sing of His power for everything, even for his
physical life, so that he cannot wink his eyelashes without God's help,
therefore, 'In every place I will that men pray.'

And how is that to be done? First of all, by keeping out of all places
where it is impossible that we should pray; for although He is
everywhere, and we want Him everywhere, there are places--and some of us
know the roads to them but too well, and are but too often in
them--where prayer would be a strange incongruity. A man will not pray
over the counter of a public-house. A man will not pray over a sharp
bargain. A man will not pray that God may bless his outbursts of anger,
or sensuality and the like. A man will not pray when he feels that he is
deep down in some pit of self-caused alienation from God. The
possibility of praying in given circumstances is a sharp test, although
a very rough and ready one, whether we ought to be in these
circumstances or not. Do not let us go where we cannot take God with us;
and if we feel that it would be something like blasphemy to call to Him
from such a place, do not let us trust ourselves there. Jonah could pray
out of the belly of the fish, and there was no incongruity in that; but
many a professing Christian man gets swallowed up by monsters of the
deep, and durst not for very shame send up a prayer to God. Get out of
all such false positions.

But if the Apostle wills 'that men pray alway,' it must be possible
while going about business, study, daily work, work at home amongst the
children, work in the factory amongst spindles, work in the
counting-house amongst ledgers, work in the study amongst lexicons, not
only to pray whilst we are working, but to make work prayer, which is
even better. The old saying that is often quoted with admiration, 'work
is worship,' is only half true. There is a great deal of work that is
anything but worship. But it is true that if, in all that I do, I try to
realise my dependence on God for power; to look to Him for direction,
and to trust to Him for issue, then, whether I eat, or drink, or pray,
or study, or buy and sell, or marry or am given in marriage, all will be
worship of God. 'I will that men pray everywhere.' What a noble ideal,
and not an impossible or absurd one! This was not the false ideal of a
man that had withdrawn himself from duty in order to cultivate his own
soul, but the true ideal of one of the hardest workers that ever lived.
Paul could say 'I am pressed ab