Holy Spirit. "You that are mindful of the Lord," says Isaias, "hold not your peace, nor give Him silence." "Seven times a day I praised the Lord," says the man after God's own heart. Christ's frequent retreats to solitude, and His long vigils on the mountain-side could have had no other object than to emphasize this truth. "Watch and pray," He says, and by diverse parables He showed that we ought to pray always and not to faint, and St. Paul insists again and again that we should "continue in supplications and prayers night and day." A prayerful spirit, in fact, is an essential characteristic of Christianity, for, says the prophet: "By all the nations shall My house be called a house of prayer." Nor will it do to say that for the virtuous to work is to pray, and that thus they are ever fulfilling this precept. The parables of the troublesome widow and the importunate friend at the baker's door show that real prayer is meant. The true sense, therefore, is that we must recognize prayer as one of the greatest duties of life, consecrate to it every day some time with which lesser concerns should never be allowed to interfere, and resume it at all times whenever possible. Did the love-sick youth but give to God the love he wastes on a creature, would not his prayer be constant, would not his heart be ever where his treasure is? Could we but realize our beggarly destitution, our utter helplessness and dependence on God in all our temporal and spiritual needs, would it not come as natural to us to lift our hands and voices in prayer for our daily bread as it does to
