GIFT OF 
 Elisabeth Whitney Putnai 
 

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PRAYERS 
 
 BY 
 
 HORATIO STEBBINS 
 
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 FROM BAS-RELIEF 
 BY MRS C. H. RIEBER. 
 
PRAYERS 
 
 BY 
 
 HORATIO STEBBINS 
 
 MINISTER OP THE 
 
 FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH 
 
 OP SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 1864-1902 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO 
 THE MURDOCH PRESS 
 
 1903 
 
TO THE PEOPLE OF THE 
 FIEST UNITARIAN CHURCH IN SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 "IN WHOSE FACES," FOB MORE 
 THAN A GENERATION, " HE SAW 
 THE REFLECTION OF CHRISTIAN 
 LOVE FOR HIM, AND WHO RE- 
 CEIVED WHAT HE HAD TO SAY 
 AS THE STILL, THIRSTY EARTH 
 RECEIVES THE GENTLE RAIN," 
 THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED BY 
 HIS CHILDREN. 
 
 '"? * O " 
 
 i/o 
 
NOTE. 
 
 IN eighteen hundred and eighty-nine, 
 unknown to my father, I engaged a 
 stenographer, who, for nearly a year, 
 sent me reports of the prayers of the 
 Sunday services. 
 
 My father never knew that this 
 record existed. 
 
 Feeling that their publication will 
 afford an opportunity for members of 
 his congregation and others who loved 
 him to have and to hand down a precious 
 memorial of his ministry, this little 
 
 volume is offered. 
 
 B. S. 
 
PBAYEKS 
 
 In the order of services the short prayer immediately follows 
 the sermon. 
 
 FEBEUAEY 17, 1889 - MOENING 
 
 INFINITE, Holy, and Almighty God, our Father, 
 we come now to our place newly consecrated to 
 thy service; we come with hearts refreshed in 
 the genial air of this fair day ; lift up our minds 
 and hearts to thee with devout feeling, rever- 
 ence, and prayer. Our wants are ever constant 
 and ever the same; our weakness is ever near 
 and our sin ever nearer. Thy love and thy grace 
 are greater than our weakness and mightier than 
 our sins, and we come to thee, God, and take 
 refuge in thee, our Strength and our Redeemer. 
 
 Consecrate unto our hearts, we pray thee, our 
 experience the experience of life, the experi- 
 ence of its events, the experience of its trials, of 
 its joys. We bless thee always for thy greatness, 
 the majesty of thy beauty, and we pray thee let 
 that beauty rest upon us, O God, yea, let the 
 beauty of our God rest upon us. 
 
 We thank thee, Almighty One, for the pleas- 
 ant inheritance upon which we have entered. We 
 9 
 
acknowledge with gratitude all our debt in the 
 past to those who have gone before us, the foun- 
 ders and builders, the teachers, those who have 
 lifted up their voice to thee before the people, 
 who have sung songs of mighty power, and spok- 
 en words of grace, sweetness, love, and terrible 
 retribution. 
 
 And now, God, thy people wait for thee, 
 and is not also thy coming prepared as is the 
 morning? Dost thou not come to thy people as 
 the early and latter rain to the earth? Come 
 now, thou Holy One, refresh the hearts of thy 
 children, wash away all their sins, and remove 
 their sins from them as far as the east is from 
 the west; and let thy blessing, thy tender com- 
 passion, thy glory, and thy joy be upon us, now 
 and evermore. AMEN. 
 
 God, our Father, by whose Spirit all hearts 
 are moved as the trees of the wood are moved by 
 the wind, come now in thy abundant grace and 
 bless thy people; confirm their hearts in every 
 pure thought and in every good purpose, quicken 
 their minds, their reflections, their meditations, 
 their reason, and give them something of thy in- 
 dwelling and divine life, which thy saints have 
 ever called the life of God. AMEN. 
 
 10 
 
FEBEUAEY 17, 1889 - EVENING 
 
 GOD, our Father in heaven, whose strong and 
 mighty hand supports the steady earth and 
 turns it upon its soft and silent axle, bringing 
 again the shadows of the night, we come again 
 to our place of prayer to lift up our hearts to 
 thee, reverently and devoutly to bow before thee 
 in humble worship, to implore thee for the 
 things we need, and cast ourselves upon thy al- 
 mighty arm. 
 
 We thank thee for the pleasant day, for its 
 blessed charities, for its kind and gentle man- 
 ners, customs, and habits, and we thank thee for 
 the blessing it brings to the common family of 
 man, to all who keep it, to all who are wise of 
 heart and pure in their feelings, and who accept 
 its enjoyments, its consecrated opportunities for 
 prayer and song and teaching, and reverent act 
 of worship and bowing down before thee. 
 
 Let thy blessing be upon all the people to- 
 night, and wherever the gentle currents of the 
 evening air draw around a dwelling, there let 
 gentle affection, pure desires have kingdom and 
 sway. Watch with those who watch, wait with 
 11 
 
those who wait, give cheerfulness and gladness 
 to those who are cheerful and glad with pure 
 hearts, make the pillow of little children, who 
 will sleep well in thy care, smooth the bed of the 
 weary, of the sick, of the dying, and let all the 
 people be blessed in thy goodness, thy wisdom, 
 and thy love. Forget our sins, and help us with 
 sincere purpose to quit them, to give them into 
 the past, and free us by thy great Spirit and thy 
 goodness from the past, and let us be ever living 
 now in the new present and coming future, 
 where hope and joy and gladness invite us, and 
 where we shall sit down in the kingdom of eter- 
 nal power, grace, and glory. 
 
 Almighty God, let thy blessing be as broad 
 and wide as the shadow of the night, as the 
 beams of the day, resting upon thy common hu- 
 man family, the common race of man, in all 
 climes, in all countries, in all nations, and wher- 
 ever man lives, even though he lives in darkness 
 and ignorance, if he lives according to the best 
 light that is in him, may he be received by thee, 
 the universal Father. Let thy blessing be upon 
 us here now, upon each one according to his 
 wants, to his experience, to his doubts and his 
 failings, and let faith have its victory. Let the 
 Spirit and the life of God in us subdue all other 
 powers, and let thy kingdom come and be set up 
 forever and ever. AMEN. 
 12 
 
Almighty God, our Father, let thy blessing 
 descend on us now, and as we go each one to his 
 home, may we go with deeper thoughts and feel- 
 ings and with pure affections; with bright and 
 strong hopes and confirmed courage, and a di- 
 vine resolution to live according to the best that 
 is in us, and may we put our thoughts into daily 
 practice and living. AMEN. 
 
 13 
 
FEBEUAKY 23, 1889 - MOBNING 
 
 INFINITE AND HOLY ONE, almighty Provi- 
 dence of our lives, inspirer of our souls, the 
 beginning of reason and the end of faith, we 
 implore thee now by thy gracious Spirit to 
 come nigh unto thine own, and lead forth 
 thy flock in green pastures beside still waters 
 of divine grace. "We were glad when our 
 companions said to us, Let us go up into 
 the house of the Lord." We are come in 
 the gentle light of day; the sun shines bright 
 and fair; our lives are blessed and our hearts 
 are inspired by thy gracious Spirit. We come 
 as we are, with all our earthly burdens ; we come 
 as we are, with all our earthly joys, with all the 
 hopes that thy Spirit has kindled in our breasts, 
 thou knowing us better than we know our- 
 selves, our inward thoughts, our veriest pur- 
 pose, our desires, our pain, our will, are all 
 known to thee. Pity our weakness; enlighten 
 our darkness; confirm our feeble strength by 
 thine own might; and let thy children rise up 
 and sit down and lift up their voice in gracious 
 14 
 
benediction and praise and blessing to thee, our 
 God. 
 
 Holy One, Infinite Father, we invoke thy 
 blessing on us always. And renew in our hearts 
 our sense of dependence on thee, our sense of 
 filial trust in thee. Consecrate unto us all our 
 experience ; what is dark do thou illumine in thy 
 time ; what is a deep trial, or pain, or anguish of 
 any sort, do thou relieve and assuage ; and gen- 
 tly bless with tender and holy consolations and 
 reverent feelings of how little we know of the 
 mystery of thy ways, the mystery of thy provi- 
 dences, the teachings and the wonders of thy 
 grace. 
 
 Almighty God, we thank thee for our daily 
 affairs; for our constant occupations; for that 
 which we find within our own dwellings and in 
 the world of men to occupy our minds, our 
 hearts, and our hands. Give prosperity to our 
 honorable industry, to our intelligent service; 
 and in doing good, in walking humbly, and in 
 loving mercy, may we find the abundant reward 
 and peace of thy divine kingdom. 
 
 Almighty God, our Father, we would fix our 
 mind and thoughts on thee now. We would think 
 what thou art in thine ineffable beauty and per- 
 fectness; and we would feel that thou hast in- 
 spired us with a kindred nature to thine own, 
 and called us to the great calling to be the sons 
 
 15 
 
of God. May our minds be inspired and filled 
 with reverence and devout feeling and holy pur- 
 pose of obedience and trust in thee. And as we 
 stand upon the great eminence the great 
 eminence of our Mount Zion, the city of our 
 God and look abroad over all the earthly scene 
 of our experience, its mystery, its trial, its 
 abundant salvation, its kindness, its times of dis- 
 tress, may we see in it all and through all a 
 wondrous leading, a divine hand, a holy and 
 protecting care. 
 
 Let thy blessing, Holy Father, be upon all to- 
 day, as wide as the beams of the sun. Let thy 
 gracious benediction be shed abroad. Guide with 
 thy strong and merciful hand ; keep by thy pure 
 Spirit ; and save all by thy eternal grace. 
 
 Hear our prayer; forgive our sins, and re- 
 move them from us as far as the east is from the 
 west. And as our earthly experience increases, 
 may that experience stretch over into unknown 
 worlds, into untried scenes; and may divine 
 wonder and curiosity enamor our hearts of what 
 God has yet to reveal to his children. AMEN. 
 
 16 
 
FEBBUAKY 23, 1889 - EVENING 
 
 GOD, thou Light of our light, and Life of our 
 life, we adore thy providence in the world of 
 men, thy teaching, thy wisdom, and thy grace. 
 And we give thee blessing and thanksgiving that 
 all along the line of human ages thou hast had 
 martyrs and confessors, saints and teachers, who 
 have stood as the light and the ensamples of 
 mankind, the interpreters of thy word, the com- 
 munion of thy saints. We thank thee that we 
 have entered into their heritage; that we have 
 received the wisdom, the truth, and the grace of 
 those who have gone before us. And we pray 
 that in our minds and hearts the Dayspring 
 from on high may arise continually, leading us 
 into a nobler and more beautiful and a sweeter 
 life. We acknowledge thy providence with rever- 
 ence and holy fear in all the teachings of the 
 Christian Church, in all its vicissitudes, in all its 
 tumults, and toils and trials and dangers; and 
 that, above all wreck of human fortunes and 
 human failings, thy Spirit has kept on its 
 mighty way, enchurching itself in mankind. 
 Let thy blessing, Almighty God, be upon all 
 17 
 
thy children everywhere who humbly and rever- 
 ently think of thee ; in every race and clime and 
 nation; in every division of the Christian 
 Church ; in every division of the Church Univer- 
 sal of God, the Maker and Inspirer of all. 
 
 We thank thee, our Father in heaven, for all 
 our blessings the blessings of human society, of 
 civilization; for Christian teaching, Christian 
 knowledge, and Christian hopes. And, Almighty 
 One, let thy goodness be upon all everywhere, 
 according to their need. Lift up those who are 
 fallen; comfort those who are sorrowing and 
 broken-hearted; enlighten the darkness of those 
 who are benighted; and lead all gently by thy 
 hand to better things and to the fulfillment of 
 better hopes. And so may all thy people be 
 blessed in thee now and hereafter and forever. 
 AMEN. 
 
 18 
 
MAECH 3, 1889 MOENING 
 
 THE day is bright and fair, the world is filled 
 with the glory of the sun, and thy Spirit, God, 
 goes forth inspiring the hearts of all thy chil- 
 dren, and we come, beckoned by divine signals, 
 led on by holy hands, with our feelings drawn 
 toward thee, to our place of prayer. Come to 
 thy people as thou ever dost and hast done from 
 all time ; come to us as to thy own, and give thy 
 people peace. Forgive our sins; subdue our 
 minds to patience, to penitence, to prayer; lift 
 up our hearts in holy gratitude with exultation 
 of soul and bowing down and worship, and ris- 
 ing up before thee with awe and gladness and 
 terrible reverence and comfort at thy goodness 
 by thee manifested to thy children. 
 
 We always thank thee, Almighty One, we al- 
 ways bless thee, thou infinite and eternal God, 
 and with holy patience and penitence and prayer 
 we lift up our hearts to thee now. Let thy bene- 
 diction be upon the homes we have left for an 
 hour to come to this our house of God. Conse- 
 crate them, consecrate this. Wherever our 
 thoughts, flying on wings of imagination and 
 love, rest down upon those whom we would bless 
 19 
 
with thy blessing, there let thy love go inspiring, 
 and thy almighty hand sustaining, comforting, 
 and supporting. Let thy tender benediction be 
 upon all thy suffering ones. Deal kindly with 
 the wretched, the poor, the weak, the wicked, the 
 wise, the good, the true. Thou knowest, Almighty 
 One, our wants; thou knowest and thou canst 
 supply them by thy Spirit and by thy grace and 
 thy power. Subdue our hearts to thee. Teach 
 us wisdom by thy divine grace and Spirit. Lead 
 us in plain paths of duty and consecrate to our 
 minds and hearts our daily work of coming be- 
 fore thee, and as we go forth at any hour of the 
 day, in the morning, at mid-day or evening, may 
 the rising of a new life, the satisfaction of mid- 
 day strength, the tender thoughts of the evening 
 glories, fill our hearts with the divine presence 
 and holy companionship of God in heaven. 
 AMEN. 
 
 God, thou Mysterious One, who dost move 
 on our right hand and on our left, ever present, 
 terrible, lovely Spirit, fill our hearts with all 
 things true and good and beautiful ; let us dream 
 and wonder and imagine of thee; let us be lost 
 in thy own infinite glory, manifested on earth 
 beneath and in heaven above; and may thy 
 indwelling Spirit kindle our hearts to all medi- 
 tation, prayer, and peace. AMEN. 
 20 
 
MAECH 3, 1889 -EVENING 
 
 LET thy blessing be upon us, God, according to 
 thy tender mercies and thy loving-kindness, ac- 
 cording to thy wisdom and thy grace. We thank 
 thee for the pleasant day, for the gentle night, 
 for thy hand that supports the morning and 
 evening, that leads forth the glory of noonday 
 and the majesty of night; in all we see thy pow- 
 er, thy wisdom, thy goodness, thy love. 
 
 We come each one from his place and duty 
 and his dwelling to this our common meeting- 
 place of prayer and teaching and song. Let our 
 hearts be in devout mood of pure feeling, of 
 clear intelligence, of devout faith and earnest 
 hope. We give thee gratitude for all our bless- 
 ings, the blessings of thy word spoken in all 
 places of thy domain and of thy kingdom, and 
 spoken in all times and all ages, among every 
 race of man in the common human earth. 
 
 Teach us by thy Spirit; inspire and refresh 
 the light of reason, a ray from thyself; purify 
 our affections by thy almighty Spirit that ever 
 goes forth among the children of men. Chastise, 
 rebuke, reprove, cheer, encourage, lift up, and 
 21 
 
bless thy people forever and ever. Forgive us 
 our sins and help us with thee to put them as far 
 from us as the east 'is from the west. Let thy 
 blessing be upon all manner and condition and 
 fortunes of men. Cheer up those who are in 
 great distress and perplexity of mind or body or 
 heart ; give them wisdom, give them self-control. 
 Make the pillow of the dying and lead them 
 gently on. Lift up those who are fallen ; and so 
 by thy grace and thy goodness be ever and ever 
 more for thy people. AMEN. 
 
 22 
 
MAECH 10, 1889 
 
 GOD, our Father, Infinite Spirit, Holy One, we 
 come again to our place of prayer ; again we quit 
 the usual cares and duties of labor and of life, to 
 come here to remind thee of our gratitude for 
 our divine calling in God, our Father, and we 
 leave our earthly dwellings for this our place of 
 prayer and worship, our remembrance of our 
 " house not made with hands, eternal in the 
 heavens. ' ' We come with gladness and with joy, 
 with awful mirth and song ; we come with grati- 
 tude and penitence and contrition, and bowing 
 down and rising up to worship thee, our Maker. 
 
