Prayer is the key to open the day, and the bolt to shut in the night. But as the sky drops the early dew and the evening dew upon the grass, yet it would not spring and grow green by that constant and double falling of the dew, unless some great shower at certain seasons did supply the rest. The customary devotion of prayer twice a day is the falling of the early and the latter dew. But if you will increase and flourish in works of grace, empty the great clouds sometimes, and let fall in a full shower of prayer. Choose out seasons when prayer shall overflow like Jordan in times of harvest.

Real inward devotion knows no prayer but that arising from the depths of its feeling. Perfect prayer, without spot or blemish, though not a word spoken and no phase known to mankind be uttered, always plucks the heart out of the earth, and moves it softly, back and forth beneath the face of heaven.

Between the humble and contrite heart and the Majesty of heaven there are no barriers. The only password is prayer. Prayer is a shield to the sword, a sacrifice to God, and a scourge to Satan. Prayer has a right to the word " ineffable." It is an hour of outpouring which words cannot express --- of that interior speech which we do not articulate even when we employ it. The cry of distress is an involuntary appeal to God whose aid our souls seek. Our prayers and God's mercy are like two buckets in a well; while one ascends the other descends.

For the most part, we should pray rather in aspiration than petition, rather by hoping than requesting; in which spirit, also, we breathe a devout wish for a blessing on others upon occasions when it might be presumptuous to beg it. Prayer is not eloquent, but earnest; not the definition of helplessness, but the feeling it; not figures of speech, but compunction of soul. When the heart is full, when bitter thoughts come crowding and pushing forward for utterance, and the poor common words of courtesy are such a very mockery of your feelings, how much the bursting heart may relieve itself in prayer!

The dullest observer must be sensible of the order and serenity prevalent on those households where the occasional exercise of a beautiful form of worship gives, as it were, the keynote to every temper for the day, and attunes every spirit in harmony. Family worship embodies a hallowing influence that pleads for its observance. It must needs be that will enter a household. The conflict of wishes, the clashing of views, and a thousand other causes, will ruffle the temper, and produce jar and friction in the machinery of the family.

There is needed some daily agency that shall softly enfold the homestead with its hallowed, soothing power, and restore the home to the fine harmony that God intends there to be. The father needs that which shall gently lift away from his thoughts the disquieting burdens of the daily business; mother, which will smooth down the fretting irritation of her unceasing toil and trial; and the child, that which shall neutralize the countless temptations of evil. And what so well adapted to do this as, when the day is done, to gather around the holy pages of God's Word, and pour a united prayer and acknowledgment of God's protection and security that are ever around their path.

And when darker and sadder days begin to overshadow the home, what can cheer and brighten the sinking heart so finely as this daily resort to our Heavenly Father, who can make the tears of the lowliest sorrow to be the seed-pearls of the brightest crown? The mind is thus expanded, the heart softened, hopes elevated, and pursuits ennobled. The greatest want of our intellectual and moral nature is here met, and home education gives forth a filled treasury, that will last for all eternity.

The custom of having family prayer is held in honor wherever there is real Christian life, and it is the one thing which more than any other knits together the loose threads of home and unites its various members before God. The family worship time in which parents, children and friends daily join in praise, and prayer is at once an acknowledgment of our dependence on the Heavenly father and a renewal of consecration to His work in the world. The Bible read, the hymn sung, the prayer is offered, and unless all has been done in mere formality and without hearty assent, those who gathered are armored as they were not before they met there. The sick and the absent are remembered, the tempted and the tried are commended to God, and, as the Israelites in the desert were attended by the pillar and cloud, so in life's wilderness the family who inquires of the Lord are constantly overshadowed by His presence, peace and love.

We, ignorant of ourselves, may ask in prayer that what would be to our inquiry, which the Father denies us for our own good; so find we profit by losing of our prayer. Or we may even pray for trifles, without so much as a thought of the greatest blessings we have received. And, with sorrow be it said, we are not ashamed many times to ask God for that which we have, when our neighbor is in want of that very thing. It is by reason of the worthlessness of so many of our prayers remain unanswered. Good prayers never come creeping home. We are sure we shall receive either what we ask or what we should ask. Prayer is a study of Truth. No man ever prayed heartily without learning something, if he did but listen and watch.

It is for sake of man, not of God, that worship and prayer are needed. Not that God may be rendered more gracious, but that we may be healed, that we may be confirmed in our proper sense of dependence upon God's precious Son, Christ Jesus. He who is worthy of all praise and worship and adoration!