ost honoured South African
missionaries, now gone to his rest: he had the same complaint. "In the
morning at five the sick people are at the door waiting for medicine. At
six the printers come, and I have to set them to work and teach them. At
nine the school calls me, and till late at night I am kept busy with a
large correspondence." In my answer I quoted a Dutch proverb: 'What _is_
heaviest must _weigh_ heaviest,'--must have the first place. The law of
God is unchangeable: as on earth, so in our traffic with heaven, we only
get as we give. Unless we are willing to pay the price, and sacrifice
time and attention and what appear legitimate or necessary duties, for
the sake of the heavenly gifts, we need not look for a large experience
of the power of the heavenly world in our work. The whole company
present joined in the sad confession; it had been thought over, and
mourned over, times without number; and yet, somehow, there they were,
all these pressing claims, and all the ineffectual resolves to pray
more, barring the way. I need not now say to what further thoughts our
conversation led; the substance of them will be found in some of the
later chapters in this volume.

Let me call just one more witness. In the course of my journey I met
with one of the Cowley Fathers, who had just been holding Retreats for
clergy of the English Church. I was interested to hear from him the line
of teaching he follows. In the course of conversation he used the
expression--"the distraction of business," and it came out that he found
it one of the great difficulties he had to deal with in himself and
others. Of himself, he said that by the vows of his Order he was bound
to give himself specially to prayer. But he found it exceedingly
difficult. Every day he had to be at four different points of the town
he lived in; his predecessor had left him the charge of a number of
committees where he was expected to do all the work; it was as if
everything conspired to keep him from prayer.

All this testimony surely suffices to make clear that prayer has not the
place it ought to have in our ministerial and Christian life; that the
shortcoming is one of which all are willing to make confession; and that
the difficulties in the way of deliverance are such as to make a return
to a true and full prayer-life almost impossible. Blessed be God--"The
things that are impossible with men are possible with God"! "God is able
to make all grace abound towar