usand hearers half-breathless on Boston
Common and made tears pour down the sooty faces of the colliers at
Kingswood.

The passion of George Muller's soul was to know fully the secrets of
prevailing with God and with man. George Whitefield's life drove home
the truth that God alone could create in him a holy earnestness to win
souls and qualify him for such divine work by imparting a compassion for
the lost that should become an absorbing passion for their salvation.
And--let this be carefully marked as another secret of this life of
service--_he now began himself to read the word of God upon his knees,_
and often found for hours great blessing in such meditation and prayer
over a single psalm or chapter.

Here we stop and ask what profit there can be in thus prayerfully
reading and searching the Scriptures in the very attitude of prayer.
Having tried it for ourselves, we may add our humble witness to its
value.

First of all, this habit is a constant reminder and recognition of the
need of spiritual teaching in order to the understanding of the holy
Oracles. No reader of God's word can thus bow before God and His open
book, without a feeling of new reverence for the Scriptures, and
dependence on their Author for insight into their mysteries. The
attitude of worship naturally suggests sober-mindedness and deep
seriousness, and banishes frivolity. To treat that Book with lightness
or irreverence would be doubly profane when one is in the posture of
prayer.

Again, such a habit naturally leads to self-searching and comparison of
the actual life with the example and pattern shown in the Word. The
precept compels the practice to be seen in the light of its teaching;
the command challenges the conduct to appear for examination. The
prayer, whether spoken or unspoken, will inevitably be:

"Search me, O God, and know my heart,
Try me, and know my thoughts;
And see if there be any wicked way in me,
And lead me in the way everlasting!"
(Psalm cxxxix. 23, 24.)

The words thus reverently read will be translated into the life and
mould the character into the image of God. "Beholding as in a glass the
glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image from glory to
glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit."*

* 2 Cor. iii. 18.

But perhaps the greatest advantage will be that the Holy Scriptures will
thus suggest the very words which become the dialect of pray