And how naturally may this thought of mountain-quiet and distance from earth’s noises lead us to the consideration of that most exquisite and precious communion with God which we know by the name of Prayer. In associating the time of prayer with the idea of mountain seclusion, two pictures rise at once before the mind, because in them actually a mountain was the scene, and not only the type, of earnest and retired prayer. We see first the top of Carmel, bare and burnt under the sun of Palestine, and overlooking the intensely blue sea. Upon it the solitary prophet Elijah bends to the ground, prostrate on the earth, with his face between his knees. A watching form stands on a point towards the sea, until, at last, far away over the water, in the sultry horizon, a little dark speck, like a man’s hand, arises, and, on rapid wing, the delicious cool clouds gather and spread their awning between the burnt earth and the pitiless sun. Then the glorious sudden rush of the restoring rain, steady, incessant, abundant, settling in pools on the caked ground, streaming down the sides of the orange hills, sending eddying torrents to brim the parched cracked river-beds. Thus impetuous and profuse came the answer to the prophet’s lonely mountain prayer. And another dearer picture we never weary of contemplating; another account of One who, after the day’s toil of healing, of teaching, of feeding the multitudes, sends the thronging crowd away, dismisses even His disciples in a ship across the lake, and then, when “The feast is o’er, the guests are gone, And over all that upland lone, The breeze of eve sweeps wildly as of old,” retires up into a mountain apart to pray, and continues all night in prayer to God. What a lesson! The crush and press dismissed; even the closest and most intimate companions avoided, and a quiet time secured for we know not what prayers to the co-equal Father.