devotions, with the daily offering of the Holy Eucharist linking the
whole system together.

The lowest standard to aim at is private prayer morning and evening,
midday too if possible, and regular attendances at God's House on
Sundays and Feast Days. The guiding principle, to be kept ever in mind,
is not what my own inclinations suggest, but what the glory of God
demands. Were this always the case, what magnificent congregations there
would be.

Prayer represents a real business of the spirit into which we put the
whole endowment of our being, intellect, memory, emotion, will.

Oh! those wandering thoughts, how they do distress us; and just in
proportion as we wish to pray and are learning to pray, so we feel our
deficiencies the more keenly.

A few moments before we commence our prayers spent in saying very
quietly, "Thou God seest me," or "In the name of the Father and of the
Son and of the Holy Ghost," coupled with a simple yet earnest act of the
realisation of God's presence, will be of infinite use.

The railway train coming into a station does not draw up with a jerk,
but gradually slows down. So with us; we cannot come out of our rushing
lives all in a moment into the quiet of God's presence; we need to slow
down.

But much of the wandering in prayer is the direct result of the habit of
wandering in life. Flitting from one subject, one book, one occupation
to another; scrappy reading, talking, thinking; then, as a natural