endurance and strenuous work. 'Rejoicing in hope;
patient,' persevering in tribulation.

III. Lastly, our lives will be joyful, hopeful, and patient, in
proportion as they are prayerful.

'Continuing instant'--which, of course, just means steadfast--'in
prayer.' Paul uttered a paradox when he said, 'Rejoice in the Lord
alway,' as he said long before this verse, in the very first letter
that he ever wrote, or at least the first which has come down to us.
There he bracketed it along with two other equally paradoxical
sayings. 'Rejoice evermore; pray without ceasing; in everything give
thanks.' If you pray without ceasing you can rejoice without ceasing.

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