Make the prayer a regular and constant feature of your daily life. Don't let it be a matter of chance whether you offer a prayer or not. Don't let every insignificant hindrance prevent you from saying your prayer. Many of the ancient leaders in the church of the Lord set aside several hours a day, parts of their most propitious working time, for praying--and considered that a gain. Thus Luther often devoted three or four hours a day to constant prayer. You may not accomplish anything like that, but you are able, nevertheless, to give the prayer a fixed and constant place on your schedule for every day, and then you will experience that it is a gain and a protection; for "prayer brings down from Heaven the peace of God; it brings down the strength to love and revere Him; it brings down from Above relief in the hour of distress, and it brings infinite comfort at the moment of death." 2. _What Mother Taught Me_ A chaplain at one of our insane asylums related the following: One day when he had been preaching a sermon to these poor, insane people among whom only a few were able to make out what he said, one of them came to him and announced: "I, too, can pray!" The chaplain stopped surprised, because the man was completely an idiot. He had forgotten everything--his name, his age, his home; about these things he could give no information whatever. Somewhat doubtfully, the chaplain asked him: "What can you pray?" The poor fellow righted himself a little and answered: "What mother taught me"; he then folded his hands and spoke the following verse with perfect ease, and without mistakes: Lord Jesus, who dost love me, O, spread thy wings above me, And shield me from alarm. Everything was forgotten. Not one event in his life was he able to recall in his memory. Everything had been left out of his soul, out of his memory--only not that one prayer his mother had taught him. I have myself had a somewhat similar experience. It was a Dane who was not wholly demented--rather what is known in the vernacular as "crazy"--and a little more. He never did any harm, and for that reason he was sent to the poor-house instead of to an insane asylum. Whenever he found an opportunity, he made his escape, and once in a while he came to my home--once at eventide and he was then allowed to stay overnight. In the evening he sat plucking at his clothes just like a child, and he then said: "I'm clean enough, all right." A little later he said: "I ain't forgotten how to pray--want to hear me?" Then he folded his hands and spoke two little verses of the kind a mother teaches her very young child. These he could remember. It was the same thing over again: What mother taught me. Remember this, you Christian mothers! 3. _The Evening Prayer: A Protection_