busy world
around me; eye, ear, and thought will be all needed for that work, done
in and amidst that busy world; now, ere I enter upon it, I would commit
eye, ear, thought and wish to Thee. Do thou bless them, and keep their
work thine; that as, through thy natural laws, my heart beats and my
blood flows without my thought for them, so my spiritual life may hold
on its course, through, thy help, at those times when my mind cannot
consciously turn to Thee to commit each particular thought to
thy service."

But I dare not say that by any the most urgent prayers, uttered only at
night and morning, God's blessing can thus be gained for the whole
intervening day. For, in truth, if we did nothing more, the prayers
would soon cease to be urgent; they would become formal, that is, they
would be no prayers at all. For prayer lives in the heart, and not in
the mouth; it consists not of words, but wishes. And no man can set
himself heartily to wish twice a day for things, of which he never
thinks at other times in the day. So that prayer requires in a manner to
be fed, and its food is to be found in reading and thinking; in reading
God's word, and in thinking about him, and about the world as being
his work.

Young men and boys are generally, we know, not fond of reading for its
own sake; and when they do read for their own pleasure, they naturally
read something that interests them. Now, what are called serious books,
including certainly the Bible, do not interest them, and therefore they
are not commonly read. What shall we say, then? Are they not interested
in becoming good, in learning to do the things which, they would? If
they are not, if they care not for the bondage of sin and death, there
is, of course, nothing to be said; then they are condemned already; they
are not the children of God. But one says, "I wish I could find interest
in a serious book, but I cannot." Observe again, "Ye cannot do the
things that ye would," because the flesh and the Spirit are contrary to
one another. However, to return to him who says this, the answer to him
is this,--"The interest cannot come without the reading; it may and
will come with it." For interest in a subject depends very much on our
knowledge of it; and so it is with, the things of Christ. As long as the
life and death of Christ are strange to us, how can we be interested
about them? but read them, thinking of what they were, and what were
their ends, and who can help being i