r, or how he was in a desert place apart in prayer.

These withdrawals of Jesus into the solitude of the desert or the
mountain, these hours in which He was alone with the Father, are but
another name for those exercises of prayer, fasting, meditation,
communion with God, without which, as He tells His followers in the text
I have read to you, it is not possible to eradicate from the soul those
influences of sin which destroy its harmony and undermine its strength.

These withdrawals were His times of spiritual refreshment; and by His
practice He declares to us His need of them. And if in His case they
were necessary, much more are they necessary for you and me, entangled as
we are amidst all the varied influences of our common life, and with
natures prone to sin.

Hence it is that the Church has set apart this season of Lent to come
round to us year by year as a season of special thought and prayer and
self-denial. Many other times and seasons come to us laden with the same
spiritual influences, and to be used by us as times of reflection,
inspiration, purification, and strengthening. This is the purpose which
the quiet of these recurring Sundays should be fulfilling in our lives,
or our gatherings for Holy Communion.

And once and again there comes to us in the course of life some time or
season which is sure to make its impression upon our soul as having
brought us in a special sense into the presence of God, and within the
overshadowing influences of His Spirit.

So it may happen to us that some family bereavement, the death of father
or mother, of brother or sister, or child of our affections, draws us
away from the world into a closer communion with our Father in Heaven, a
communion which is never entirely lost again or forgotten. So, too,
comes the season of confirmation, as to many of you just now, with all
its thoughts, feelings, prayers, and resolutions.

And it is a happy thing for our life when any of these seasons leave an
indelible mark upon our memory and our spirit.

But as we think of these words of Jesus, "This kind goeth not out but by
prayer and fasting"--the question for each of us here to-day is, what
practical daily meaning we hope to give to this season of Lent which is
to begin on Wednesday.

Let us not fancy that we can allow such seasons to come and go, year by
year, giving them no thought or attention, without some corresponding
loss.

The voice of humanity, and the experience o