Above all, it is important to give the evening prayer a fixed and permanent place in the daily schedule of our life. When we intend to pray for something, the time at which it is done may be relatively immaterial, but if we think of the prayer as a _protection_, the evening prayer goes before anything else. And why? Because it requires the peaceful quiet of eventide--and the same thing is true about all kinds of silly fun and of evil. In point of time, the evening prayer meets with the tempting voices of wickedness that sound with the greatest irresistance in the darkness. A decisive battle thus takes place between the tempting voices of wickedness and the evening prayer--a battle about time; it is a Whether--Or, for to divide the time in twain in this matter is impossible. It is not possible to devote one evening hour to wickedness, and the other to prayer. Then, if the evening prayer is given a regular place in one's everyday life, it is a protection against the temptations. Therefore the evening prayer should be a part of the child's life even 'way back in the days of the cradle. And therefore we praise the fact that the evening prayer is just that prayer which it is easiest for a mother to make a part of the everyday life of the child; this is not a mere accident, but is due to that grace of God which descends upon Christian mothers. Say the evening prayer with your child, and for your child, every evening when you tuck him or her into bed--do it even before the babbling voice of the child is able to say the words after you--and do never miss an evening! The evening prayer which has thus been implanted in the heart of the child because of the privilege and the intense love granted to the mother-heart, and which is to be protected by that same love throughout the years to come, will prove to be a real protection to the child during its earliest youth, which is just the very time when it stands most in need of _protection_ because the tempting voices of wickedness resound with the greatest power in its own breast. For that reason the time of youth is that period of our life when we stand most in need of the evening prayer.