 Forgive our sins ; remove them from us as far 
 as the east is from tne west. Pity our weak- 
 nesses, overcome our doubts, strengthen our 
 faith, and let us be glad in thee, our God, our 
 Kefuge, our Eock. 
 
 We thank thee always when we come together 
 in our place of prayer for the common blessings 
 of thy providence ; that we have food and cloth- 
 ing and comfortable shelter; that in all things 
 thy hand is bountiful, thy mercy is great, and 
 thy loving-kindness everlasting. We thank thee, 
 
Almighty One, that in the midst of perplexities 
 and doubts and fears, thy unspeakable gift has 
 never been taken from us, the gift of thinking 
 and of believing that somehow, in some way, 
 within some time, thy eternal good-will is ever 
 working and will work for the human family. 
 We thank thee for the ever-increasing experience 
 of our hearts which has increased our faith in 
 thy Spirit and thy grace, which teaches us to 
 overcome all the contradiction, the violence, the 
 guessing, the uncertainty, the suspicion of the 
 world and to believe that thou hast o'er every 
 child of man an eternal "Yea"; that thou hast 
 set in thy Son Jesus Christ an answer to all 
 the great hopes, the aspirations, the feelings, the 
 fears, and the loves of the human soul. May we 
 enter into that great inheritance, and as thou 
 hast given us examples here and there in the 
 hearts of the good, may we there behold its 
 beauty and accept its inspired power and grace. 
 We thank thee, Almighty God, that wherever 
 we are on earth, wherever our friends are on 
 earth or sea, they are at home with God ; that no 
 distance of land or ocean, of latitudes or longi- 
 tudes separate from thy almighty protection or 
 from thine inspiring Spirit; and we commend, 
 O God, to thee those whom we love and think of 
 here and there. We pray for all thy common 
 human family in earth or in heaven; that every 
 
race and tribe and soul of man, in every age and 
 every nation and on the far-off islands of the 
 sea, may be all enfolded in thy almighty power, 
 thy gracious and loving providence, and inspired 
 by thy loving, tender Spirit. Let thy blessing be 
 upon us now; let thy Spirit be infused in com- 
 mon communion and our minds set free in the 
 larger liberty of the sons of God, and know 
 what it is to love God, to love one another, and 
 feel that we belong to thy common human 
 family. AMEN. 
 
MAECH 17, 1889 MOENING 
 
 HOLY FATHER, Almighty One, our wants are 
 ever new and our life is ever received afresh 
 from thy hands and thy Spirit, and we come to 
 our place of prayer to pour out our hearts to 
 thee in devout gratitude, in penitence, in holy 
 joy and awful gladness. We thank thee for thy 
 protecting care, for thy almighty hand ever 
 stretched out to hold us up, for thy love that 
 ever encompasseth us, and for thy holy provi- 
 dence, infinite, merciful, gracious, and kind ; and 
 we thank thee that amid all the mystery and 
 pain of life we have a confidence in thee our 
 Maker that thou knowest all things, and when 
 we are involved in great trouble or care or per- 
 plexity and all the waves of affliction go over us, 
 we thank thee that we do still have great confi- 
 dence that thou knowest all, thou doest all, thou 
 seest the end from the beginning, and that no 
 hurt can come to thy beloved. 
 
 We thank thee, Almighty God, that in the 
 days that have past since we met here we have 
 been able to go over our usual cares and business 
 with the world. If the world has gone evenly 
 
 26 
 
and well with us, we thank thee ; if adversity or 
 trial or pain has overtaken us, and we have 
 been comforted by the thought of our ignorance 
 and weakness and thy goodness and greatness, 
 and have found refuge in the Eternal Rock from 
 storm and tempest, we thank thee, thou Inspirer 
 of our hearts. Give us the grace and blessing, 
 we pray thee, to enter into thy divine kingdom 
 more and more, and that we may feel the power 
 of a superior world, that we may live in that 
 world to-day, and that all our affairs, our busi- 
 ness, our daily actions, our exchange of commun- 
 ion with our fellow men, may be so conducted as 
 to bring back more and more that kingdom of 
 power and grace and love. 
 
 Almighty God, our Father, let thy blessing be 
 upon all thy children to-day. Bless thine heri- 
 tage and lift up thy people forever and ever. 
 Work among the nations and the people of the 
 world. Let thy benediction be upon the rulers 
 and kings of mankind, upon the people far and 
 near, and may prosperity, peace, and heavenly 
 benediction descend upon the common family of 
 man. Let thy blessing be, as ours, upon our be- 
 loved wherever they are, on sea or land, at home 
 or abroad. May they be upheld by thy care and 
 protection and inspired by thy Spirit. Pity the 
 poor, the afflicted, the weak, the wandering, or 
 the wicked, and temper thy providence by holy 
 
 27 
 
chastisements, by tender pity and compassionate 
 love, and bring all thy people to dwell in the 
 tabernacle of the Lord. AMEN. 
 
 thou Inspirer of our hearts, confirm us now 
 in those things that we do most truly feel and be- 
 lieve. Help us to put our best thoughts and 
 purest feelings into practice in the walk of life, 
 and in the humblest work and duties and cares 
 to find there a teaching of thy will, thy purpose, 
 and thy Spirit. Give us a goodly prosperity and 
 give us fortitude to bear adversity ; and whether 
 it be prosperity or adversity, may we win the 
 great victories of human life, the victories of 
 purer souls, of eternal glory and eternal power. 
 AMEN. 
 
MAECH 17, 1889 EVENING 
 
 HOLY FATHER, Almighty One, hear the prayers 
 of thy children now, and come to thine own with 
 blessing and peace. We reverence thee and bow 
 down in awe and holy fear ; we lift up our voice 
 in devout song and praise and prayer. Pity our 
 weakness, help our ignorance, heal our doubts 
 and our wounds of mind and heart, and give thy 
 people everlasting peace and trust and comfort 
 and love. If any of thy people are in heavy 
 trial, if they are alone in Gethsemane, be with 
 them there with thy power and Spirit and lift 
 them up and save them forever and ever. And 
 if the cup may not pass from them, may they be 
 enabled to say from hearts enriched by obedi- 
 ence and faith, ' ' Not my will but thine be done. ' ' 
 We rejoice, Almighty God, in the themes of 
 thy eternal truth, that truth which thou hast set 
 in the nature of man, in the world around us, in 
 the works of thy hands ; and hast illustrated by 
 the lives of prophets and martyrs and saints, 
 and of thy Son Jesus Christ. We thank thee 
 that that truth, rising upon the world, never 
 sets; that it knows no eclipse of its increasing 
 
 29 
 
glory, but stands higher and higher until its 
 beams shall illumine the whole world. 
 
 Confer upon us, thou Almighty Spirit, the 
 spirit of truth, the love of what is, the joy of thy 
 commandments, the beauty of thy love, and let 
 us in our daily lives, with simplicity of heart 
 and purity of thought, seek to know thee, to 
 know our own being, our inmost purpose; and 
 may our thoughts and our purpose be alike con- 
 secrated to thee. 
 
 Let thy blessing be in every heart of man ; let 
 it be in every human dwelling, resting down in 
 holy peace upon little children, upon youth, 
 upon mature age and manhood, and upon the 
 aged in years, and let all thy children be blessed 
 in thee, their Father in heaven. AMEN. 
 
 30 
 
MAECH 24, 1889 MORNING 
 
 THOU INFINITE AND HOLY ONE, Maker of all 
 things, and inspirer of all souls, who dwellest in 
 thy own eternal glory, in thy own eternal 
 strength, who art never moved, who alone art 
 from everlasting to everlasting, and thou who 
 alone in thyself art great, we, thy children, come 
 again to offer our prayers. We lift up our hearts 
 to thee in all our wants and weakness and our 
 sins, and we implore thee to forgive these and to 
 supply those from thy abundant grace, thy ten- 
 der mercy, and thy bounteous glory. We come 
 with all the daily wants and experiences of our 
 lives, led forth as though by thy holy providence, 
 made glad and happy in the light of day, in the 
 genial presence of friends, with enough of this 
 world's goods and to spare. Some, it may be, 
 are afflicted, are sorrowful and broken-hearted; 
 some indeed are discouraged, it may be, and per- 
 plexed beyond their endurance; and we pray, 
 Holy Father, let thy infinite knowledge, thy 
 tender love, that goodness and love which we 
 implore, mete out all that is wanted to every 
 pure heart. 
 
 31 
 
Almighty God, let us thank thee now for all 
 common gifts received from thee. We always 
 want, we always shall want from thee, and we 
 would not be bereft of our wants. We all ever 
 desire thee more and more. We would be par- 
 takers of thy eternal beauty and glory more and 
 more, and the more we want the more thou wilt 
 supply. We give thee blessing, Almighty God, 
 and gratitude that in the usual circumstances of 
 life we have been permitted to go through an- 
 other week, with our business with the world, 
 blessed by thee, if we have made that business 
 an honorable service to one another, to men, and 
 to God, if in the humblest duties of our life we 
 have manifested to the world that we have had 
 such thoughts of thee as kept our hearts in awe 
 and lifted us up in joy and peace. 
 
 We thank thee, Almighty God, for the com- 
 mon benefits and light of thy love and grace, and 
 power and providence, upon our common land 
 and country ; for all the men of honor, for all the 
 noble records of the past treasury of our history, 
 the treasury of God's will, the treasury of hu- 
 man strife and human mercies in which the good 
 has sustained itself above the evil, and brought 
 a blessing to mankind; in these things we re- 
 vere thy will and thy goodness forever and ever. 
 
 And now, Holy Father, what wait we for? 
 Let thy blessing come. Let thy Spirit be with thy 
 
 32 
 
beloved. Consecrate us to each other, to thyself, 
 and may we be prepared by service, by service 
 here in thy house, to give thee service wherever 
 we are abroad in the world of men ; and whether 
 here or there, on land or sea, in thick-peopled 
 cities or wide barren deserts, may thy presence 
 be with us, and may it be as near to us from 
 earth to heaven as from here to there, and may 
 we be ever near thy love. AMEN. 
 
 God, our Father, inspire the hearts of thy chil- 
 dren with the best they believe and the best they 
 know, and let thy eternal beauty, strength, and 
 loveliness be manifested to our hearts; and let 
 that strength and beauty and loveliness be in us 
 and lift us up forever and ever. AMEN. 
 
MAECH 24, 1889 -EVENING 
 
 ALMIGHTY GOD, thou joy and gladness of all the 
 ends of the earth, Maker and Inspirer of man- 
 kind and faithful Providence of our lives, gra- 
 cious, merciful, and gentle Teacher, day by day 
 we come to thee with rejoicing song and glad 
 refrain and reverent prayer, and from the holy 
 height of devout thought and feeling and con- 
 templation, we would look down o'er all the 
 scene of thy goodness, thy power, thy wisdom, 
 and thy love. Thou hast given no time when 
 thou hast not had on earth witnesses of thyself, 
 and when man was a child thou didst fold him in 
 thy arms and carry him upon thy bosom, and 
 leading him by the hand send him forth upon 
 the world to subdue it, to conquer it, and to win 
 unto himself everlasting life in thee, in whom 
 alone is immortality. We revere thy providence, 
 we love thy grace, and we bow in humble adora- 
 tion, in penitence and deep sense of need, in thy 
 holy presence. 
 
 We ask thy blessing upon us, Almighty God, 
 that by that Spirit whereby thou dost awaken 
 the souls of men and kindle in their hearts the 
 
 34 
 
great and illustrious sentiments of our nature 
 thou wilt increase our human sympathy, our 
 breadth of intellectual and moral feeling, the 
 eternal power and life of our faith, that we may 
 receive and feel and know how we are joined to 
 the common lot of man, to the common destiny 
 of thy human world, and that if we are 
 privileged above some, our duty, our obligation 
 is increased and our own responsibility to thee 
 and to one another is greater and greater. 
 
 Almighty God, our Father, we ask thy bless- 
 ing to-night upon all thy people wherever they 
 may be, upon all nations and races and children 
 of men, upon our common country, upon the 
 commonwealth to which we belong, here upon 
 the city in which we dwell; and let thy protect- 
 ing providence be over all the weak, the wander- 
 ing, the wicked, the foolish, the wise, the true, 
 the good. Chastise with wise severity and rebuke 
 with holy retribution, and let thy Divine Spirit 
 go forth and adjust itself in the hearts of men. 
 AMEN. 
 
 Almighty God, confirm now in our hearts 
 whatever truth we have. Let that truth be 
 settled on an eternal base. Let thy Spirit shine, 
 thy grace descend, and let our minds and hearts 
 rise in eternal strength and glory and peace. 
 AMEN. 
 
MAECH 31, 1889 MORNING 
 
 GOD, our Father, Infinite Spirit, Almighty Being, 
 we are here again in our place of prayer ; the sun 
 shines bright, the day is glorious, all creation is 
 glad, and the earth is filled with thy power and 
 glory and beauty and goodness. Thy providence, 
 wiser than our hearts and more patient than our 
 reason, brings about the regular succession of 
 day and night, of labor and rest, and we are 
 come to our place of adoration, prayer, peni- 
 tence, and peace, and ask thee that all the hearts 
 of thy children may be blessed. 
 
 Thy tender care, thy paternal love, thy wis- 
 dom, thy eternal righteousness, thy awful retri- 
 bution, let these be the dwelling-place of our 
 thoughts, the rest of our hearts, the peace of our 
 conscience ; and as we pray, for ourselves here, a 
 worshiping company, let thy benediction, thy 
 grace, thy wisdom, and thy power, go forth o'er 
 all the earth to gladden, refresh, sustain, and 
 encourage the heart of man. Be with all those 
 who are in great distresses, who are walking in 
 the midst of sharp trials and anxieties and fears, 
 and who know not what a day or an hour may 
 
bring; may they commit the keeping of their 
 souls to God as to a faithful Creator, and know 
 that no harm can come to thy beloved. 
 
 Let thy blessing be in the dwellings we have 
 left while we come to this our house of God. 
 Let those dwellings be consecrated by a pure 
 spirit, by sweet and lovely affection, by patient 
 will, by tender love, and may they be to us our 
 best symbol and expression of the divine king- 
 dom of God. 
 
 And now, Holy Father, come to thine own 
 here, to thy common human family, the nations 
 of the earth, the people of the country, the citi- 
 zens of the towns, the dwellers in the house of 
 prayer, and in thine abundant grace and al- 
 mighty power let all be blessed. AMEN. 
 
 Holy Father, move our hearts by thy Spirit 
 that we may learn quickly thy truth and thy 
 presence, and may we behold in the world which 
 thou hast made the manifestation of thy eternal 
 beauty and glory, and may our hearts and minds 
 be transfigured more and more into that beauty 
 and glory that is everlasting and forever and 
 ever. 
 
 Let thy peace and thy blessing be upon us. 
 Go with us where we go ; stay with us where we 
 stay ; come with us where we come ; and in thine 
 eternal presence let us live. AMEN. 
 37 
 
MAECH 31, 1889 -EVENING 
 
 ALMIGHTY GOD, our Father, we give thee blessing 
 for the pleasant day, for the genial night, the 
 calm fresh air, the night heavens with all their 
 glory, and the peace that gathers around our 
 earthly dwellings. Let thy blessing be upon us ac- 
 cording to our need. Supply well and abundant- 
 ly by thy Spirit all our wants, and may we be 
 blessed with that better and diviner knowledge, 
 the blessing of knowing our wants, our wants of 
 one another, our wants of thee, our Maker and 
 Inspirer. 
 
 May the spirit of truth dwell in our hearts so 
 that we shall love and revere and honor what- 
 ever thou hast done, whatever thou hast said, 
 and whatever places or footsteps thou hast hal- 
 lowed by thy presence and power and providence 
 and life in the world of men. 
 
 Almighty One, thou who turnest the hearts of 
 princes as the rivers of water are turned, let thy 
 word have free course and be glorified upon the 
 earth ; let thy Church, the Church of the Living 
 God, be lifted up with towers and bulwarks and 
 defenses, and let thy Spirit be with thy people, 
 
 38 
 
and thy providence ever guide them on and on 
 to the unknown land whither thou wilt lead 
 them. Let our patient minds be constant in 
 duty, faithful in every trust, honorable and 
 pure in every relation. 
 
 May we find, God, that thy word is not 
 lifted up on high that we should send for it 
 there, that it is not in the deep that we should 
 send for it there, but "Lo, it is nigh thee, even 
 upon thy lips and in thy mouth," the word of 
 faith, the word of that humble faith in God, our 
 Maker, in Jesus Christ, thy Son, the inspiration, 
 the life of thy people. 
 
