'' seek ye my face … thy face, lord, will I seek. " Psalm 27:8See also Psalm 105:4.

In prayer, I have not only to ask for things, but to realize the presence of Him to whom I speak. The power of prayer is gone if I lose the sense of seeing Him by faith.

Prayer is not only asking right things, but having the sense of the Person there. If I have not that, I lose the sense of His love and of being heard.

When the Holy Spirit leads us into real spiritual worship, it leads into communion with God, into the presence of God; and then, necessarily, all the infinite acceptability to Him of the offering of Christ is present to our spirit. We are associated with it. It forms an integral and necessary part of our communion and worship. We cannot be in the presence of God in communion without finding it there. It is, indeed, the ground of our acceptance, as of our communion. Apart from this, then, our worship falls back into the flesh, our prayers (or praying) will form what is sometimes called "a gift of prayer," (than which, often, nothing is more sorrowful)-a fluent rehearsal of known truths and principles, instead of communion and the expression of our wants and desires in the unction of the Spirit; our singing-pleasure of the ear, taste in music and expressions in which we sympathize-all a form in the flesh and not communion in the Spirit. All this is evil; the Spirit of God owns it not; it is not in the Spirit and in truth . . . The Lord keep us nigh to Himself to judge all things in His presence, for out of it we can judge nothing. J. N. D.