day. As my life to-day has been determined by the way I lived my
yesterday, so my to-morrow is being determined by the way I live my
to-day. Let me then live in this _eternal now_, and realize that I am at
this very moment living the eternal life as much as I ever shall or can
live it. I will then waste no time with the past, except perhaps
occasionally to give thanks that its then seeming trials, sorrows,
errors, and stumblings have brought me all the sooner into harmony with
the laws of the higher life. Let me waste no time with the future, no
time in idle dreaming, neither in fears nor forebodings, thus inviting
and opening the door for the entrance of their actualizations; but
rather let me, by the thoughts and so by the deeds of to-day, make the
future exactly what I will.

Every act is preceded and given birth to by a thought, the act repeated
forms the habit, the habit determines the character, and character
determines the life, the destiny,--a most significant, a most tremendous
truth: thought on the one hand, life, destiny, on the other. And how
simplified, when we realize that it is merely the thought of the present
hour, and the next when it comes, and the next, and the next! so life,
destiny, on the one hand, the thoughts of the present hour, on the
other. This is the secret of character-building. How wonderfully simple,
though what vigilance it demands!

What, shall we ask, is the place, what the value, of prayer? Prayer, as
every act of devotion, brings us into an ever greater conscious harmony
with the Infinite, the one pearl of great price; for it is this harmony
which brings all other things. Prayer is the soul's sincere desire, and
thus is its own answer, as the sincere desire made active and
accompanied by faith sooner or later gives place to realization; _for
faith is an invisible and invincible magnet, and attracts to itself
whatever it fervently desires and calmly and persistently expects_. This
is absolute, and the results will be absolute in exact proportion as
this operation of the thought forces, as this faith is absolute, and
relative in exact proportion as it is relative. The Master said, What
things soever ye desire, when ye pray, _believe_ that ye receive them
and ye shall have them. Can any law be more clearly enunciated, can
anything be more definite and more absolute than this? According to thy
faith be it unto thee. Do we at times fail in obtaining the results we
desire? The fault, the