 Let thy tender, pitying care be over all thy 
 people, over those who are in distress, those who 
 are in happiness and joy. May all be wisely 
 taught and chastened and blessed in thee ; and as 
 years increase and time runs on in its ceaseless 
 beat, may we all grow wiser, better, tenderer of 
 heart, more genial in feeling, and more righteous 
 in will. AMEN. 
 
APEIL 7, 1889 - MOBNING 
 
 FATHER ALMIGHTY, thou in whose hand we 
 live, whose inspiration is the source of reason, 
 faith, and love; the day is bright and fair, the 
 sun in strong, the ocean rolls as in the hollow of 
 thy hand, the mountains stand fast as by thy 
 eternal word ; thy law is stamped in letters of 
 life upon all things that thou hast made, from 
 the sun and moon and stars and the revolving 
 earth to all varieties of trees and blooming 
 flowers, and thy word and thy power and thy 
 law are written in our hearts. With reverence, 
 with holy fear, with awful gladness and mirth 
 we call upon thy name. We speak to thy heart, 
 we pray to thy love. We implore thy wisdom 
 and repose in thy almighty goodness, and as we 
 come to our place of prayer we think in our 
 inmost souls what we really are, what we are, 
 not as compared to others, who may be better, 
 who may be worse, but what we are ourselves by 
 the temper of our minds, by the purity of our 
 thoughts, by the direction of our will, and by our 
 honest, sincere, and simple desires before God. 
 May we from the depths of our hearts cry unto 
 40 
 
thee, l ' God, search me, know me, try my ways 
 and see if there be any wicked ways in me, and 
 lead me in the way everlasting." 
 
 We implore thy tender pity and forgiveness 
 upon every contrite heart, upon every broken 
 tender spirit, upon every promise of penitence 
 and every aspiration for a better life, and as we 
 look back clearly o'er the past, seeing many 
 things forgotten that are sometimes revived, and 
 many things which we would forget but which 
 live with us for a constant reproach; as we look 
 back o'er the bleak distances of opportunities 
 lost, of occasions gone, of sins committed, 
 Heaven, let some power of thy reviving grace 
 send a gleam of life and beauty o'er all that past 
 and bring back to us something of the innocent 
 phases of life, something of the loveliness of 
 childhood, and create within us some sentiments 
 of a childhood's heart. Increase in our experi- 
 ence those infinite and unsearchable depths of 
 wisdom and love, and penitence and fear, and all 
 those emotions, experiences, and feelings of the 
 heart which reveal to us our infinite nature and 
 our relations to God. Help us, we pray thee, to 
 bring such thoughts, such sentiments, and such 
 truths into our daily lives that we may set our 
 houses and our homes in the order of the heaven- 
 ly beauty. Let childhood be blessed in them, 
 youth nurtured and strengthened against all 
 
 41 
 
temptation and wrong, and over all let there be 
 gladness and beauty and reverence and fear of 
 thee. 
 
 Almighty God, we ask thy blessing that it may 
 be diffused abroad everywhere; that thy good- 
 ness shall be as wide as the gleam of the sun; 
 that thy eternal good- will, working ever for thy 
 kingdom, will work that that kingdom may come 
 in our hearts, and through us may it come to 
 the world. 
 
 Hear our prayers, forgive our sins, lead us by 
 thy hand, and bring us at length to thy eternal 
 peace and power and love and goodness. AMEN. 
 
 God, our Light, illumine us by thy Spirit, 
 and drive out all our poor conceits of knowledge 
 and seeing, and reveal that inner glory and in- 
 spired sight which sees thy truth, thy law, and 
 thy love. May we be blessed in the truth, 
 strengthened in the law, and comforted and 
 blessed in the love. AMEN. 
 
APEIL 7, 1889 -EVENING 
 
 ALMIGHTY FATHER, we thank thee for thy pro- 
 tecting care, thy holy providence, thy inspiring 
 Spirit, thy paternal love. They are expressed 
 in our lives, in the events of every day, in the 
 experience of our hearts, and in all the great 
 sentiments with which thou hast blessed and 
 comforted and adorned our earthly lot. We 
 thank thee that we see in the life of the world 
 the home of thy providence, reminding us that 
 thy Spirit has been going forth from the begin- 
 ning and is going and shall go time without end. 
 For the vision of the kingdom of God and so- 
 ciety of perfect and exalted souls on earth and 
 in heaven, the hope of mankind, the destiny of 
 thy earthly children, we thank thee, and also for 
 all who have ascended from this life believing 
 they saw a distant light, the light of a heavenly 
 dwelling, the light of a Heavenly Father's love; 
 and we implore thee for thy gracious Spirit to 
 increase our human sympathies that we may be 
 able to restore in our minds and hearts some- 
 thing of the experience of the world, and have 
 our imaginations to go back to the primeval age, 
 to the days of the childhood of the world, the 
 
 43 
 
feebleness of man's estate, his groping in much 
 darkness and ignorance, yet illumined by celes- 
 tial light; and we may see that great, that 
 mighty thing, in the human world, the teachings 
 and word of thy Son Jesus Christ. 
 
 We thank thee, Almighty Father, that thou 
 hast given us so great occasion to be called the 
 sons of God, and as we endeavor humbly to walk, 
 each one in the station which thy providence has 
 assigned us, may we find, each one in his station, 
 service enough to render unto thee, his God. May 
 we bring to our daily affairs, to our life at home, 
 to all the kindly charities of our earthly 
 thoughts, may we bring a refined and exalted 
 spirit, a pure temper and will, a cheerful and 
 courageous heart, able to bear suffering, able to 
 bear heavy burden; and may we not expect too 
 much from this world, but expecting less may re- 
 ceive more more of thy Spirit, more of thy wis- 
 dom, and more of that divine inheritance which 
 will stand us in good stead in that world to 
 which we go. 
 
 Almighty God, let thy blessing be upon all the 
 families of the earth. Let it be among the sick, 
 upon the country, upon all the homes and dwell- 
 ings of our fellow citizens and our neighbors. 
 Counsel, sustain, and bless by thy Spirit and 
 providence all of us and every child of man. 
 AMEN. 
 
 44 
 
APEIL 14, 1889 MOENING 
 
 GOD, our Father, Infinite and Holy One, mys- 
 terious, wonderful, almighty, we thank thee for 
 thy protecting care, thy strong and gentle provi- 
 dence, thy pure spirit, thy paternal love ; and we 
 look up to thee from humble and devout hearts 
 to implore thy goodness, to rest upon thine al- 
 mighty arm, to give thee thanks and gratitude 
 and awful praise with gladness and holy mirth 
 for what thou art in thyself, in thine exceeding 
 glory, for what thou art to us by thy providence 
 and love, and for what thou art to us in our own 
 being, life, and actions. In thee we live and 
 move and have our being, Infinite Spirit, Awful 
 One, infinite, lovely Father. 
 
 And as we come in the gentle light of a pleas- 
 ant day again to our place of prayer, we would 
 ascend into the high places of our experience 
 and down into the depths of our humility and we 
 would lift up our voices to thee from the depths 
 and from the heights; and as we look along all 
 the line of our earthly way we give thee praise 
 and gratitude, and penitence and joy, and tears 
 and gladness. 
 
 45 
 
We thank thee, Almighty One, that in the 
 sharpest stress of human experience, in the 
 midst of many perplexities, borne down it may 
 be by heavy trials now and then, we thank thee 
 for the unspeakable gift that thou hast given us, 
 the gift of believing in thee as children believe in 
 their father because they think he knows, be- 
 cause they trust his wisdom, because they feel 
 his love ; and we thank thee that thou hast given 
 us that great gift of believing that somehow and 
 somewhere and somewhen, good will come out 
 of apparent evil, and that if we are in the simple 
 way of duty, if we are childlike and faithful, and 
 are living without anxiety for this or that, but 
 reposing on thee and following thy lead, that all 
 shall be well, more than well, with us. And we 
 give thee thanks and gratitude, Almighty God, 
 that the worst never comes to us ; that whatever 
 our lot and our trial, it is not as hard as it might 
 be. The darkness is not as dark as it might be, 
 and there is a wonder beyond, a wonder of be- 
 lieving and hoping and trusting that thou seest 
 the end from the beginning and that thy eternal 
 will is eternal good. We pray that by thy Spirit 
 we may enter into this experience with fullness 
 of life, with cheerful resignation of heart, with 
 humble sense of weakness and sin ; and that thou 
 wilt give us strength enough to be thy people in 
 our day. 
 
 46 
 
Inspire us, we pray thee, to noble ambitions 
 and godly lives ; kindle in our hearts those things 
 that are so beautiful that we will rest under 
 their banners for their own sakes, for their own 
 love, for their own glory. May we have more 
 and more things, thoughts, imaginations, and 
 affections that we are willing to live for and die 
 for. May we have more and more of those un- 
 selfish experiences which teach us that if we 
 would be anything we will be willing to be noth- 
 ing. And so may we be lead into the mystery 
 and secret of thy life, the losing ourselves to find 
 ourselves, the losing ourselves that we shall be 
 saved. 
 
 Almighty God, our Father, we thank thee for 
 all the blessings of our lot, the common blessings 
 of daily life, our food and raiment ; for comfort- 
 able shelter, for gentle and pure light, and for 
 all the benedictions and blessings that beam 
 upon us from the eyes of those that love us and 
 from the hearts in which we trust. These, these, 
 God, are thine, thou Inspirer of all goodness, 
 all beauty, and all love. 
 
 We would call to mind to-day the events in the 
 life of Jesus, our Master. We would call to mind 
 his trials, his temptations, the illusions and all 
 the dreams and all the popular vanities which 
 gather around it, and we will learn from them 
 lessons of wisdom and of truth, and of all beauty 
 
 47 
 
and of holiness ; and as we hear the cheers, as we 
 hear the hosannas which hailed him, and which 
 the next day or the day after were turned to 
 storm and contempt, may we see his exceeding 
 glory, infinite and divine his moral strength 
 which could not be moved, by which he stood in 
 his own divine power, in his own eternal might, 
 and overcame with the sweetness and purity and 
 strength of his spirit all the scorn of the world. 
 So let our hearts be taught ; so let our footsteps 
 be led and guided by eternal wisdom and eternal 
 love. AMEN. 
 
 God, thou who giveth to every man liberally 
 and withholdeth not, fulfill now in our hearts the 
 best thoughts, the purest purposes that we feel 
 and know ; and when we go to our places, to our 
 homes, to the world of business, the conflicts of 
 life, may we keep the citadel of being in awful 
 fear of terrible glory and surrounded by ever- 
 lasting fires of watchfulness and purity and 
 truth. And may the peace of God ever be with 
 us ; the peace of a pure conscience, of an upright 
 mind, of a tender heart; and may it be enough 
 for us to know that thou art and we are. AMEN. 
 
 48 
 
APEIL 14, 1889 -EVENING 
 
 GOD, our Father, thou who makest day and 
 night, who causeth the day spring to know its 
 place and the setting sun to rejoice in its glory, 
 we come again to our place of prayer for an 
 hour, to meditate, to think, to worship, to pray 
 to thee. We come with grateful minds, ever 
 bearing in our hearts remembrance of thy good- 
 ness. The whole earth is full of it, and thy wis- 
 dom is high above the heavens and deeper than 
 the earth ; thy understanding is from everlasting 
 to everlasting, and thou hast guided man in his 
 feeble steps through much ignorance and blind- 
 ness and sin, and thou hast concealed in his heart 
 thy word of truth and love and righteousness. 
 We adore thy goodness, we bow reveringly be- 
 fore thy power, we owe with gratitude thy eter- 
 nal kingdom and righteousness and rule. 
 
 Let thy blessing be on all to-night, upon the 
 common family of thy earthly children, and let 
 thy blessing and thy Spirit be with all those 
 whom we think of when we think most deeply, 
 most affectionately of the bonds that bind us 
 here on earth. Wherever they may be, on land, 
 
on the sea, going or coming or staying, may 
 they be blessed and upheld in the same almighty 
 providence, and may we all feel that distance 
 cannot be great between those who are thinking 
 the same thoughts, worshiping the same God, 
 and enfolded in the same almighty, almighty 
 care. Let thy blessing be upon the people of 
 this city and upon all their dwellings. Deal gen- 
 tly with the weak, the wandering, the straying; 
 with wise severity with those who are willfully 
 wrong, and let all thy goodness again and again 
 pass before thy children, that they may be 
 turned from every evil way to their Father in 
 heaven. 
 
 Let thy blessing be upon all the widows, the 
 sick, the tried, the afflicted, and the broken- 
 hearted. May they have a mysterious comfort, 
 even in their sorrow and trial itself, and may 
 pain and anguish reveal in their hearts an awful 
 mystery, the mystery of suffering to bring our 
 hearts to the deepest experience of loveliness 
 and truth. 
 
 Almighty One, hear our prayers, forgive our 
 weaknesses and our sins, and lead us by thy 
 strong and merciful hand in safety and in peace. 
 AMEN. 
 
 50 
 
APEIL 21, 1889 - MOENING 
 
 GOD, our Father, Infinite and Holy One, thou 
 whose word is spoken in all places of thy domin- 
 ion and the uttermost parts of the world; thou 
 whose law goes forth to hold the worlds in their 
 places and in whose hand the ocean rolls; thou 
 hast proclaimed thy word and thy truth to the 
 children of men; thou hast set thy Son Jesus 
 Christ to confirm that word, to establish and to 
 keep it forever and ever. 
 
 We adore thy greatness; we bow in humble 
 reverence before it, and we lean with filial trust 
 upon thy almighty paternal arm. We thank 
 thee (owning the presence of thy inspiring 
 Spirit in all those great sentiments of the human 
 heart which have struggled on in the darkest 
 periods of man's trial and ignorance and sin) 
 that somehow through the wicket gate of death 
 we see a heavenly light. We thank thee (owning 
 the influence of thy everlasting Spirit) for that 
 faith by which thine humble children are gone 
 up from the earth as the sea ascends in mists. 
 They have gone up with a humble hope, with a 
 humble trust, that somewhere and somehow they 
 
 51 
 
would be nearer thee, their Maker, and feel thy 
 paternal arm. In times of darkness and igno- 
 rance and sin we thank thee that this great hope 
 has struggled on in the human soul. 
 
 And we thank thee, Almighty One, in the 
 name of thy Son Jesus Christ, that thou hast 
 confirmed the heart of man and strengthened his 
 hope and comforted his spirit; that thou hast 
 given to him thy Son to abolish death, to bring 
 life and immortality to light through his gospel, 
 and to establish thy eternal kingdom and that 
 infinite communion of earth and heaven. Let 
 this Spirit and this faith be upon all thy people 
 to-day; on every land and clime and race and 
 tongue, and in whatever humble ways men wor- 
 ship thee, in whatever ignorance they lift up 
 their hands unto thee, God, hear their prayers, 
 strengthen their hearts, confirm their hopes, and 
 lead them forth to everlasting life. 
 
 We ask thy blessing upon us now, and receive, 
 we pray thee, our humble prayers, our penitent 
 confessions; and lift up thy people forever and 
 ever. 
 
 Let the blessing of the truth of the gospel of 
 thy Son be in our dwellings. Let it be in all our 
 hearts, blessing, consoling, lifting up, and com- 
 forting amidst trials or perplexities or joy or 
 gladness forever and ever. AMEN. 
 
 52 
 
APEIL 21, 1889 EVENING 
 
 ALMIGHTY GOD, our Father, we thank thee for 
 the pleasant day, for the gentle evening hour, 
 the fresh evening breeze, for the quiet of home, 
 the fair and terrible heavens of night, and for 
 thy watching over all. 
 
 We come to thee in the evening hour to our 
 place of prayer. We come to take thy name rev- 
 rently upon our lips, to bow down and rise up 
 before thee with reverent act of holy fear, of 
 awful gladness and mirth, and humble peni- 
 tence and contrition. Pity our weaknesses ; for- 
 give our sins; restore us from every way of 
 thoughtlessness or ingratitude or wrong ; and let 
 all thy goodness pass before us, that we may 
 know and love thee for what thou art. 
 
 Tenderly let thy gracious compassion rest up- 
 on all thy afflicted children. Pity the poor, the 
 distressed, the captive, the prisoner, and may 
 all conditions and fortunes of earthly life to 
 which thy children may be appointed be blessed 
 by thy o'erruling providence; and wherever 
 they may be there let thy pity be also. 
 
 Almighty God, thou whose providence hast 
 53 
 
guided thy human race from the beginning 
 from its days of feebleness, ignorance, weakness 
 and want, and who hath kept thy word and 
 thy promise to thy people, leading them on, we 
 adore with reverence and gratitude thy presence 
 and power in thy Holy Church thy Holy 
 Church throughout the world, of all classes and 
 races and of all men. We thank thee for thy 
 Holy Spirit, which enchurches itself in the 
 human world and leads forth the common race of 
 man to its great destiny. 
 
