When the spiritual nature following the judgment and the judgment following perception completed the strong chain binding us to the personal origin of mind and life, we may never know. Some of our scientific friends go farther and say we may never hope to know. The spiritual phenomena of daily life, the tests of experience are ours. Allow for heavy tasks, for youth, for moods, for circumstances beyond our control, and then ask yourself if there was ever a time when you were happier, more useful, so successful, so spontaneous in cheer and courageous in work as when your first love was your Master and no prudential parsimony had hedged you round. O how often if you had the wings of a dove could you fly away and rest in a new start in life! When did you derive so much benefit from the Bible, from social and evangelistic meetings, from the Church, from Christian fellowship and work?

This is not the mood of one who is always talking about "the good old times." There are those whose golden age is ever an age of the past. Their eyes are turned backward. We are now concerned only with those whose intellectual equipment may even be the best. They know all that can be reasonably expected of people with great opportunities, but they have neglected their spiritual development. "Because iniquity abounds" they have yielded to their surroundings and “waxed cold." They have many good qualities and highly desirable and commendable attainments, but they have left their first love. They suffer. The community suffers all the more because their very virtues make their failures bad examples to youth. They are perhaps not moral but they may be spiritual hindrances.

Some awakened to the necessity of change may begin in the wrong way to correct error. One says; “let us have a sound faith." By this is meant; "let us go about and tie the bark on the tree of life, which the sap within is forcing off." Their logic is as follows; "outgrown ideas belonged to the past, our first love belonged to the past, therefore the former were the cause of the latter. Make the doctrinal tests more stringent. The difficulty is a head difficulty." Another voice is confident that our methods of church work are wrong. A church, without an institutional plant, is told that the first thing it needs is a more modern equipment for advanced work. A church, with one, is told that they would do better to go back from an every day church, with its doors open all the time, to a once a week church. No! the first love will come back to us by no change of methods. All these so far as they represent sacrifice for the Kingdom are evidences that the love still lingers. All good work will help it. When we give to the six benevolent societies of our order we get more than we give. Advance is needed on all lines of indirect benevolence in sending and supporting where we can not be in person. The idea of the associate pastorate is becoming more popular and necessary. It is not an experiment. It has been tried in thousands of churches and with most happy results.

The question however of regaining the first love is not a question of doctrine or of methods. It is a personal question. It will take the man into his closet and close the door and open his soul to the Father. It will lead him forth again to the open rewards of a spirit whose ransom has been one of the heart. The idols are broken. False ambitions are laid upon the

altar.

Selfish fears are sacrificed. Consecration is made. The distractions of a double mind fall away and they leave the spirit strong for life's duty. The soul sings a new song. The first love has returned. We toil and spin but the labor does itself. Love's work is easy. Love's burden is light. Love turns drudgery into joy. Greetings are trifles, but they tell whether thought is upon the immediate passing, practical fact. Preoccupation and concern with large interests, may palliate but can not excuse absent mindedness. The common courtesies are not to be despised. Christian courtesy is not too common. Not as the world giveth, gives the Christian his desire for the best a soul can receive. His "goodbye" is God be with you. His life may be criticised, in its form, as unwise or wise, but his influence is found in the love which is back of the deed, behind the word, before the thought, beneath the feeling, the first love of the soul, earth's greatest joy, "Heaven's first welcome."

XXV.

PRAYER AND THE PRAYER MEETING.

"Father! Thy wonders do not singly stand,

Nor far removed where feet have seldom strayed; Around us ever lies the enchanted land,

In marvels rich to Thine own sons displayed.

In finding Thee are all things round us found;
In losing Thee are all things lost beside;
Ears have we, but in vain sweet voices sound,
And to our eyes the vision is denied.

Open our eyes, that we that world may see!
Open our ears that we Thy voice may hear,
And in the spirit land may ever be,

And feel Thy presence with us, always near."

-Jones Very.

A Greylock Pulpit.

PRAYER AND THE PRAYER MEETING.

Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting. Matt. 17:22.

To make the most of the prayer-meeting is the greatest single undertaking in the life of a church which proposes to develop and express both morality and spirituality. The reasons are complex and many, though not beyond direct control.

The conditions must be exceedingly peculiar, if pastor and people can not make the prayer-meeting a success. Every congregation contains good men and women who are not of much value in the prayermeeting, but patience and time will often disclose gifts in them which they themselves have not known.

What is a successful prayer-meeting? One says "I am sure we have just as good a prayer-meeting as the church in B- They succeed no better than we do, if quite as well. I attended their prayer-meeting this summer, just to see how they did it, and there they all sat like so many bumps on logs. I confess our folks want the minister to peel all the apples they eat and hand them the pieces in convenient mouthfuls and watch them closely so that he has another piece to hand them as soon as the last one is being swallowed, but this church went one better than ours, they expected their minister to scrape each apple and put the soft pulp in their mouths on the end of a silver case-knife."

"But is there not a real ground for making the relation of the minister to the prayer-meeting quite important?" Yes. No matter how tough the problem may be, by diligence and devotion, looking over four or five years, there ought to be the beginnings of success. The minister should keep at it and charge himself with the duty of making the meeting succeed. One by one, will be gathered about him, in spite of removals by death and change of residence, those who love both the brethren and God and find some way to make it known in the prayer-meeting. Probably if the prayer-meeting does not get life in the course of five to ten years the fault is so largely that of the pastor, that not having struck oil in that period, the church needs to change the gimlet, and get a new shepherd.

What is the prayer-meeting for?