Let us, therefore, recognize and avow, when occasion serves, that prayer, worship, or communion with God is a larger, deeper, fuller thing than mere asking and having. Let us acknowledge that the simplest and most inarticulate cry for help—the voice of the “infant crying in the night, and with no language but a cry”—is as sure to enter the ear of the Father of spirits as the deepest prayer ever uttered by saint or martyr. Let us remember that, according to the teaching of our Lord Himself, the one voice which is more sure (if degrees of sureness there can be) than any other of being listened to by the good Shepherd, is the voice of the one who has strayed the furthest from the fold, and is the most deeply conscious of being afar off—the voice of the lost sheep over whose first turning towards home the very angels in heaven rejoice with a special joy. But let us never forget that in the homeward path there are heights beyond heights; that as any spirit is drawn upwards by the Father’s love and care, it becomes more and more filled with the light of His countenance, more interpenetrated by that light which shines clearest in the dark places through which every upward-tending spirit must assuredly pass. Let us not forget that the reward of faithfulness in that which is least is the call to enter into that which is greater—deeper and higher and fuller of Divine significance; that those “influences of the Divine presence” to which it is the essence of true worship to “yield ourselves” must penetrate into the inmost recesses of our being, and bring every thought into subjection to the law of Christ—that law of the Spirit of life, by which all that is of the flesh is gradually purged away as by a consuming fire—and that to live in the spirit of prayer is to live more and more continually and intimately in the presence of Him before whom the angels veil their faces, and who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. So that it may well be, or rather it can only be, in fear and in trembling that this wonderful salvation of entrance into His presence can be worked out. The prayers which are owned by Him are not prayers which can be offered in the will of man, or which can be used as a means of gratifying the desires of the flesh or of the reason; they are the breathings of the spirit struggling to return to Him who gave it, or rejoicing in the light of His countenance. The spirit which is being made free from the law of sin and death cannot look backwards towards the things of earth. Its path is onwards and upwards, ever “into light,” and its breathings are the vibrations communicated to it from the Source and Centre of light; they obey a law as unchangeable as the laws of light itself, and their function is to destroy and to consume away the perishing, worn-out raiment of the spirit, to free it from defilements and hindrances, and to bring it forth in the fulness of time “into the glorious liberty of the children