 Open our eyes and hearts to that truth, that 
 truth that thou hast ordained to go forth from 
 conquering to conquer, and in our hearts may it 
 have free course and be glorified in the light of 
 reason, in the purity of imagination and affec- 
 tion, in our humble desire to serve God and our 
 fellow men, and thus whatever earthly event 
 may o'ertake us, may we ourselves be free free 
 as those who are made free by the spirit of God. 
 AMEN. 
 
 54 
 
APEIL 28, 1889 MOENING 
 
 GOD, our Father in heaven, Infinite and Holy 
 One, almighty and all-good, we come again to 
 our place of prayer. The week has passed, the 
 days are gone; thy strong and merciful hand 
 hath led and sustained us; thy Spirit hath in- 
 spired us; thy providence hath protected us; 
 and we come now to lift up our minds in com- 
 mon prayer and hymn and song, to bow down 
 before thee, reverently and devoutly, and with 
 penitence and humility to implore thy loving 
 forgiveness. 
 
 Almighty God, be with thy people as thou 
 hast been from of old. Let thy goodness be ac- 
 cording to our wants, our ignorance, our weak- 
 ness, frailty, and sin. Thou knowest us alto- 
 gether, and it is well for us that thou shouldst 
 know us fully. May we by thy Spirit be able to 
 say with the sincerity and simplicity of a child- 
 like heart, "Search me and know me, and see if 
 there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in 
 the way everlasting." 
 
 We always have much and everything to 
 
 55 
 
thank thee for and to bless thy holy name. It is 
 thy hand that guides us and thy Spirit that in- 
 spires us ; and by thy blessing we are beset with 
 many a charity and many holy things, the in- 
 spiring gifts of our earthly lot. 
 
 We thank thee, Almighty God, for the holy 
 companionships of life ; for its homes, its beauty 
 and grace and many virtues, its loveliness and 
 many self-sacrifices, its tender sentiments that 
 bind us heart to heart and thought to thought. 
 And if any of thy children look back o'er the 
 past, o'er a past that was wasted, o'er lives 
 much of which they deplore, may they in such 
 an hour, be restored by some fresh impulse of 
 the will, some divine thoughts of thy suggestion 
 and thy Spirit, which will set them free in the 
 gladness and peace of thy own eternal life. 
 
 Almighty God, we ask thy blessing upon us 
 now, that in our minds and hearts (fit temples 
 for thy Spirit) we may worship thee in sincerity 
 and truth. May we have abundant blessings of 
 thy grace, abundant communions of thy Spirit, 
 and in humility and tenderness of mind and 
 feeling may we be indeed adopted into the house- 
 hold of our Father in heaven. Let thy blessing 
 be upon all those whom we love everywhere; 
 upon those who are in any distress, affliction, or 
 perplexity of mind or heart. Open before them 
 a plain path. Lead them by a strong hand. 
 
 56 
 
Comfort them and lift them up forever and 
 ever. 
 
 Almighty God, forgive our sins; pity our 
 weaknesses and lift upon us the light of thy 
 grace and thy countenance, and give thy chil- 
 dren abundant peace. AMEN. 
 
 Almighty God, hear our prayer. Penitent, 
 humble, self-reliant, and relying on thee, help 
 thy servants in their most tried moments, in 
 their sharp temptations, with purity of will and 
 sweetness of affection, to read the life in thy 
 law ; and may wisdom and truth and virtue seem 
 beautiful to us ; and young or old, rich or poor, 
 wherever we may be, may we hear thy voice and 
 answer, "Here am I." AMEN. 
 
 57 
 
APEIL 28, 1889 - EVENING 
 
 ALMIGHTY and most merciful God, our Father 
 in heaven, infinite in thy greatness and in thy 
 goodness, who hast revealed thyself and art re- 
 vealing thyself unto us through the generations 
 and lives of men, in our own hearts, in our 
 earthly experience; and thou art making known 
 to us continually thy ways, thy word, and thy 
 commandments. We would hear thy word. We 
 would obey thy call. We adore thy providence 
 as it is manifested in the world of men. We 
 would, with devout feeling and pure imagination, 
 go back in our thoughts to the early times of 
 thy providences and thy doings in the world. 
 
 God, thou hast no time, and the ages are 
 but as a hand Vbreadth unto thee. Man has had 
 his beginning, his childhood, his ignorance, his 
 blindness, and his need of continual guidance 
 and teaching and guardianship and care from 
 thee. And we thank thee, Almighty God, as we 
 run back in thought and imagination that we 
 can see that thou hast treated man kindly. Thou 
 hast taken him in thine arms, and he has seen his 
 own image in thine eyes, and thou hast preserved 
 58 
 
him as the apple of thine eye. Thou hast led 
 him by the hand, held him in thine arms, taught 
 him the simplest words of thy truth and com- 
 mandment, and led him forth to a large place 
 from conquering to conquer the world around 
 him by the power of that spiritual being which 
 thou hast given him. 
 
 We thank thee, Almighty God, that devout 
 and simple minds, the more they know the more 
 childlike they feel; the greater the conquests of 
 their knowledge, the simpler their hearts; and 
 that as we grow older and the stream grows 
 deeper that bears us on to the infinite sea, we 
 thank thee that our highest experience is to be- 
 come childlike again, to forego our worldly vani- 
 ties and conceits, to remember our ignorance and 
 our weakness, and to look into thy face with filial 
 confidence and filial trust. Let all our earthly 
 experiences, and all our knowledge of the world, 
 and all the trial of our hearts, and all the glories 
 of our minds be chastened by such thoughts. 
 May our trials be consoled. May our knowledge 
 be made modest and humble. May our reverence 
 for the human heart and the human mind be 
 greater and greater, and may we learn that thy 
 grace and distinguished expression to us are 
 through our fellow beings ; and so may our sym- 
 pathy increase, and may we learn something of 
 what it is we need, and know when we talk of the 
 
love of God that it is a love for all that is human, 
 a love for every human child, with all its affec- 
 tions, trust, burden, or care, a love for every 
 triumph and conquest and faith and emotion; 
 and may we learn something of what it is to be 
 human ourselves. 
 
 Almighty God, our Father, hear our prayers 
 and pity our weaknesses; forgive our sins; 
 chasten our pride and our conceit, and give us 
 wisdom and virtue and faith and peace. AMEN. 
 
 60 
 
May 5, 1889 - MORNING 
 
 GOD, our Father in heaven, Infinite and Holy 
 One, we thank thee for thy protecting care, for 
 thy constant mercy, thy providence and good- 
 ness, thy wisdom, thine eternal good-will. We 
 thank thee for the fair order of our daily life; 
 that to a believing and trustful heart it seems 
 led forward by a providential hand. We are 
 guided in darkness and we are led in light. When 
 trial overshadows us and when peace surrounds 
 us, there seems to the trusting spirit a guiding 
 and protecting power over all, a fire by night a 
 cloud by day, an almighty goodness and eter- 
 nal wisdom and power and love. 
 
 We rejoice, Almighty Father, that thou hast 
 given us this grace and peace, that whatever 
 comes, that whatever happens, that whatever 
 bereavement or trial or joy or satisfaction or suc- 
 cess may come to us, in the depths of our hearts 
 we feel that there is a goodness and a wisdom 
 guiding us better than ourselves and better than 
 we know. 
 
 Almighty One, terrible in thy greatness, 
 lovely in thy goodness and in thy beauty, come 
 61 
 
now to the hearts of thy people ; comfort, cheer, 
 and bless; forgive our sins that we do repent 
 of; lift up our discouraged hearts into joy and 
 peace and triumph; and lead us on through a 
 land of beauty and wonder and goodness, to a 
 still fairer land of glory and power and might. 
 
 We thank thee, Almighty God, for the won- 
 ders of thy word ; the ancient stories of prophets 
 and martyrs and saints and of thy servants, 
 stories which do so illustrate our daily experi- 
 ence, and seem to be the thread on which our 
 common human lot is borne. 
 
 We thank thee, Almighty God, for all those 
 events in human experience that have a perpet- 
 ual import, how the planting of the earth, the 
 setting of the vine, the building of the wall and 
 tower may all illustrate our earthly scenes and 
 our earthly undertakings; and how all comes 
 to nought without God's blessing and God's 
 care, for the story of the wise man and king 
 who went to be crowned and came back expect- 
 ing wisdom and faithfulness and industry and 
 honorable gains from his servants; for the wise 
 reproof that he gave to one, the blessing and 
 honor he gave to the other, because he had been 
 faithful and true, or because he had been weak 
 and cowardly, we thank thee for it all. And 
 we pray thee, Almighty God, that thy Spirit in 
 us, inspiring our intelligence, purifying our con- 
 
sciences and our hearts, may enable us to see the 
 similitude of our earthly business with our 
 spiritual lives, the glory of that life which is 
 crowned with honor and immortality, symbolized 
 and set forth in our getting and our doing, our 
 planning and laying out our work for days and 
 months and years ; and we pray, God, that by 
 thy Spirit we may be illumined so as to turn 
 those sharp conflicts of mind and spirit within, 
 into those victories and triumphs of the heart 
 which are hidden from the world, but which thou 
 knowest, and which thy servants know in their 
 own breasts, and which give us a place in the 
 kingdom of God. May we ever be ready for 
 unseen conflicts, for that hidden wall of trial; 
 and may we feel with unseen hands the crown 
 put upon our brow. 
 
 Almighty God, we ask thy blessing now upon 
 all who belong to us by the tender ties of human 
 feelings and human love. We thank thee for all 
 those whom we have had with us ever before, 
 who are gone from us and are beyond our sight 
 on earth. And we lift up our hearts to thee in 
 gratitude for every manifestation of thy Spirit 
 to human eyes and human hearts, and child- 
 hood's love and childhood's memory. 
 
 Let thy blessing be upon thy people now, and 
 lift them up forever, and let not evil have domin- 
 ion over us to-day and for evermore. AMEN. 
 
Almighty God, our Father, fulfill now in the 
 hearts of thy servants their best thoughts, their 
 purest purposes, their right good-will. Help us 
 to overcome every infirmity of body or mind, and 
 in the strife of life may we have great conquests, 
 honorable, pure, and true; and in the secret 
 places of our own hearts and in the walks of the 
 world, may we have no doubt that things are 
 eternal and everlasting. AMEN. 
 
 64 
 
MAY 5, 1889 -EVENING 
 
 THOU INFINITE SPIRIT, Holy One, we would come 
 nigh unto thee with filial minds and trusting 
 hearts. We adore thee with awful reverence, with 
 gladness and holy mirth; and we lift up our 
 voice unto thee in song and prayer. Give thy 
 people of thy blessing and thy grace. Lead them 
 into fresh pastures of thy truth and thy love. 
 Let still waters sound near by, bringing peace 
 of the heart, the conscience, and the spirit. 
 
 Almighty One, thou in whose hand turns the 
 soft axle of the earth, bringing day and night, 
 ordering the fair seasons of the year, giving the 
 rain, refreshing the earth, and gladdening every 
 creature, gladden the hearts of thy people, and 
 refresh them with wisdom and knowledge and 
 beauty and truth. Pity our weaknesses; lift us 
 up if we fall ; be patient with us in our ignorance 
 and in our thoughtlessness; and may we feel 
 that by being tenderly and wisely chastised we 
 become wiser, better, more filial and true to thee. 
 Let the knowledge of thy pity and faith in thy 
 great wisdom, thy perfect righteousness, let 
 that kindle our hearts in the midst of life's 
 
troubles and trials and tumults. It takes us a 
 lifetime to learn the mysteries and plan of life ; 
 to learn how deep are its sorrows, how high its 
 morning^ how wide and strong its peace at 
 evening. 
 
 Teach us to feel that in thy almighty hand and 
 in thy perfect wisdom no harm can come to us 
 save through ourselves; that nothing can move 
 thine eternal good-will from its purpose, and 
 nothing can disturb its goodness, its power and 
 wisdom, but our own waywardness, our own 
 weakness or folly ; and so help us wisely to bear 
 whatever comes, mindful of that which comes by 
 thy providence, and mindful of that which comes 
 of our folly; and may we use wisely our expe- 
 rience, that our minds may be enriched, our 
 hearts made more soft and gentle and teachable ; 
 and as years increase may we have greater faith, 
 greater peace, and have no fear or alarm, know- 
 ing that we may be the friends of God. AMEN. 
 
MAY 12, 1889 
 
 GOD, our Father, Infinite and Holy One, whose 
 hand sustains, whose Spirit inspires, whose lov- 
 ing providence and paternal care blesses all thy 
 creatures, we thank thee for the pleasant day, 
 for all its happy opportunities, its freedom from 
 the common cares and labors of life, its compan- 
 ionships of home and friends, of childhood's 
 gladness, of youthful associations, of pure affec- 
 tions and tender cares ; and now we come in the 
 evening hour to look up to thee again in grati- 
 tude and in reverent thoughtfulness, to meditate 
 upon the things that belong to us as the children 
 of God, to think a little of the great mystery of 
 existence, the glory, the wisdom, the wonder, the 
 discouragement, the hope, and the victory of the 
 human world. 
 
 O God, help us by thy Spirit as we believe in 
 thee to believe in man, thy child ; help us as we 
 believe in thy providence to believe in the history 
 of the world, and as we read the early story and 
 read the later words of thy Son, may we with 
 exalted imagination, with pure insight, see the 
 meaning of all this human throng ; this mystery 
 67 
 
of existence in this world of hope and doubt and 
 fear and triumph and peace. 
 
 Almighty Father, reveal unto us the simple 
 truth and the simple faith that thou, the Maker 
 of all things, knowest what thou hast made ; that 
 thou knowest man's heart, his weakness and his 
 sin, and that the chastisements of thy righteous- 
 ness, the retributions of thy wisdom and thy love, 
 are all in his behalf, for his welfare and for thine 
 eternal good-will ; and help us, each one of us in 
 his place, in the place which is providentially 
 allotted to us in life, to act well our part with 
 consecrated will, with pure affection, with sim- 
 plicity of heart, to do our duty and to leave the 
 rest to God. 
 
 We thank thee for all the kindly charities of 
 our human life, all its tender blessings that as- 
 suage the hardness of our earthly lot, all its 
 heavenly benedictions and graces that descend 
 upon us, softening our hearts, purifying our af- 
 fections, clearing our vision, so that the truth of 
 God, his wisdom, our own hearts, and our own 
 consciences are as plain to us as the sun. 
 
 Let thy blessing be upon the dwellings of all 
 the people to-night, upon all the people of the 
 city, and upon all dwellings as the evening 
 shadow falls around them. Be with those on 
 whom a deeper shadow falls, deeper than the 
 shades of night the shadow of trial, of anxiety, 
 
of grief, and of death. Let thy gentle provi- 
 dences be with all the afflicted children of men, 
 and thy wisdom and thy goodness be ever going 
 forth to help the weary, to lift up the fallen, to 
 bless the helpless, and to lead thy children on 
 and on and on. AMEN. 
 
MAY 19, 1889 - MOENING 
 
 GOD, the God who alone surrounds us on every 
 side, thou Almighty, Mysterious One to whom all 
 hearts are opened, we look up to thee reverently 
 and devoutly, and we bow down with penitence 
 and holy fear, and rise up with gladness and 
 awful mirth before thee. We, thy children, al- 
 ways need thee ; we call thy name ; answer thou 
 us and hear our prayers. We come from the 
 daily, constant, yet everchanging experience of 
 the human life, its vicissitudes, its cares, its 
 hopes, its fears ; the life that thou hast given us, 
 a life of great rejoicing, a life of sublime wonder 
 and wisdom, a life of infinite anxiety, a life of 
 great and heavy pain and burden. We would 
 not think to comprehend it or to understand it, 
 but we would flee unto thee, thou Ordainer of it, 
 feeling our own ignorance and our dependence 
 on thee, and trusting that thou seest the end 
 from the beginning, and hast ordained our lot 
 in eternal wisdom, goodness, and good-will. 
 
 We come to thee, God, in this our place of 
 prayer. We have called upon thy name in gen- 
 tler accents at our own home, and in the private 
 
 70 
 
places of our thoughts, or it may be in a moment 
 upon the streets or by the wayside we have 
 thought of thee, our Maker and our Almighty 
 Friend, our final Judge. And we pray, Almighty 
 One, that these thoughts that come to our hearts 
 as doves to the windows may chasten and bless 
 and guide us ; that we may become so accustomed 
 with them that we shall be in companionship 
 with thee, and that we shall learn something of 
 the mystery of thy servant's ancient word, when 
 he spoke of the "light of God" that shone upon 
 his beloved in the heavenly kingdom, where they 
 have no need of the light of day or lamps or 
 candles, but the light of thy Spirit enlightenth 
 them, and they understand and see and discern 
 the deep things of thy Spirit and of thy truth. 
 
