Prayer need not be confined to stated hours and times. Interpreting prayer at its widest, the ideal should be to "pray without ceasing." It was said of an early Christian writer that his life was "one continuous prayer": and it is well to form the habit of inwardly lifting up the heart to GOD from time to time in the midst of daily cares and business. Where Churches are kept open it is often possible in passing to spare time to enter and kneel for two or three minutes in quiet and recollection before GOD: but it is perfectly possible to pray inwardly at any time and in any environment. Fixed times of prayer, nevertheless, there must also be: and a man should at least pray in the morning upon rising and in the evening before going to bed. If a time can also be secured for midday prayer, so much the better: but this is more difficult. To have formed a really fixed and stable habit of daily prayer is an enormous step forwards in Christian life. Much depends upon learning to rise regularly at a fixed hour before breakfast: and this in turn depends upon a regularity in going to bed, which under modern conditions of life it is not always easy to achieve. If a man is obliged to be up so late at night that it is morally certain that he will be too tired to pray with much reality before turning in, he should endeavour, if it is at all possible, to secure some time for prayer at an earlier stage in the evening. Difficulties in the life of prayer beset everybody. Thoughts have a way of wandering, the "saying" of prayers tends to become mechanical, moods vary, and there are times in most men's lives when they feel it almost impossible to pray with any sense of reality. A man should not lightly be discouraged. He may be recommended to remind himself that GOD knows all about it, and that the resolute offering of his will to GOD at such times, in defiance of distraction and difficulty, has special value. It is well to take God into one's confidence. "If GOD bores you, tell Him that He does." He is no exacting tyrant, but a Father caring for His sons. Those who care to do so may find _Prayer and some of its Difficulties_, by the Rev. W. J. Carey (Mowbray & Co.), a helpful book to read in this connexion.