November First.
SHORT SCRIPTURAL PRAYERS.
"Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my (anxious) thoughts."—Psalm cxxxix. 23.
NUMEROUS are the prayers contained in the book of Psalms, which, though to the hasty or unreflecting reader they appear but as ejaculations, nevertheless contain the fulness of heavenly wisdom; and prove the insufficiency of the long prayers of those who "think they shall be heard for their much speaking."
In this prayer, while there is an acknowledgment of inability to discover our own evils and errors, there is also expressed a desire for the continual presence and watchfulness of the Lord, and a willingness to surrender the whole soul to the dispensations of His Divine providence. For it is, by His providential dispensations that the Lord searches us, and knows us; and all the anxious thoughts with which we are so often disquieted can only be set at rest as we acquire confidence in His Divine dispensations.
In reality, the Lord is never absent from us; for it is by His influence we live; and by the Word of His Truth, in which He is present, that He is ever desirous of holding conversation with us. But we too often