 Almighty One, terrible, holy, good, beautiful, 
 let thy Spirit rest upon thy people now. Com- 
 fort the afflicted; bind up the broken-hearted; 
 and help those that have been afflicted to learn 
 the great lesson of wisdom, the wisdom of their 
 own weakness, the wisdom of God's love, the 
 righteousness and uprightness of his providence, 
 and may they have the peace of abiding near 
 thee evermore. 
 
 We ask thy blessing, Almighty One, upon thy 
 
 common human family. We know that thou 
 
 carest for them ; that thou hast measured out to 
 
 them the bounds of their habitations; thou hast 
 
 71 
 
appointed their years, their times, their eras, and 
 we love with human sympathy and human re- 
 gard to speak the common name of man man, 
 thy son, man, thy beloved, weak, ignorant, and 
 blind, often going away in many sins. Pursue 
 him by thy love and bring him back, we pray 
 thee, from all wanderings, and finally lead him 
 on with all the conquering hosts of God to that 
 eternal city where thou art the light and glory 
 for evermore. AMEN. 
 
 God, our Father, thou who hast kindled our 
 hearts with celestial fires and inspired in us an 
 eternal hope, let the light of that fire and the 
 inspiration of that hope sustain, comfort, and 
 cheer the hearts of thy children with holy forti- 
 tude, with glad and happy courage, with patient 
 strength and holy faith. May our vision be puri- 
 fied ; may our hearts be made true ; and whatever 
 we are called upon to do or bear may we say 
 within our hearts, "This is the will of God," 
 and may we bear it and go forward with the 
 strength of God's will. 
 
 Let thy gentle and tender compassion be upon 
 all thy children; encourage, inspire, bless, and 
 make glad the heart of thy people forever and 
 forever. AMEN. 
 
 72 
 
MAY 19, 1889 - EVENING 
 
 AGAIN we come in the evening hour to this our 
 place of prayer. Again we lift up our heart and 
 voice to thee and commend ourselves and all 
 those who are dear to us to thy holy providence, 
 thy paternal and ever friendly care. 
 
 The pleasant day is gone. Evening shadows 
 are falling around the dwellings of man, and thy 
 care and thy watching are over all. We adore 
 thy providence; we wonder at thy works, the 
 marvelous works thou art doing and hast been 
 doing from when time began until now ; and the 
 experience of human life renewed in the hearts 
 of every generation, repeated in our hearts and 
 lives, the leading of thy providence, the moni- 
 tions of thy Spirit, the directions of thy will, 
 all these fill our hearts with a revering adoration, 
 and we look forward and around us and upward 
 and we gain new and divine suggestions and 
 hints of our being and our destiny. 
 
 We thank thee for all the records of thy provi- 
 dence in the world of men, for the testimony 
 which the great and the good, the illustrious, and 
 the ensamples of mankind give of their confi- 
 73 
 
dence and their trust when guided by thy al- 
 mighty hand. We thank thee for the story of 
 the childhood of man; for thy care of him, for 
 thy watching over him, for the adaptation of 
 thy teaching to his mind and heart, and for thy 
 guidance by thy Spirit and thy Son. 
 
 Let a reverent mind, we pray thee, let a de- 
 vout temper and disposition penetrate our hearts. 
 Dismiss from our minds all conceit of knowledge. 
 Now may reason and faith and affection, pure 
 feeling and pure thoughts, guide us, inspire us, 
 and keep us in perfect peace. 
 
 Almighty God, we ask thy blessing upon and 
 we commend to thy care all those whom we think 
 of when we think of the human ties that bind us ; 
 we remember our fathers and mothers in the 
 past ; and we remember our fathers and mothers 
 and brothers and sisters and neighbors and 
 friends of to-day. For every feature of human 
 life and experience, for every joy and grace, for 
 every pain we bear, we give thee revering grati- 
 tude, and we invoke on us daily thine eternal 
 good-will. 
 
 Let thy blessing be upon every human dwell- 
 ing, on every human heart; chastise, reprove, 
 lead by the hand, lift up, restore, and strengthen, 
 and let all thy children be blessed in thee. 
 AMEN. 
 
 74 
 
MAY 26, 1889 MOENING 
 
 INFINITE AND HOLY ONE, Almighty Maker and 
 Inspirer, Guide and Providence of thy people 
 forever and forever, we come to our place of 
 prayer and meditation with our continually re- 
 turning wants, with our newly offered praise, 
 with our humble, devout, and contrite prayer. 
 We own thy greatness, thy power, thy goodness, 
 thy eternal good-will. We come to thee conscious 
 of our own weaknesses, our shortcomings, our 
 frequent failures, and our often sins. We would 
 come with deep and tender humility; we would 
 come with sincere and holy penitence; and for- 
 give, thou Infinite God, forgive the sins that we 
 do repent of and sincerely forsake, and pity our 
 weaknesses, and lift up thy people forever and 
 forever. 
 
 We thank thee, Almighty God, for the common 
 blessings of our lot, those blessings which are so 
 common that we are quite inclined to forget 
 them, or take no note of them, the genial light 
 of day, the health-giving air, fair scenes and 
 lovely sounds, the companionship of friends, the 
 consecration of home with all its affections, all 
 
 75 
 
the genial ties and hopes and pleasures and satis- 
 factions, and all the deeper triumphs that give 
 solemnity and earnestness and awe to our earth- 
 ly lot. Holy One, we ask thy consecrating Spirit 
 in blessing upon each one of us in whatever posi- 
 tion thou hast placed us, and we pray thee to 
 adorn our earthly habitations with fair and 
 beautiful and holy associations. Let thy blessing 
 be upon us according to our age, according to 
 our experience, according to our wants; upon 
 infancy, childhood, youth, manhood, ripe years; 
 according to all that thou hast led thy children 
 into, through, and out of; according to all that 
 they have yet to learn to become wise and en- 
 lightened and true and pure and good. So tem- 
 per thy Spirit and thy providence that no evil 
 shall have dominion over us. Keep us to-day 
 without sin, and keep us all our days in eternal 
 heights of moral strength and purity and good, 
 where none can molest or make us afraid. 
 
 Holy Father, hear our prayer, our prayer 
 that is uttered and our prayer that is unuttered, 
 that which is deeper than words can tell and 
 flows from the depths of our hearts, the heights 
 of our imagination, and the wonder and infini- 
 tude of our love ; hear it all ; receive it into thine 
 own heart. Pity, forgive, cheer, encourage, and 
 lead thy people on. AMEN. 
 
 76 
 
Almighty God, hear now the prayers of thy 
 children, and answer them according to their 
 needs, to their sincere purpose, their tender and 
 pure affection. Consecrate us all to each other 
 and to thyself, by thy Holy Spirit. 
 
 Thou who turnest the hearts of kings as the 
 rivers of water are turned, turn our hearts to 
 genial sympathies, to pure feelings and simple 
 loves ; and may we be blessed in the common good 
 of the common heart inspired by thee. AMEN. 
 
 77 
 
MAY 26, 1889 EVENING 
 
 GOD, our Father in heaven, we are come again to 
 our place of prayer, and as thou drawest the 
 gentle curtains of night about the habitations of 
 men we would lift up our hearts to thee in rever- 
 ence and gratitude and humility and joy. We 
 thank thee for the pleasant day, for its happy 
 relief from the ordinary cares and business of 
 the world, for its blessed opportunities of home, 
 of childhood, of father and mother, brother and 
 sister and friend ; and we thank thee, Almighty 
 God, with simple and childlike feeling that, as 
 our experience increases, we feel that the world 
 is more and more one of a home in our Heavenly 
 Father 's house ; that here thou hast fitted us our 
 dwelling-place for a time, appointed us our sea- 
 sons, to lead us forth by the hands of thy holy 
 providence in a wise, paternal, severe, yet merci- 
 ful manner ; that thou art chastising us morning 
 and evening and admonishing us gently by thy 
 word and Spirit, and teaching us to live unto 
 thee, to love righteousness, to love one another, 
 and to love thee, our Father and our God. May 
 our filial heart receive these gentle teachings, 
 
 78 
 
these wise admonitions, and if we look up to thee 
 through our tears, if we sometimes cry to thee 
 from the sea of trouble, God, give us faith and 
 trust to look to thee with confiding hearts, and to 
 believe in and trust thee with pure and childlike 
 minds. 
 
 Almighty God, we ask thy blessing upon all 
 thy people of the city, of all conditions and for- 
 tunes and experiences. Thou alone knowest the 
 hearts of all men. Thou alone knowest their 
 trials, their temptations, their sins. Chastise 
 with wise severity, with tender mercy, with pa- 
 ternal love; and pursue all with thy goodness, 
 thy wisdom, and let thy goodness and thy wis- 
 dom be on our behalf always. 
 
 Give us such prosperity in the affairs of this 
 world as it good for us, and out of it all may we 
 gain that which is better, wisdom, grace, and 
 love, moral beauty, spiritual life, and when 
 finally we come to the end of this life may we not 
 be compelled to exclaim, " Vanity of vanities, all 
 is vanity, ' ' but may we be enabled to say from a 
 pure and sincere heart that we have found wis- 
 dom and grace and love and goodness in this 
 world, and that we won some of these things to 
 our hearts; and may we, when we are called to 
 do it, may we be enabled to dismiss this world as 
 a wise and good man dismisses his servant who 
 has served him well, commending him to another. 
 79 
 
And so, Holy Father, may thy word and thy 
 kingdom live forever. Lead thy people on and 
 on by thy power, by thy wisdom, and let none of 
 us ever repent that we have lived, or ever be 
 sorry that thou hast created us. Hear our 
 prayer, forgive our sins, and lift up thy people 
 forever and forever. 
 
 God, our Father, hear now, in heaven thy 
 dwelling-place, the prayers of thy people. In- 
 spire our hearts with thy truth that we may live 
 honestly and faithfully as we dwell here; and 
 with pure consciences and good hearts may we 
 pursue this world with higher objects than the 
 world itself ; and when our work is done may we 
 have no regrets, but rather gratitude, that we 
 have been sustained to do God's will. AMEN. 
 
JUNE 9, 1889 - MOENING 
 (After the Conemaugh disaster.) 
 
 GOD, Infinite and Holy One, righteous 1 Gov- 
 ernor, just Judge, Holy Father, we have gone 
 through another week of our earthly experience ; 
 day unto day have uttered speech, and night 
 unto night have shown knowledge of thee; our 
 hearts have borne testimony of thy word and 
 commandment; thy Spirit has breathed its in- 
 spiration into our hearts and thy holy providence 
 has spread over us its ever-protecting care; and 
 we come again with gladness and joy, and grief 
 and pain, and penitence and tears, and awful re- 
 joicing and mirth, with all the thoughts and 
 senses and feelings that muster in human hearts. 
 We are come from far and near upon the earth, 
 across continents or seas, and from the near- 
 lying city and streets and dwellings here. We 
 are come, some of us, it may be, from great dis- 
 tances, from wanderings of desire, from solitudes 
 of ingratitude and thoughtlessness and indiffer- 
 ence, great distances indeed from thee, from 
 ourselves, from the better angels of our minds, 
 from the guardian spirits of our affections; but 
 we would come back, we would come to thee, to 
 
 81 
 
one another, to this place of holy prayer, devout 
 penitence, humble teaching, holy desire ; and we 
 would come, O God, thou one in all, we would 
 come with increased human sympathies and more 
 abundant human charities and feelings. 
 
 If we have any personal or peculiar or hidden 
 distress of our own hearts, save us, God, from 
 the selfishness of it; save us from that seclusion 
 which grieves and mourns, and grieves and 
 mourns, saying, "Was there ever any prophet 
 afflicted as this prophet?'' but let our hearts be 
 opened wide to receive the monitions of thy 
 Spirit and providence always, that we may 
 learn how great a company the afflicted are ; and 
 if we have joy and gladness, may we multiply it 
 as the light of day is multiplied ; may we multi- 
 ply it as thy Son multiplied the bread to feed the 
 famished multitude, multiply it by passing it 
 around and giving to all. 
 
 Almighty One, in thy infinite providence, un- 
 der thy paternal law, we live ; under that provi- 
 dence and in that law we rejoice and are glad 
 always; and when by sudden calamity or man's 
 weakness or ignorance or folly or sin our fellow 
 creatures are snatched away from life and over- 
 whelmed in destruction, we bless thee for the 
 confidence and for the hopeful feeling that no 
 human thing is really hurt, no eternal good is 
 destroyed, but evil and pain, and every tear and 
 
 82 
 
every prayer are heard and answered by thee in 
 thine own eternal way. 
 
 Let thy blessing be upon the afflicted ones 
 around, upon the homes of mankind, those of 
 our fellow citizens and countrymen, of neighbor- 
 ing towns and cities; and may our hearts be 
 taught by wisdom, by truth, and by love, that 
 we may learn more and more that we are all one 
 and another united to each other, and to all and 
 to thee. 
 
 Our Father, forgive our sins; help us, we 
 pray thee, help us to renounce those sins of 
 which we do humbly repent; and by thy love 
 wash away even the last remnant of their power 
 over us, so that we may go forth free and strong 
 in heart, and that through all our earthly years, 
 whatever scars we wear may all be healed and 
 made pure and clean as the flesh of a child. 
 
 Almighty God, order thou our way for us in 
 thy word; lead us by thy strong and mighty 
 hand ; give us something of thy paternal strength 
 and something abundantly of thine eternal 
 peace. AMEN. 
 
 thou Almighty, terrible, lovely One, come 
 now by thy Spirit of grace to our hearts ; take us 
 into thy great companionship and partnership of 
 work in the world ; fill our minds with a sense of 
 the worthiness of our earthly vocation; lift us 
 
 83 
 
up above its horrors or accidents ; give us a keen 
 and tender heart and a sensibility of beauty, and 
 in whatever time of peace or prosperity, of peril 
 or safety we may be, may we be staid and 
 steadied upon thee, our Rock, our Refuge, our 
 Defense. AMEN. 
 
 84 
 
JUNE 9, 1889 - EVENING 
 
 ALMIGHTY GOD, thou whose protecting care is 
 over all thy works, and whose Spirit inspires our 
 souls, we thank thee, as we always do, for the 
 common blessings of our lot, for the privileges, 
 the charities, the opportunities, and the blessings 
 of this day ; and now in the evening hour we im- 
 plore again thy protecting care, and cast our- 
 selves with filial trust upon thine almighty arm. 
 Goodness and mercy have followed us all the days 
 of our lives ; our cup runneth over ; we have more 
 than enough, and our hearts are satisfied of thy 
 mercy and of thy goodness. Let thy tender, holy 
 providences, we pray thee, be everywhere to- 
 night. Watch with those that watch; listen to 
 the prayer of those who are cast down and brok- 
 en-hearted; and the sigh of the oppressed, let 
 that come up before thee ; and give blessing and 
 grace, and relief and benediction. 
 
 Almighty One, Holy Father, thou who know- 
 est the mystery, and the pain, and the gladness, 
 and the hope, and the sorrow of the human heart, 
 let thine ear be open, and let thy heart be full of 
 love toward thy weak, broken, erring, and wan- 
 
 85 
 
dering ones. Forgive with the freedom of thine 
 own Spirit ; restore with the beneficence of thine 
 eternal mercy ; blot out the transgressions of thy 
 children and remove their sins from them as far 
 as the east is from the west, and let them be 
 ever renewed in thy Spirit and thy grace. 
 
 We thank thee, Almighty God, for that Holy 
 One, that pure and divine ensample of man- 
 kind, thy Son, the Son of God, the Son of Man. 
 We implore thee that his divine life, his pure 
 heart, his mysterious communion with God, his 
 divine truth, his holy pattern, may ever be before 
 us; and in the incidents of his life on earth, in 
 his going from house to house, from village to 
 village, may we see the wonderful connection of 
 his history with the life of mankind, and let his 
 pattern be ever in our hearts, and give us insight 
 and grace to interpret the meaning of life. 
 
