y reveals to us, as to what real prayer is? For if we are told
to do a thing uninterruptedly, it must be something that can run
unbroken through all the varieties of our legitimate duties and
necessary occupations and absorptions with the things seen and temporal.
Is that your notion of prayer? Or do you fancy that it simply means
dropping down on your knees, and asking God to give you some things that
you very much want? Petition is an element in prayer, and that it shall
be crystallised into words is necessary sometimes; but there are prayers
that never get themselves uttered, and I suppose that the deepest and
truest communion with God is voiceless and wordless. 'Things which it
was not possible for a man to utter,' was Paul's description of what he
saw and felt, when he was most completely absorbed in, and saturated
with, the divine glory. The more we understand what prayer is, the less
we shall feel that it depends upon utterance. For the essence of it is
to have heart and mind filled with the consciousness of God's presence,
and to have the habit of referring everything to Him, in the moment when
we are doing it, or when it meets us. That, as I take it, is prayer. The
old mystics had a phrase, quaint, and in some sense unfortunate, but
very striking, when they spoke about 'the practice of the presence of
God.' God is here always, you will say; yes, He is, and to open the
shutters, and to let the light always in, into every corner of my heart,
and every detail of my life--that is what Paul means by 'Praying
without ceasing.' Petitions? Yes; but something higher than
petitions--the consciousness of being in touch with the Father, feeling
that He is all round us. It was said about one mystical thinker that he
was a 'God-intoxicated man.' It is an ugly word, but it expresses a very
deep thing; but let us rather say a _God-filled_ man. He who is such
'prays always.'

But how may we maintain that state of continual devotion, even amidst
the various and necessary occupations of our daily lives? As I said, we
need not trouble ourselves about the possibility of complete attainment
of that ideal. We know that we can each of us pray a great deal more
than we do, and if there are regions in our lives into which we feel
that God will not come, habits that we have dropped into which we feel
to be a film between us and Him, the sooner we get rid of them the
better. But into all our daily duties, dear friends, however absorbing,