profound truth that "the going down of the walls between our life and our Lord's life, though it consisted of the failure of our dearest theories and the disappointment of our dearest plans,--that, too, could be music to us if through the breach we saw the hope that henceforth our life was to be one with His life, and His was to be ours." Prayer, in its relation to God and the divine laws; its practical effect upon the immediate events of life, and its power to transform the spiritual self, is one of the great problems of the intellectual and the scientific as well as of the religious life. One day a prayer seems absolutely and undoubtedly answered,--the relation between the prayer and the fulfilment being too direct to admit of classing it under coincidence; and again the purpose that is made a continual supplication perhaps recedes from the realm of the possible to that of the impossible, and the more fervent the entreaty, the more absolute and hopeless seems the denial. By means of which, it may be, one learns a very high spiritual lesson,--that of not desiring any specific event or fulfilment, but of praying, instead, to be kept in harmony with the divine laws, to be enabled to make his life a means of aid and true service to others, and to think as little as possible about any special conditions for himself. "He that loseth his life shall find it," is the affirmation of a very deep philosophy as well as of sacred truth. To entirely emancipate one's mind from thoughts of himself, and to fill it with the inspiration and the sweetness and exhilaration of making his life a quest after every good, and an increasing means for service to humanity, is the only way to find it in the truest and largest sense. So, for the most part, the highest use of prayer is not to ask for the specific gift or event. In a work entitled "Esoteric Christianity" by Annie Besant there is a chapter on prayer in which we find Mrs. Besant saying:--