 Almighty One, let thy tender mercy be every- 
 where. Restore, bless, inspire, and let thy Spirit 
 be ever enchurching itself in this human 
 world, a figure of that divine and eternal so- 
 ciety which thou wouldst raise up, which thy 
 Son called the kingdom of God. AMEN. 
 
 thou Inspirer of all, inspire and teach our 
 hearts to see the spiritual meaning of things, and 
 to transform our daily life into beauty and glad- 
 ness and joy. By thy grace and by thy Spirit 
 
may we be a blessing to those around us; and 
 may life be relieved of some of its burdens ; may 
 strength be given to bear those burdens well; 
 and may gladness be refined, may joy be purified, 
 and grief blessed to all. AMEN. 
 
JUNE 16, 1889 MOENING 
 
 INFINITE AND HOLY ONE, God, our Father in 
 heaven, it's a pleasant thing to behold the sun; 
 life is sweet, its fruits are fair, and it is good to 
 live. We walk about in the fair light of day ; we 
 look upon the heavens above, abroad upon the 
 earth beneath and upon the great wide sea, thy 
 power and Spirit are ever present; thy inspira- 
 tion is nigh unto us that we should not ascend to 
 the heavens after it, nor cross the sea that it 
 should be brought to us; thine ever-present in- 
 spirations are in our hearts, and intelligence and 
 reason and faith and love spring forth from the 
 touch of thy almighty being. 
 
 We come to thee again now in the morning, on 
 the return of the day and the week, to our place 
 of prayer. Come with thy people; give us the 
 gracious and blessed communion of thy presence 
 and thy Spirit; give us that vision of our own 
 nature, our own weakness, our own possible com- 
 munion with thee, that shall at once make us 
 humble, meek, and teachable, and make us aspir- 
 ing and strong and faithful in the vision of 
 God. 
 
We implore thee heavenly Father, that the 
 days and weeks and years, with their ever-re- 
 turning round of duty, joy or trial, grief or sor- 
 row, may bring to thy children deeper wisdom 
 and deeper insight into the meaning of the 
 world, and shall make us at home with thee 
 where we are, at home wherever we may be, at 
 home with God in the world that he has made, 
 wherever he provides for his children, from 
 whatever place he speaks by his word and his 
 Spirit. 
 
 We thank thee, Almighty God, for the little 
 things of our daily life, those little things that 
 come again and again and again, duties that 
 are always pleasant, if our hearts are lovely and 
 sweet, duties that never weary us, if we are in- 
 spired afresh by thy Spirit, of companionships 
 and of home ; angelic visitations of goodness and 
 beauty and truth, that sit with us at our daily 
 board, walk with us as companions to the house 
 of God, who beam in our countenances the light 
 of heaven, and give us grace and benediction 
 ever and ever. 
 
 And we thank thee, Almighty God, for all 
 great deliverances from evil of any kind, from 
 the shock of any alarm, the collision of any of the 
 powers of nature, or the triumphs of any of the 
 instruments of man's device to turn and strike 
 us with their blows. Increase our sympathies, 
 
Almighty Father; while we love one another, 
 and while we love our friends, and while we are 
 touched with the sorrows of our fellow citizens 
 from afar, even beyond these horizons of homes 
 and neighborhoods and countries, enlarge our 
 hearts with the spiritual grace that was in 
 Christ, thy Son, that we may have something of 
 the vision of humanity, a vision of the human 
 world that includes every race and tribe and na- 
 tion, and knows and feels and interprets and be- 
 lieves in mankind, mankind figured in the Son 
 of God, the Son of Man. 
 
 Almighty One, hear our prayers, forgive our 
 sins, give us tenderness of heart and humility of 
 mind, give us self-respect ; and while we deplore 
 our weakness and our sin, may we ever have some 
 good reason and some good faith in saying that 
 there is much good in us; and may we appeal 
 unto God, ' ' Search me and know my heart, and 
 see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead 
 me into the way everlasting, ' ' the way in which 
 my steps shall never weary, the road that shall 
 ever grow brighter and brighter to the perfect 
 day, the way of eternal life, eternal beauty, and 
 eternal strength. AMEN. 
 
 Almighty God, thou who givest thy Spirit 
 without measure to those who will receive it, in- 
 crease our faith, and increase our belief in our 
 90 
 
faith, our courage in it, our trust in ourselves, 
 and our trust in God; and may thy Spirit rest 
 upon us abundantly, giving us a new baptism, 
 adopting us day by day into thy heavenly king- 
 dom, into thy divine family; and may we feel 
 that we are not merely creatures of the world, 
 but sons of God, partakers of his nature, bound 
 to a great destiny, honorable, glorious beyond all 
 telling or thinking ; and thus may we abolish and 
 repent of all our sins ; may we purify our hearts 
 even as God is pure, and, lifted up by thee, may 
 no harm come to thy people. AMEN. 
 
 91 
 
JUNE 16, 1889 EVENING 
 
 ALMIGHTY GOD, thou Infinite in power and good- 
 ness, we come again to our place of prayer; we 
 give thee thanksgiving ; we bow in reverence, we 
 humble ourselves penitently and contritely, and 
 lift up our hearts unto thee, to cry unto thee 
 from the depths and from the heights, from the 
 depths of lowly penitence, and from the heights 
 of awful joy. 
 
 We thank thee for the pleasant day, and now 
 for the gentle night; for all the cheerful and 
 sweet opportunities of life that we have en- 
 joyed, the companionship of home, friends, 
 children, father, and mother; for the gentle re- 
 lease from the ordinary cares of life, for the 
 change of opportunity; for the blessed privilege 
 of refreshing our own minds and hearts, and 
 our own bodies, with rest and peace and holy 
 contemplation and cheerful talk and pleasant 
 charities. And we thank thee, Almighty God, 
 always that we may ever bear in mind thy great 
 goodness to us, thy children ; if we would count 
 thy mercies we could not tell one in a thousand 
 of them ; they are as common as the day, cheerful 
 
 92 
 
and abundant as the light that descends upon us 
 like the early and the latter rain, and the foun- 
 tains of life are filled with thine abundant good- 
 ness. 
 
 Almighty God, what more can we ask? We 
 would ever ask and implore thine inspiring 
 Spirit that we may discern thy providence and 
 thy goodness ; that we may have heavenly visions 
 of thy own being and power and excellence and 
 greatness and majesty ; that we may love thee for 
 what thou art ; that we may fear and revere thee 
 with holy awe; and that our hearts may ever 
 bend in great humility, in humble reverence be- 
 fore thee. 
 
 Help us, we pray thee, by thy Spirit, each one 
 of us, to live faithfully and honestly according 
 to the best thoughts, the best things, the best 
 faith and hope in us. Deal not with us, our God, 
 too severely ; reprove us gently if thou wilt, and 
 lead us in the way of thy commandment by a 
 strong but tender hand. Reprove us if thou 
 wilt, reprove us for our sins ; chastise us by thy 
 paternal love, and let us with teachable, devout, 
 and childlike minds learn that thy wisdom is 
 better than our knowledge, and that our knowl- 
 edge may be but folly compared with that wis- 
 dom. 
 
 Let thy blessing be abroad upon all thy com- 
 mon human family ; wherever the shades of night 
 
are falling, there watch with thy protecting care 
 and paternal love ; and wherever the sun is rising 
 afresh upon the earth, upon distant habitations 
 and populations of men, there let thy goodness 
 be abundant as his beams, bringing light and 
 gladness and peace and joy. 
 
 Holy Father, hear our prayer, forgive our 
 sins, lead us always in the plain path of duty, 
 and give us a heart of fortitude, strength, and 
 courage, gentleness and beauty; and let us ever 
 be satisfied with the abundance of the goodness 
 of God. AMEN. 
 
JUNE 23, 1889 
 
 GOD, our Father in Heaven, day unto day 
 uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth 
 knowledge of thee ; thy commandments are pure, 
 thy statutes are right, and thy word is gone forth 
 in all places of thy dominion. We, thy children, 
 guided by thy providence, sustained by thy pow- 
 er, inspired by thy Spirit, the creatures of thy 
 hand, the sons of thy love, would come unto thee, 
 unto thee, God, almighty, all-good, all-wise. 
 Thy mightiness, thy goodness, and thy wisdom 
 are ever on our behalf. Thy providence is gra- 
 cious ; thy tender mercies are from everlasting to 
 everlasting ; and thy goodness is without bounds. 
 If we have gone astray, we would come back ; if 
 we have been led by follies, we would return to 
 thy wisdom; if we have fallen into sin or any 
 wrong, we implore thy forgiveness ; and we pray 
 thee to stretch forth thine hand and lift us up, 
 and lead us in the way everlasting. 
 
 In all our experiences we have had the faith, 
 the divine gift of God, to believe that somehow 
 there was a power above us, a wisdom and a 
 goodness greater than we know; and thy chil- 
 
 95 
 
dren, in their faithful hearts, have chosen rather 
 to be led by thee in darkness than to walk alone 
 at noonday. The testimony of thy believing ones 
 on earth has ever been the same, that they have 
 trusted thee, and they have never been de- 
 frauded, they have never been confounded, but 
 have found in thee their all ; enough to be satis- 
 fied with thy being and thy love, and satisfied 
 with the soundness of their own hearts. 
 
 Almighty God, give us, we pray thee, such 
 simpleness of mind, such purity of thought, and 
 such heroism of conduct that we may have no 
 doubt who is God. May we have no question, no 
 word of decision, as to whom we would serve; 
 but may we set before our hearts the very highest 
 objects that it is possible to conceive of, the 
 Supreme Good, the Perfect Wisdom, the Al- 
 mighty Love ; and to these great purposes in our 
 hearts and to the simplicity of our endeavor, to 
 the purity of our devotion, do thou add such 
 things in this world as seem to thee good. May 
 we be chiefly concerned for the kingdom of God ; 
 add thou the other things as thou wilt; we will 
 receive them in greater or in smaller supplies, 
 we will receive them as from thy hand, and trust 
 that all is for the best, and though we lose yet 
 we shall win, and though we die yet we shall live. 
 
 Almighty God, let thy blessing be upon thy 
 people here now, as we come again to our morn- 
 
ing service and prayer. Consecrate unto us all 
 the experiences of the past week; and to thy 
 servants, endeared to one another and endeared 
 to thee, let thy providence seem all grace and 
 love, and over all the scene of this our earthly lot 
 may there be a celestial light, a divine peace, a 
 heavenly glory; and while our feet walk upon 
 the dust of the earth, may our hearts ascend into 
 the mountain-heights of prayer and peace. 
 
 Let thy blessing be abroad, God, upon all 
 the earth as far as the beams of the sun, and 
 wherever the sun is rising, and wherever it is 
 setting, there let thy glory be in lingering beams 
 or in rising beauty, and bless and guide and pity 
 and comfort mankind. And may we learn more 
 and more to be altogether human ; may we desire 
 the greatest of all gifts, that we may have a 
 spirit to share the common lot of men, to sympa- 
 thize with the common heart, to believe in the 
 common good, to worship, to serve, and to love 
 the common God. 
 
 Hear our prayer, forgive our sins, and give us 
 answer of abundant peace and grace, according 
 to thy word. AMEN. 
 
 Almighty God, our Father, confirm in our 
 hearts now the truth that we most deeply feel; 
 give us the courage and strength of it; give us 
 the peace and hope of it. Let thy good provi- 
 
 97 
 
dence protect us; let thy Spirit inspire us; go 
 with those that go, stay with those that stay, and 
 come with those that come ; and wherever we may 
 be, by night or day, on sea or land, may we be 
 quite at home in our Heavenly Father's house, 
 and may we feel that it is as near heaven from 
 either mountain-top, or valley, or sea, and that 
 wherever we are thou art. AMEN. 
 
AUGUST 4, 1889 
 THOU EVER-GRACIOUS AND MERCIFUL ONE, thou 
 
 Guardian and Guide of all thy people, blessed 
 art thou from everlasting to everlasting. Infinite 
 and Holy One, we come again to our place of 
 prayer; here we are in thy presence according 
 to our accustomed habit; restored again to one 
 another, never separated in our love from one 
 another or from thee, and now we come again 
 with holy and revering minds, with devout and 
 loving temper, with gratitude and joy, with 
 awful gladness and holy mirth; and we give 
 thee praise and thanksgiving for thy goodness, 
 we adore thy power, and we intrust ourselves 
 to that goodness and to that power with filial 
 confidence and filial love. We thank thee for 
 the common goodness that is over all thy works, 
 and that ministers to the happiness and comfort 
 of all thy creatures; and that we can believe 
 and feel and trust that, whatever comes to us, 
 thou art working with thine eternal good-will, 
 thy long-minded ways of wisdom and love and 
 truth and goodness. And we thank thee that, 
 in the daily experiences of life, we can turn to 
 
thee with devout confidence, with devout and 
 pure filial affection, and that thou art always 
 for us, that thou dost whisper every word of 
 peace in our hearts, thou dost kindle every 
 divine imagination, thou dost lead us on and on 
 through every trial, and support us by a power 
 greater than ourselves; and we thank thee with 
 revering filial sentiments that when we have 
 been low and weak and troubled with pain and 
 grief we have been able to sustain it, and have 
 been borne up by a mighty Spirit greater than 
 our will; and we have been let into the mystery 
 of suffering, the wonder of affliction, and we 
 have seen the beauty and love of thine own 
 face. 
 
 And now, Almighty God, our Father, we ask 
 thy blessing upon all thy children here, upon 
 us all, according to our experiences, our wants, 
 our joy, our grief, our suffering, or our glad- 
 ness. The cup of life is mingled by a wise and 
 merciful hand; human tears are tender and 
 lovely, human hearts are sweet and true ; and we 
 thank thee that, however the world has used us, 
 whatever disappointments it has brought to us, 
 however wicked we sometimes may think it is, 
 we bless thee for the sight of those whom we 
 never doubted, for eyes into whose depths we 
 look with complete trust, for hearts of which we 
 never had one suspicion, and for consciences 
 100 
 
and spirits which stand erect as bright angels 
 before the face of God. 
 
 And now, holy Father, lead thy people on, 
 lead them by their hopes, by their trusts, by 
 their conscious rectitude toward one another and 
 toward thee, and let all thy will, perfect and 
 holy and true, be fulfilled in us. Let thy bless- 
 ing be upon all those whom we think of now, 
 whom we would bless, and we implore thy power 
 and care for them; and let us learn, as wisdom 
 increases in our hearts, that they can never be 
 widely separated who are bound in bonds of 
 love to one another, who think the same thoughts, 
 live the same duties, love the same God and 
 Father always. AMEN. 
 
 Holy One, thou Dweller in the heavens, and 
 who makest thy presence and thy heaven in the 
 pure heart, let now thy peace come to the wait- 
 ing minds and thoughts of thy children; love 
 us with thy boundless love, and deal with us 
 with all thy tender pity. And may we, by lov- 
 ing thee, know thee fully, and know thee all 
 in all. 
 
 Hear our prayer, forgive our sins, and let thy 
 wisdom, and thy goodness, and thine eternal 
 good-will, be for us now and for evermore. 
 AMEN. 
 
 101 
 
AUGUST 18, 1889 
 
 GOD, our Father in heaven, we, thy children, 
 often come to thee to tell thee our wants, our 
 cares, our trials, our blessings, and our joys. We 
 come to thee now in our accustomed place of 
 prayer with all the common and oft-repeated 
 stories of childhood wants, of gentle and tender 
 love, of much weakness and impatience and 
 want of trust, it may be, but yet with a keen and 
 tender feeling for thy care, for thy love, thy 
 wisdom, and thy power. We believe and feel, 
 and we bless thee, that wherever we have wan- 
 dered thou hast never forgotten us, in whatever 
 paths we have strayed thy heart has ever pur- 
 sued us, and in the midst of indifference or in- 
 gratitude thou hast still longed for us, and 
 waited and waited, and believed in us, and hoped 
 in us, and expected in us. And now we come, 
 Almighty God, our Father, we come, and let us 
 fulfill thy hope, the hope of thy paternal heart 
 concerning us. We come to this our place of 
 prayer which we call thy house; we look up to 
 thee with filial trust and confidence, because we 
 believe and trust thee evermore. 
 
 And now, of thine abundant grace, of thy wis- 
 102 
 
dom and thy goodness, let thy heart be blessed, 
 and let our hearts be at rest and restored by the 
 plenitude of thy grace. Forgive our sins, we 
 pray thee; and our sins which we do honestly 
 and sincerely forsake, God, remove them from 
 us, we pray thee, as far as the east is from the 
 west; and if we do return from wandering and 
 forgetfulness, from many ways of sin or wrong 
 or doubt or weakness, if we return, God, go 
 forth to meet us ; fall upon us as upon a return- 
 ing prodigal, and speak not a word to us of our 
 past, reproach us not with sins that are gone; 
 but welcome us to our home, welcome us to thy 
 heart, and give us the repose and the abundant 
 love of thy house. 
 
