Steady Prayer
By Mary Wilder Tileston

      Continuing steadfastly in prayer. ROMANS 12:12 (R. V.)

      PRAYER is a preparation for danger, it is the armor for battle. Go not into the dangerous world without it. You kneel down at night to pray and drowsiness weighs down your eyelids. A hard day's work is a kind of excuse, and you shorten your prayer, and resign yourself softly to repose. The morning breaks, and it may be you rise late, and so your early devotions are not done, or done with irregular haste. It is no marvel if that day in which you suffer drowsiness to interfere with prayer be a day on which you betray Him by cowardice and soft shrinking from duty.

      FREDERICK WM. ROBERTSON

      PRAYER to God regular and earnest, never intermittent for any reason, never hurried over for any weariness or for any coldness; this is one chief means of keeping our spiritual growth healthy and alive. If we would live in any degree by that ideal which our better selves sometimes set before us, we must steadily maintain the habit of regular prayer. For whether or not we are conscious of it at the time, there is a calm and unceasing strength which can be thus engrafted on our souls, and thus only.

      FREDERICK TEMPLE