Page:Three Thousand Selected Quotations from Brilliant Writers.djvu/478

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470
PRAYER.

Not every hour, nor every day, perhaps, can generous wishes ripen into kind actions; but there is not a moment that cannot be freighted with prayer.


Ejaculations are short prayers darted up to God on emergent occasions. They are the artillery of devotion, and their principal use is against the fiery darts of the devil.


I like ejaculatory prayer; it reaches heaven before the devil can get a shot at it.


When does the building of the Spirit really begin to appear in a man's heart? It begins, so far as we can judge, when he first pours out his heart to God in prayer.


There is nothing about which a young Christian should be more anxious than maintaining the spirit, the love, the practice of private prayer; and nothing which should more seriously alarm him than any disposition to neglect it.


There it is—in such patient silence—that we accumulate the inward power which we distribute and spend in action; that the soul acquires a greater and more vigorous being, and gathers up its collective forces to bear down upon the piece-meal difficulties of life and scatter them to dust; there alone can we enter into that spirit of self-abandonment by which we take up the cross of duty, however heavy, with feet however worn and bleeding.