 We thank thee always for the common bless- 
 ings of our lot; teach us wisdom, that we may 
 see those blessings and that we may use them 
 well. Save us from selfishness; save us from 
 conceit in prosperity and from despair in adver- 
 sity ; and may we keep that pure and true way, 
 the way of eternal life, the way of upright will, 
 or pure affection, of true conscience and imagi- 
 nation that dwells face to face with God. 
 
 We ask thy blessing, thou holy, terrible, and 
 Almighty One; we ask thy blessing upon the 
 fortunes and events and experiences of universal 
 man on earth, mankind, thy children, human 
 society, the Church of God. Over all man's 
 103 
 
ignorance, and passion, and strife, and jealousy, 
 and wrong, and despair, and cruelty reign by 
 thy power and wisdom, and make the desert 
 places of ignorance and wrong bloom with the 
 beauty of righteousness and truth and peace. 
 Enable us in our hearts, each one of us, to bring 
 this thy kingdom; in our homes set up this em- 
 pire; and, confident in thee, our Maker, led by 
 the word and gospel of thy Son Jesus Christ, 
 may we hold on our way with steady steps, with 
 gentle hearts, taught by thee, secure in eternal 
 strength and eternal peace. AMEN. 
 
 Almighty God, our Father, hear us now. The 
 thoughts that we think, the words that we speak, 
 the resolves we make, may they all seem good in 
 thy sight, and may they be consecrated in our 
 hearts to devout and holy purpose. May we be 
 undeceived in regard to all things of vanity and 
 weakness in the world; may we be kings, each 
 one of us in his domain and dominion. May our 
 own nature serve, and may it be glorified by 
 serving thee ; and as we look out upon the world, 
 the human world, over all its wrongs and vio- 
 lence and sin, may we love it still; may we be 
 fond of thinking of it; and may visions of pro- 
 phetic power and glory for its future, its great- 
 ness, and its eternal kingdom ever dawn upon 
 our souls. AMEN. 
 
 104 
 
AUGUST 25, 1889 
 
 ALL eyes do wait on thee; all creatures look to 
 thee; thou guidest them with thy hand, and 
 givest them their meed in due season. The earth 
 turns steadily by thy power; the ocean rolls in 
 the hollow of thy hand. Almighty Being, terri- 
 ble One, glorious in majesty, of eternal beauty, 
 eternal excellence, goodness, and love, we come to 
 thee. We come to our place of prayer, we love 
 it, we revere it, because here we have seen thy 
 face ; here we have heard thy counsels ; here our 
 hearts have been lifted up on the wings of 
 prayer, and peace has come to our thoughtful 
 minds or to our afflicted hearts and our longing 
 souls. And now we come in the return of the 
 days of the week again with our oft-repeated 
 story of this life, with its ever-returning wants, 
 with its constant themes of joy and gratitude, 
 and pain and grief and sorrow, with its note of 
 gladness, and its deep wail of discontent and un- 
 happiness. Almighty One, thou Infinite One, 
 hear the prayer of thy people, spoken or not, 
 uttered or unexpressed, hear the prayer of thy 
 people. Forgive our sins. Give us that peace 
 
 105 
 
of mind that coines of upright will and good con- 
 science, the consciousness of service honestly 
 rendered, and work well done, and duty faith- 
 fully discharged; the consciousness that in our 
 hearts there are no passions or sentiments of 
 wrong, and no selfish desires or self-will. 
 
 We thank thee, Almighty God, for what we 
 call thy providence, thy care, thy protecting 
 power; and we praise thee that amid all the 
 realm of things unknown we may commit all to 
 an infinite wisdom, to a faithful love, to an 
 almighty power that can suffer no wrong to 
 come to any human soul. We rejoice in the com- 
 mon conquests of the human mind over this out- 
 ward world. We rejoice in every triumph of 
 intelligence, in every victory of reason, in every 
 noble ascent and heavenly outlook of human 
 faith. We are sometimes oppressed by the vast 
 " Unknown, " how much more vast than all we 
 know or think or feel, and as we go forth day 
 by day with something uncertain always in our 
 lot, some unlooked-for event, some strange and 
 unreconciled power that mingles with our daily 
 fortunes and lives, we would go forth, God, 
 sowing seed of truth and virtue and honor, with- 
 out a doubt that, whether we know this or that 
 shall prosper, or whether both alike shall grow, 
 we nevertheless trust to thee that what is best 
 will be. 
 
 106 
 
Almighty God, our Father, temper our hearts 
 to the common providences of this life. Teach 
 us that there is a bound to our earthly lot and 
 the end will come, and deliver us from all sur- 
 prise at it; and when our fellows, our fellow 
 beings, our neighbors, our friends, our lovers, 
 die, may we not feel surprised at it ; may we not 
 be taken by sudden alarm; but may our well- 
 taught hearts know that this is the way of 
 Heaven, that it is the appointment of God ; that 
 affliction in any form comes not from the air, 
 that it comes not from the earth beneath, but 
 man is born with it, it is a part of his lot, a 
 part of his inheritance, yea, a part of the ap- 
 pointment and will of God ; and so may our will 
 bow down to that will with noble act, sure devo- 
 tion, divine insight, immortal wisdom; so keep 
 us, so replenish our hearts by thy grace, and for- 
 giving all our sins that we do honestly forsake, 
 let the power of eternal life ever abide in us, and 
 let us commit the keeping of our souls to God, as 
 those who are risen from the dead. AMEN. 
 
 Hear now our prayer; fulfill in our hearts 
 those things that we do most sincerely and faith- 
 fully desire, to be at one with ourselves, at one 
 with the world, and at one with God. Reveal 
 unto us a plain path of duty, and increase the 
 brightness of that light that lighteth every man 
 107 
 
that cometh into the world; and may we know 
 what it is to be at one with God, and to know 
 that our will and thy will are ever in divine ac- 
 cord. Lead us in times of difficulty and danger ; 
 wipe the tears from our eyes in days of grief and 
 anguish; lift us up from affliction and from all 
 fear; and reveal unto us the ways of thy spirit, 
 the glory of thy truth, and the awful beauty of 
 thine own being. AMEN. 
 
 108 
 
SEPTEMBEE 1, 1889 
 
 INFINITE AND HOLY ONE, thou almighty, ter- 
 rible, lovely, true, and good, we, thy children, 
 come again to our place of prayer. We come 
 from the busy scenes of life, its absorbing cares, 
 its frequent perplexities, its deep trials, and its 
 dark sorrows. We come to ascend up into the 
 mountains, into the heights above the clouds, 
 above the dust of earth, to rest, to look abroad, 
 to lift up our hearts in prayer, to bow down in 
 holy adoration, in awful fear, and to rise up in 
 childlike trust. 
 
 We thank thee for the gentle day. We thank 
 thee for the silent night; for their ever-steady 
 succession and order and beauty and peace. Re- 
 freshed and strengthened, man goes forth to his 
 labor in the morning and returns again at even- 
 ing. The ever-coming round of daily duty, of 
 daily want, of returning feeling of gladness and 
 gratitude, or pains and regrets, God, in these 
 thy children find a mighty teaching, a wondrous 
 guidance, a mysterious presence, and an al- 
 mighty power. We are sometimes quite con- 
 
 109 
 
fused and in darkness; we are sometimes led to 
 shining heights of glory and of peace ; and some- 
 times we are quite perplexed, even not to know 
 whether thou thyself art, or whether life here 
 hath any destiny. In all these vicissitudes of 
 our feelings, in all these trials of our experience, 
 God, minister unto us gently; speak to us as 
 to children; take us by the hand; tell us the 
 simple story of thy love, and tell our hearts to be 
 still and quiet in thy presence. 
 
 We thank thee, Almighty God, that there is 
 such depth in our experience that we cannot 
 fathom it; that there are times when in our 
 hearts there is much that we cannot utter, and 
 even thought itself cannot reach these heights. 
 Blessed be thy name and thy grace for the 
 mysteries of our being, for the wonders of our 
 experience, for the strange and mighty guidance 
 of our earthly lot. Remove from our hearts and 
 our minds, we pray thee, all vain conceits, all 
 vain wisdom; and may we accept at thy hand 
 our daily lot, our daily experience, whatever it 
 is ; and teach our minds and our hearts to make 
 the best of it, the best of it, by a pure temper, 
 by a consecrated will, by a readiness to follow 
 the leading of thy hand and to accept the ap- 
 pointments of thy love. 
 
 We ask thy blessing, Almighty Father, upon 
 all those who are dear to us, upon our neigh- 
 110 
 
bors, our friends, those bound to us by ties of 
 kindred blood, and those who are bound to us by 
 that great human friendship that makes life 
 lovely, that consecrates our being here on earth, 
 and which grows dearer and dearer to us as our 
 paths stretch on and on. Let thy blessing be in 
 tender mercy upon all fortunes and classes and 
 conditions of men, those who are put to hard 
 extremity with distresses of many kinds, those 
 who are bowed down with heavy and deep trials, 
 those who by the humbleness of their labor help 
 to give us decency, comfort, refinement, and 
 luxury; and may our human sympathy be so 
 true, our spiritual insight so penetrating, that 
 no human being may ever seem unworthy, com- 
 mon, indifferent, or lost in our sight. 
 
 And now, Almighty God, let thy blessing be 
 upon us. Let our contemplation be reverent and 
 devout, our teaching pure and sincere, and all 
 our service may it be worthy ourselves, and 
 worthy of thee. AMEN. 
 
 God, thou Inspirer of all, lift up our minds, 
 we pray thee, to discern the greater truth of our 
 being, the bond that binds us to thee, and the 
 great vocation we have in thee, our God. Trans- 
 form our daily labor into a school of moral 
 beauty ; transfigure our trials into discipline of a 
 saintly spirit, and walk with us through fire or 
 ill 
 
flood, through joy or gladness ; and let our rever- 
 ence and our peace be the pledge of our union 
 with God. AMEN. 
 
 112 
 
SEPTEMBER 8, 1889 
 
 THOU ALMIGHTY AND MYSTERIOUS ONE, thou 
 who hast all things and all power and kingdom 
 and glory, who art without beginning of days or 
 end of years, in whose Almighty Being all crea- 
 tures live, whose inspiration giveth us under- 
 standing, whose holy providence protects us, and 
 whose Spirit inspires us, we love to recite thy 
 glory with reverent and devout hearts. We speak 
 thy name, and wonder and awe and glory and 
 majesty and beauty bow us down. 
 
 We are come again to our place of prayer. 
 We have come in a day of memory;* we have 
 come in a day when recollection goes back for 
 a little space of years, and returns again 
 freighted with great gratitude, serene and happy 
 joy, triumphs over many trials, burdens borne 
 gladly, griefs accepted patiently, and triumphs 
 of faith that stand on mountain heights of ex- 
 ceeding beauty. For these, God, we bless 
 thee ; for these we bow in proud humility before 
 thee, and speak thy name with shout and joy 
 and gladness. 
 
 And we thank thee now, as we look back a 
 
 *This service was conducted with special reference to the 
 fact of the day being the twenty-fifth anniversary of Dr. 
 Stebbins's presence as pastor in the church. 
 
 113 
 
little to call to mind the things and events of 
 other days, to review in the stream of life faces 
 that were once familiar, whose images are still 
 fresh, and whose hearts are still dear to us, 
 we thank thee for the ever-flowing stream that 
 never flows by, but is ever refreshed from eternal 
 fountains, the stream of life and of being and 
 of love. We thank thee, Almighty God, for the 
 token we have in our hearts and in the world 
 around us of the increasing kingdom of God, the 
 power of man's intellectual, moral, and spiri- 
 tual nature, the increase of intelligence, the in- 
 crease of justice, the increase of truth, and for 
 the feeling that those have who have the great- 
 est confidence in thy power, that we are ever 
 living in the morning of the world, that light is 
 ever dawning, the sun is ever rising, noonday 
 splendors are ever overhead, and sunset glories 
 are ever in the west. For this mysterious pres- 
 ence, for this manifestation of thy power and 
 thy Spirit, thy sons do ever bless thee and re- 
 joice. And, with deep humility of heart and 
 conscious of weakness and of sin, we implore 
 thy forgiveness, and pray that thy kingdom of 
 power may come for us on earth. May it come 
 in gentleness of mind, in purity of will, in sweet- 
 ness of temper, in genial human sympathies with 
 our fellows, and in humble, reverent, and devout 
 love for God; and so may we be gaining such 
 
 114 
 
foothold in eternal places that we shall be quite 
 safe amid the wastes of time, the vicissitudes of 
 change, that we shall be at home in the world 
 as in our Heavenly Father's house. 
 
 Consecrate unto us now, God, all the kindly 
 charities of life; all its domestic ties, its bonds 
 of friendship, its human regards, its firm, sub- 
 stantial honors and manly respects. May we 
 grow more and more into what is manly and 
 godly. May the religion of thy Son become to 
 us as natural and as easy as our conscience, as 
 clear as our reason, and as pure as our love; 
 and so may we be able to enter to some extent 
 into his experience, and to say each one in a 
 devout and triumphant heart, "I and my Father 
 are one." 
 
 Hear our prayer; forgive our sins; let thy 
 blessing be as broad and as wide as the beams 
 of the sun ; let thy wisdom, thy providence, and 
 thy grace be for all thy human family. AMEN. 
 
 Almighty God, confirm in our hearts, in the 
 hearts of all Thy people, every good expe- 
 rience, every sincere and devout feeling, and 
 every consecrated truth. Let thy blessing and 
 thy guidance be with us. Let thy Spirit ever 
 inspire us, thy strong hand support us; and 
 whether we are here or there may we be at home 
 with thee, members and children of thy com- 
 
 115 
 
mon family, inspired by a common hope, lifted 
 up and blessed by the gospel of the truth of thy 
 Son. AMEN. 
 
 116 
 
SEPTEMBEE 15, 1889 
 
 GOD, Almighty One, terrible in glories, fearful 
 in praises, lovely in goodness, thy people come 
 again to their place of prayer. The day is 
 bright ; the sun shines fair across sea and land, 
 all creatures are blessed in its light, and the 
 glory of its beams are sent far and wide. We 
 come to our place of prayer. We gird up our 
 souls and rise up and bow down before thee, the 
 Lord God, our Maker. Thy goodness is from 
 everlasting to everlasting, and thy loving-kind- 
 ness is unsearchable. Thy providences are wise, 
 and thy retributions are terrible. 
 
 Almighty One, forgive our sins and separate 
 them from us as wide as the east is from the 
 west. Give us the joy and strength and satisfac- 
 tion of feeling that, purged from all evil and 
 purified by penitence and forgiveness, thou hast 
 washed away all our sins, and that thy Spirit 
 may descend upon us saying, " This is my be- 
 loved son in whom I am well pleased. " 
 
 Holy Father, we bless thee for the common 
 sympathies of a common human heart. In our 
 best moments, when we rise to supreme heights 
 117 
 
above all selfishness, we are glad above all that 
 thou hast made us human, that thou hast made 
 us partakers of a common nature, that we are 
 descended in a line of kindred blood from thy 
 Spirit, and that all of us everywhere have that 
 common lot, great, glorious, wonderful, how- 
 ever we may be placed by outward circum- 
 stances, by factitious events, by uncertain things 
 of the world. And we implore now thy gracious 
 pity upon all human infirmities, weaknesses, and 
 sin. Thou knowest what is sin; thou knowest 
 what is weakness; and surely thou wilt not 
 quench the smoking flax of feeble desire; thou 
 wilt not break the bruised reed of our feeble 
 will; but cherish in the hearts of thy children 
 every pure sentiment, every pure and upright 
 principle, and give to all fortitude, strength, and 
 righteousness. 
 
 Almighty God, we ask thy blessing now upon 
 all efforts of good and wise men everywhere, for 
 the progress, the growth, the power of what 
 thy Son called the kingdom of God, that 
 eternal spirit that is enchurching itself in the 
 human heart, that inspiration which is inspiring 
 every man, that spirit diffused through all intel- 
 ligence, the kindling fire of love, of faith, and 
 of hope. Let thy pitying care and tender mercy 
 be upon all those who are terribly afflicted, who 
 are oppressed and bound in fetters and in chains 
 
 118 
 
of iron. Chastise, correct, admonish, encourage, 
 and bless ; and let thy wisdom and thy goodness, 
 thy eternal power and righteousness, be ever for 
 us, for us all, and for thy common human 
 family. 
 
 This we ask in the name of thy Son, in the 
 name of our common nature, and in the name of 
 thy paternal love. AMEN. 
 
