that interests them.  Now, what are called serious books, including certainly the Bible, do not interest them, and therefore they are not commonly read.  What shall we say, then?  Are they not interested in becoming good, in learning to do the things which, they would?  If they are not, if they care not