_First, when I feel that I am become cold and indisposed to prayer, by reason of other business and thoughts, I take my psalter and run into my chamber, or, if day and season serve, into the church to the multitude, and begin to repeat to myself--just as children used--the ten commandments, the creed, and, according as I have time, some sayings of Christ or of Paul, or some Psalms. Therefore it is well to let prayer be the first employment in the early morning, and the last in the evening. Avoid diligently those false and deceptive thoughts which say, Wait a little, I will pray an hour hence; I must first perform this or that. For with such thoughts a man quits prayer for business that lays hold of and entangles him, so that he comes not to pray the whole day long._ MARTIN LUTHER. O Lord, our Heavenly Father, who keepest covenant and loving kindness with Thy servants, who walk humbly with Thee, and who hast been attentive to the prayers of our fathers when they lifted up their hearts and their hands to Thee, teach us to pray, and to love to pray. Visit us in the night season and before the morning watch. Touch our spirits with the flame of Thy Spirit, before the day's business lays hold upon us and entangles us, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. REUBEN KIDNER. February 11 _In one of Dean Stanley's sermons to children, preached at Westminster Abbey, he told the following story: "There was a little girl living with her grandfather. She was a good child, but he was not a very good man; and one day, when the little child came back from school, he had put in writing over the bed, 'God is nowhere,' for he did not believe in the good God, and he tried to make the little child believe the same. What did the little girl do? She had no eyes to see, no ears to hear, what her grandfather tried to teach her. She was very small. She could only read words of one syllable at a time; she rose above the bad meaning which he tried to put in her mind; she rose, as we all ought to rise, above the temptation of our time; she rose into a higher and better world; she rose because her little mind could not do otherwise, and she read the words, not 'God is nowhere,' but 'God is now here.' That is what we all should strive to do. Out of words which have no sense or which have bad sense, our eyes, our minds, ought to be able to read a better sense."_ WILLIAM MOODIE.