s spontaneous and flows
without effort, like the deep floods of Ezekiel's river, where the
struggles of the swimmer ceased, and he was borne by the current's
resistless force.

So God leads us into spiritual conditions and habits which become the
spontaneous impulses of our being, and we live and move in the fulness of
the divine life.

But these spiritual habits are not the outcome of some transitory impulse,
but are often slowly acquired and established. They begin, like every true
habit, in a definite act of will, and they are confirmed by the repetition
of that act until it becomes a habit. The first stages always involve
effort and choice. We have to take a stand and hold it steadily, and after
we have done so a certain time, it becomes second nature, and carries us
by its own force.

The Holy Spirit is willing to form such habits in every direction of our
Christian life, and if we will but obey Him in the first steppings of
faith, we will soon become established in the attitude of obedience, and
duty will be delight.

JANUARY 3.

"Watch and pray" (Matt. xxvi. 41).

We need to watch for prayers as well as for the answers to our prayers. It
needs as much wisdom to pray rightly as it does faith to receive the
answers to our prayers.

We met a friend the other day, who had been in years of darkness because
God had failed to answer certain prayers, and the result had been a state
bordering on infidelity.

A very few moments were sufficient to convince this friend that these
prayers had been entirely unauthorized, and that God had never promised to
answer such prayers, and they were for things which this friend should
have accomplished himself, in the exercise of ordinary wisdom.

The result was deliverance from a cloud of unbelief which was almost
wrecking a Christian life. There are some things about which we do not
need to pray, as much as to take the light which God has already given.

Many persons are asking God to give them peculiar signs, tokens and
supernatural intimations of His will. Our business is to use the light He
has given, and then He will give whatever more we need.

JANUARY 4.

"Blessed is the man that walketh not" (Ps. i. 1).

Three things are notable about this man:

1. His company. "He walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor
standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful."

2. His reading and thinking. "His delight is in the law