many there may be; nor does He look at the logic of our prayers, how methodical and nicely arranged they may be; nor at the rhetoric, how beautiful they may be. What He looks at is the sincerity of our prayers, how earnest they are. And lose not the Spirit in your prayers; that is the one direction of to-day's text. And the other is, "Praying always with all perseverance," _i. e._, prayer must be constant, unceasing. The Apostle knew the defects of earth-born man, and, knowing, bids them to beware of being tardy in their prayer. There is a good reason why. Prayer is spiritual breath, we said. If a man's breathing is bad, if it is hurried, fitful, some mortal mischief is at work. Even so spiritually. If our prayers are hurried, if they are irregular, if we regard them as disagreeable duties, if they are not the natural and necessary consequences of our spiritual life, natural and necessary as breathing is to every living man, then that life is sadly weak and diseased. Why are we so weak in Christian faith? why so wayward and sluggish in our Christian life? Why have sinful habits such power over us? It is because we breathe, _i. e._, pray, so badly. How is it possible to work for God, or fight for Him, if we are tardy in holding communion with Him? Think it over, my dear fellow-Christian, and may it aid you in making you a man, a woman, of prayer! For what is a man of prayer? See yonder mountain. Below is its gigantic base; then your eye runs up the mountain side, and you see--what? That the peak is lost in the clouds. So is the man of prayer. His feet stand upon the earth, his heart is in the clouds; there is a something that keeps him in constant communion with God. There lies his strength. We call it "prayer." Amen. ASCENSION. So, then, after the Lord had spoken unto them, He was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.--_Mark 16, 19._ The Christian Church, from the beginning, has made the ascension of our Lord the subject of a special annual festival and service, and with excellent reason. The ascension of Christ ranks in importance with His birth, His death, and His resurrection. Strange to say, however, much less attention is given to it. Many are prompt and devout in noting and observing Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter, but when it comes to the glorious ascension, the heavenly enthronement of our blessed Lord, though furnishing equal cause for our gratitude and rejoicing, few seem to so regard it, and make little over its celebration. This ought not to be.