friend, years afterwards, remarked: "I was afraid to stretch out my hand in the darkness for fear I should touch God." That was just what Horace Bushnell was doing-touching God by the power of thought-concentrated thought.

The philosophy of prayer can be expressed in two

sentences:

First-Divine Contact.

Second-Divine Guidance.

Divine contact!

In touch! In tune! The secret of power is a proper spiritual relationship. When the trolley is off the car stops. Dean Bosworth, when speaking on "The Discovery of God," remarked: "I am sometimes awakened at night by the sound of a little voice, near by my bedside, crying: 'Papa, papa, hand, hand!'-My child desires to know that she is not alone in the darkness." That is the initial secret of prayer-Contact.

"Still, still with Thee, when purple morning breaketh,
When the bird waketh and the shadows flee;
Fairer than morning, lovelier than daylight,

Dawns the sweet consciousness, I am with Thee."

Give it any

Divine contact and divine control. name you please. Guidance, Providence, or Spiritual Direction. God never reveals the details of His plan in advance. We are sailing under sealed orders. The greatest man is the man who fits into God's plan. Destiny calls "next" to every human soul. And if God will tell me what to do "next" I will not ask for any greater blessing. Divine leadership is moment by moment." All Christian experience

attests the truth of Robert Louis Stevenson's affirmation: "There stood at the wheel an unknown pilot whom we call 'God.'"

Those are beautiful words of Helen Hunt Jackson.

"Yet this one thing I learn to know,
Each day more surely as I go,

That doors are opened, ways are made,
Burdens are lifted or are laid,

By some great law unseen and still.
'Not as I will.'"

Pray, friend, pray! And let your prayer be natural. Pray when you feel like it. Use your own vocabulary. Ask for your own blessings. I sympathize with Ralph Waldo Emerson who resigned as pastor of the First Unitarian Church of Boston because he would pray in public only when he "felt like" praying. Said Father Taylor one day, when the head of the house where he was visiting asked him to pray, "Is there anything you desire-any particular thing you wish? If not, I would rather not pray. Just at this moment I don't feel like praying." How honest! But, in private, it is always safe to pray when you "don't feel like praying."

Prayer was never intended to foster inactivity. God refuses to do for us that which we can do for ourselves. Many prayers remain unanswered because we do not answer them. Frederick Douglass, reviewing the days when he was held in the chains of slavery, said: "My prayers for liberty were never answered until I began to pray with my feet!"

Certain prayers are never answered because they

are born of ignorance and not of faith. God will not grant to New Testament saints Old Testament privileges. "Wilt Thou that we command fire to come down from heaven and consume them even as Elias did?" New Testament fire does not consume -it purifies. They did not know what to ask for or what they were asking for: "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of." Ignorant prayers are answered by the divine refusal to take us at our word. We shall, some day, thank God for our unanswered prayers.

We have a temple-the human body. We have an altar-the human heart. We have a confessional -the human conscience. We have a great high priest, even Jesus Christ. In that temple, the temple of the soul, stand, and look up.

The swiftest thing in the universe is a mother's prayer. From London to Edinburgh in a flash! From Edinburgh to Montreal in a flash! From Montreal to Winnipeg in a flash! From Winnipeg to Vancouver in a flash! Oh, what a wonderful

arrow of light, tipped with fire, aflame with love, winged with faith and vibrating with spiritual force. A mother's prayer is a thought of love passing through the universal heart of God and on its way from soul to soul. I seem to hear the reply of the Bishop of Hippo to the mother of Augustine, who came beseeching him to pray for her skeptical son: Depart, good woman," said he; "the child of so many prayers cannot be lost!"

A

IV

THE LAW OF BEAUTY

The Spiritualizing Power of Thought

FRENCH author has written a book entitled "John Ruskin and the Religion of Beauty," but Paul was nearly two thousand years in advance of Ruskin, for he marks a golden circle around the velvet bloom of all spiritual beauty when he uses that wonderfully descriptive and comprehensive phrase: "Whatsoever things are lovely."

We have plain indications in Holy Writ that God is in love with the beautiful. In the description of the architectural splendours of the temple of Solomon we have these words, "On the top of the pillars there was lily work," and when we are asked to inspect the quality of the fabric woven into the veil of the temple we find the sacred curtain true to the divine specifications: "Thou shalt make a veil of blue and purple and scarlet and fine twined linen." And we also remember that almost every precious stone is mentioned in the Bible: the diamond, the pearl, the emerald, the sapphire, the ruby, the topaz, the onyx, the jasper, the chrysolite and the amethyst. In fact so great is the emphasis placed on the things which are known as beautiful that the words, "Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness," could almost

be reversed and made to read, "Worship the Lord in the holiness of beauty."

God has more than one Bible. Nature, too, is a revelation of the divine thought, and nature is robed in beauty. As a famous English writer has said: "God's greatest gift to man is colour." Gaze upon the autumnal splendours of this very hour-valleys, plains and mountains clad in purple, crimson and gold!

"God's world is robed in beauty,
God's world is robed in light.'

The rose on the cheek, the purple veined marble of the white brow, the pillared beauty of the well-formed neck, the ruby splendour of the lips, the spiritual glory of the eye, the stately carriage of the head-these, these are all the incarnation of divine thoughts.

God is in love with the beautiful. He paints the lily. He distills the dewdrop. He moulds the pearl. He arches the rainbow. He studs the starry night. He gems the ocean depths. He flecks the flowery fields. He robes the mountains in mist. He sends the clouds trooping in the snowy splendour through the blue fields of space. God is in love with the beautiful.

The purple of the bird's wing, the red of the rose, the stainless white of the lily, the golden glory of the sunset, the silver diadem of the night, the rippling surface of the sea, the waving gold of the boundless prairie-these, all these, tell me that God is in love with the beautiful!