The affirmation of confidence, love, trust, and peace should follow as well as precede the evening exercises. We should make the going to sleep a sacred part of our lives. In giving up our consciousness we should be sure to surrender it to the positive forces of the universe. This is not an idle dream, nor a mere mystical fancy. Even from a psychological point of view the emotion with which we go to sleep is apt to remain with us and get in its good or evil work in the unconscious, involuntary metabolism that takes place in all the cells. We must lie down to rest in peace. "Dr. Thomas Hyslop, of the West Riding Asylum in England," according to Professor James in "Memories and Portraits," "said last year to the British Medical Association that the best sleep-producing agent which his practice had revealed to him, was prayer. I say this," he added [I am sorry to say here that I must quote from memory], "purely as a medical man. The exercise of prayer, in those who habitually exert it, must be regarded by us doctors as the most adequate and normal of all pacifiers of the mind and calmers of the nerves. "But in few of us are functions not tied up by the exercise of other functions. Relatively few medical and scientific men, I fancy, can pray. Few can carry on any living commerce with God. Yet many of us are well aware of how much freer and abler our lives would be, were such important forms of energizing not sealed up by the critical atmosphere in which we have been reared. There are in everyone potential forms of activity that actually are shunted out from use. Part of the imperfect vitality under which we labor can thus be easily explained." Have a few simple sentences full of thanksgiving, of peace and rest. The best are found in the Bible. The words to Moses, "My presence shall go with thee and I will give thee rest," may be given and repeated many times with a realization of their deep meaning and a personal application to the individual. Not only repeat phrases, lines, and verses, full of beautiful thought, but change these into your own words. Learn to articulate your own convictions and apply them to your own needs,--even paraphrase, for example, such a phrase as "He restoreth my soul" in the twenty-third Psalm. For the word "soul" we can substitute anything according to the specific needs of the hour. We should, however, use nothing that is not in accordance with universal love and the highest spiritual ideals of man and of our conceptions of the universe. We must always remember that truth is universal. We can change "soul" also to "health," "strength" or "life," to "joy," to "success," to "confidence," to the body or any part of the body which may seem to be afflicted. There are in this Psalm other good affirmations on going to sleep. Take individual clauses and repeat them many times, such as "I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me."