 119 
 
SEPTEMBEE 22, 1889 
 
 ALMIGHTY GOD, thou who art above all heights, 
 who dwellest in inaccessible glory, whom we 
 cannot comprehend, but to whom we stretch 
 forth feeble hands of prayer and beseeching, 
 come to thy children now in all thy gracious 
 favor and blessed presence; come to us in the 
 warmth and purity of our affections, in the recti- 
 tude and righteousness of our will, in the holy 
 aspirations of devout hearts, and by thy pure 
 Spirit set us free from the ordinary toils and 
 cares of life, and remove from us, God, our 
 transgressions as far as the east is from the west. 
 We have had another week of the experience 
 of life. That experience has brought to each one 
 of us, in the way of thy providence, those things 
 which thou, our Guide and Protector, hast pre- 
 pared for us. We have seen joy and gladness; 
 we have seen grief and sorrow; we have seen 
 penitence and exultation. And we come with all 
 our varied care, with all our grief, with all our 
 joy, whatever it may be that thy providence 
 and Spirit have meted out to us, we come to 
 120 
 
thee with our common prayer, our common sup- 
 plication, our common suit. 
 
 Almighty God, we bless thee that every day 
 thou openest thy hand and satisfiest the desires 
 of every living thing; our daily bread is from 
 thee; thy strong protecting care preserves us 
 from evil and from harm; thy Spirit inspires 
 our intelligence and confirms our will; and we 
 look to thee with devout and filial minds for all 
 we need. 
 
 Holy Father, give us wisdom ; rebuke us with 
 wise severity and with tender mercy ; and let all 
 thy goodness be so familiar and so well taught to 
 our hearts, that we shall never again go astray. 
 
 We ask thy blessing, Holy One, upon us, each 
 one of us, in our daily experience of life; that 
 thou wilt give us that reasonable worldly pros- 
 perity that is good for us. Confirm our industry, 
 and make that industry a school of human ex- 
 cellence and virtue and worth; and may we, by 
 the aid of thy Spirit and inspired by that Spirit, 
 see in the common things of our daily life some- 
 thing of a moral beauty ; may the ever-returning 
 round of workday experience, of care and toil 
 and labor, may it not be merely a dusty path be- 
 neath a burning sun, but may it be relieved by 
 glimpses of moral beauty, by gentle shadows 
 that send their shade over us for rest beside 
 pure streams that refresh us, while ever before 
 
 121 
 
us are celestial heights of attainment, of knowl- 
 edge, of wisdom, of virtue, and of the power of 
 eternal life. 
 
 Almighty God, consecrate to us our personal 
 ties, our relations to one another, our pure affec- 
 tions, our consecrated love. As we sit at the 
 daily board and dispense the bread which thy 
 hand hath given us, may we, each in his place, 
 feel a kind of providence to those that are near. 
 May the climate of the house be genial ; may its 
 light be celestial, its love pure, and may it be to 
 us, to some extent, a symbol of the kingdom of 
 God; and so may life hold on its course guided 
 by thee, setting us free continually from our 
 past and guiding us onward to a better and bet- 
 ter future. May we have great hope in ourselves, 
 great hope in our fellow men, and trust in God. 
 And so may the company on earth press forward 
 to the company in Heaven. AMEN. 
 
 God, hear our prayer that we offer now, 
 that our best thoughts and purest affections may 
 be made steadfast and strong, and that the foun- 
 dations of thy eternal kingdom may be laid in 
 our minds and hearts. Inspire us by thy Spirit, 
 encourage us by thy grace, protect us with thy 
 care, and let thy kingdom ever be in us a glori- 
 ous city, a wonderful empire, a kingdom of 
 power, of peace, of eternal life. AMEN. 
 122 
 
SEPTEMBER 29, 1889 
 
 GOD, thou art my God ; early will I seek thee. 
 The morning is fresh; the air is bright and 
 clear; the world is filled with thy presence and 
 thy glory; and we come humbly to our place of 
 prayer that, in the midst of thy glory and thy 
 power, we may bow with humble, contrite hearts 
 before thee and beseech thee with all the power 
 and imploring prayer of penitent and believing 
 hearts. We come from afar; we come as doves 
 to the window, from distant places of thought, of 
 vocation, of daily life; from the streets of the 
 city, the dwellings of men, and from countries 
 far away. Let thy blessing in heavenly grace 
 and love descend upon thy people. Teach us 
 that we are all one kind, of one household and 
 one family; and that thou, our Father in 
 heaven, art the Father of all the families of 
 men. 
 
 thou who touchest the lips of thy prophets 
 with flames, and they speak thy words and thy 
 truth, speak now unto thy people and call them 
 by name, by thine own name with which thou 
 hast named them from everlasting to everlast- 
 128 
 
ing, and may we rise up as the children of God, 
 guided by thy hand, inspired by thy love, and 
 led forward by thy holy and tender providence. 
 
 Almighty One, we thank thee as it is our cus- 
 tom to thank thee, may it not be a custom mere- 
 ly, may it not be a vain word, but may it become 
 the expression of a devout and grateful heart, 
 we thank thee for thy protecting care; we own 
 with gratitude thy never-failing love, and we 
 bless thee that in the midst of mystery and of 
 thy unsearchable providence and the strange 
 events of human life thou hast given us an un- 
 speakable gift; that in all the tangle and per- 
 plexity and darkness and contradiction of mind 
 in our earthly lot, thou hast given us the un- 
 speakable gift of thy Spirit to help us to trust 
 thee still, to believe in thee always, to believe 
 that over and above, and deeper down and high- 
 er, than all that we can see, thou art working, by 
 a providence of wisdom and holiness and good- 
 ness, thou art working out the good of every 
 human soul. May we not hinder that good by 
 bad will, by impure affections, by wayward de- 
 sires ; but may we be with thee, and, if thou wilt 
 permit us, may we even be the companions of 
 God, his imitators, his likeness; and may his 
 word and commandment be our comfort, our 
 peace, and our strength. 
 
 Almighty God, we ask thy blessing upon those 
 
 124 
 
whose hearts are not yet quite formed in secur- 
 ity and strength of life ; we pray that innocence 
 may ever be guarded and protected; that inno- 
 cence may become virtue, that virtue may be- 
 come moral power, and moral power may become 
 eternal life, and those who live a mixed life of 
 good and evil, in whom there is much evil and 
 some good, turn them toward thee, and let 
 the good overcome the evil. Let thy mercy ever 
 be with us; let thy severity deal with us as thy 
 wisdom sees best, and let us never flinch or fear 
 from the wise severity of a just and loving God. 
 Holy Father, let thy tender compassion be 
 with all; help the troubled to bear their trouble; 
 those who are walking in darkness and in pain, 
 may they be led by a mysterious and almighty 
 hand, and may they rather be led in darkness 
 than to walk in light by their own will; and so, 
 in all the conditions and fortunes of thy chil- 
 dren, in their outward lot and in their inward 
 life, in their past experience, and in their pres- 
 ent feeling, in their future hopes and present 
 desires, may they dwell in thee, thou Guide and 
 Hope of all thy people. AMEN. 
 
 Almighty One, inspire now in our hearts by 
 thy good Spirit every pure purpose, every good 
 resolution, every right affection. If we are inno- 
 cent, confirm that innocence by thy word spoken 
 
 125 
 
in peace and power, ' ' This is my beloved son, in 
 whom I am well pleased"; if our lives are brok- 
 en, if we are fallen from supreme heights of 
 moral beauty and glory, pity us in our broken 
 condition, and let penitence and tears come with 
 blessing and gentle forgiveness and holy peace; 
 and may we think of the things that belong to 
 us as the children of God; may we subdue this 
 world and its possessions to a noble service ; may 
 we, through God, be victorious over all evil ; and 
 when we move on beyond the horizons of this 
 visible world, may we go to greater companion- 
 ships, greater glory and splendor, before which 
 the eyes of angels are undimmed, and to peace 
 which passeth understanding. AMEN. 
 
 126 
 
OCTOBER 6, 1889 MOBNING 
 
 WE are come again to our place of prayer with 
 our ever-returning wants, with our common sup- 
 plications, our common weaknesses, trials, cares, 
 and sins. We cry unto thee, God, from the 
 depths of a lowly spirit ; we implore thee not to 
 despise the offerings of our hearts, and to listen 
 to the prayer of thy contrite ones. We are come 
 from thou knowest where, from distant places 
 of the earth, from more distant places of thought 
 and affection, engagements and duties of the 
 world and affairs of daily life ; and we have all 
 come to this place where our feet meet in one 
 common way. We have come to remind our 
 hearts of thee, to lift them up toward thee, to 
 repose on thine almighty arm, to gain strength 
 and fortitude to do and bear thy perfect will. 
 
 We thank thee, Almighty God, for those great 
 sentiments in our minds and hearts that seem to 
 last forever ; and though we recite them over and 
 over again, though we utter them in prayer 
 night and morning and noon and evening, 
 though we come again and again to our place of 
 teaching and worship and bow down before thee, 
 
 127 
 
still the same ancient song bears up our hearts 
 on wings of power, the same words of lowly 
 penitence ever interpret our inmost souls, and 
 the words and thoughts and experiences of thy 
 children for thousands and thousands of years 
 are still fresh as the morning dew, with every 
 generation and with every new experience and 
 impulse of our hearts. 
 
 We thank thee, Almighty God, with humble 
 reverence; we adore thee, for thy great provi- 
 dence which has brought us into so glorious a 
 communion, the communion of human souls, 
 the communion of human experiences, the com- 
 munion of our common hearts with God our 
 Father, and now we pray thee to temper thy 
 providences to our hearts. If those providences 
 are dark and mysterious, may we reflect and 
 meditate seriously and earnestly how little we 
 know, and may we find comfort in feeling that 
 the great responsibility is with God, our Maker, 
 our Inspirer, and that, if we have been true to 
 that light which he has given, if we have been 
 true to that light "that lighteth every man that 
 cometh into the world/ ' we can be free from all 
 mean anxieties, from all dark trouble, from all 
 evil forebodings, and can rest upon thine eternal 
 arm. If we look back upon the past, or if we 
 stand up in the present, and have much to re- 
 pent of, may we meditate on the healing power 
 
 128 
 
of repentance, and upon the precious promises 
 of God. So may our hearts ever be refreshed by 
 divine breezes, may our fainting spirits be sus- 
 tained by divine inspiration; and believing in 
 ourselves and in God, led forward by the truth 
 of thy Son, and sustained by the grace that is in 
 him, may we do bravely, may we think honestly, 
 may we act with sincerity ; and may we be at one 
 with ourselves and at one with thee. 
 
 Almighty God, hear our prayer for all men; 
 give us human sympathy in the human world; 
 take us out of the little horizons of all our nar- 
 row thoughts, and expand our souls by divine 
 wisdom and divine truth. AMEN. 
 
 God, hear thou our prayer. We will not 
 pray much ; but thou knowest all. Fulfill in our 
 hearts now our best desires, our purest wishes, 
 our most heavenly affections. Strengthen reason, 
 give wings to imagination, give depths to feel- 
 ing, give insight to love, and let thy people be 
 blessed with something of angelic light and 
 something of angelic joy. AMEN. 
 
 129 
 
OCTOBEE 6, 1889 EVENING 
 
 THE day is done; the evening shadows fall; the 
 night stands above and around us protected by 
 thy care; and now we come for an hour to our 
 place of prayer, to lift up our voice in joyful 
 song, to lift up our hearts in adoring prayer, to 
 confess thy goodness, and, by solemn act of in- 
 ward thought and feeling, to consecrate our- 
 selves afresh to thy service, thy truth, and thy 
 word. 
 
 We thank thee for the pleasant day, for all its 
 happy opportunities and privileges, its freedom 
 from ordinary labor, the rest from toil, the op- 
 portunity of home, of the companionship of 
 friends, of children, of father and mother, 
 brother and sister. We thank thee, Almighty 
 God, for thy goodness that is without stint; for 
 those gifts that thou dost continually bestow 
 upon us, whether we are mindful of them or not ; 
 so freely dost thou give that we are wont even 
 to forget thy gifts. Teach us to remind our 
 hearts of our dependence and to learn that our 
 dependence on thee is our joy, our strength, our 
 great privilege, and our blessing. Open thou to 
 130 
 
us the fountains of eternal life, the glory that 
 may shine upon the mind and the spirit, the love- 
 liness that may be seen in pure affections, in 
 righteous will, and in the insights and powers 
 and glories of a true and heavenly love. 
 
 Almighty One, thou Protector of all, let thy 
 strong and loving care be over all. We would 
 think of thy common human family, the world 
 of mankind, thou knowest what thou madest; 
 thou knowest what thy will is ; lead on thy people 
 by mighty providences, by righteous retribution, 
 by holy teaching, lead them on by the pillar of 
 cloud by day and of fire by night, to fulfill the 
 great destiny whicn thou hast appointed them, 
 and may our will never defeat thy holy purpose. 
 
 Forgive our sins ; let thy tender care be upon 
 all those who are afflicted, who are bowed down 
 with trouble, distressed in mind and heart. Be 
 with those who languish on beds of sickness, and 
 who are thinking yet ere long they shall de- 
 part the lone soul to the lone God. And so let 
 thy people be comforted in thee, the Almighty 
 One. Thy perfect goodness, thy wisdom, thy 
 power, thy love, let them be for all thy people. 
 AMEN. 
 
 131 
 
OCTOBER 13, 1889 MORNING 
 
 GOD, our Father in heaven, we, thy people, thine 
 earthly children, come to thee again in our place 
 of prayer; we come with the ever-returning 
 want, with the ever-same confession, with the 
 oft-repeated supplication ; we come to thee with 
 gladness, with holy fear, with awe and filial 
 love; let our minds be reverently impressed by 
 thy greatness, thy holiness, thy power, and thy 
 goodness, and may we be drawn to thee by a 
 sense of thine unspeakable glory and beauty and 
 goodness; and as we look up to thee for every 
 good thing, and confess that we receive our daily 
 bread from thy liberal hand, may we feel that 
 the inspirations of thy Spirit kindle understand- 
 ing, reason, faith, affection, and imagination; 
 may we feel that thy manifestation in us is the 
 bond that binds us to thee, and by which we are 
 the "sons of God." 
 
 "We give thee common thanks, God ; we give 
 thee gratitude for all the blessings of our lot, 
 and we pray that when trial or darkness or dis- 
 appointment comes to us, when perplexity and 
 fear and almost death are near, we pray that 
 
 132 
 
thou wilt help us, by filial trust, by gentle confi- 
 dence, by tender and pure hearts, to lay our bur- 
 den upon thy arm, to be led by thy strong and 
 merciful hand, and to feel that no harm can be- 
 fall us if thou art nigh. 
 
 We adore thy providence, Almighty One; we 
 praise thy works. As we look abroad over the 
 earth and the sea and into the sky, thy glories 
 are manifest to our minds, thy powers are set 
 forth in every land where thy word is spoken, 
 and we bow with reverence before thee. 
 
 Almighty One, in the silent and still temple of 
 our hearts let there be a sincere worship, a 
 humble prayer, a deep and tender and broken- 
 hearted repentance. Forgive our sins; remove 
 them from us as far as the east is from the west ; 
 remember them no more; and if we return to 
 thee after having forgotten thee, after having 
 rebelled against thee and shut our ears against 
 thy paternal voice, if we return to thee, meet 
 us, Father in heaven, meet us while yet we 
 are afar off ; restore us to our home in thee ; and 
 say not a word of reproach to us for all our 
 past ; and so may we go on and on in a glorious 
 way of moral and spiritual light, finding in our 
 daily experience a training and discipline fitting 
 us for the kingdom of God. And as years 
 increase, may we, from new heights of attain- 
 ment and of experience, be able to look abroad 
 
 133 
 
and say in our deepest hearts, "Behold the good- 
 ness and mercy of God." 
 
 Protect us all by thy power; inspire by thy 
 Spirit ; and let thy common blessings and provi- 
 dences be for and over all the children of men. 
 Hear our prayer, inspire our hearts, kindle our 
 love, and let thy benediction be upon us ever- 
 more. AMEN. 
 
 God, most merciful and gracious, hear now 
 the prayer of thy children. Transform us into 
 thine own image thy divine likeness, and give 
 us courage and strength and fortitude to put the 
 best thoughts and the things that we do most 
 sincerely believe into daily practice; and teach 
 us to believe and feel that a pure thought, a 
 good conscience, an upright mind outweighs a 
 world of luxury and ease. AMEN. 
 
 134 
 
OCTOBEE 13, 1889 EVENING 
 
 ALMIGHTY and most merciful God, thou whose 
 hand supports the steady globe of the earth and 
 brings the fair procession of day and night, we 
 ask thy blessing now that our minds may be 
 attuned by the spirit of truth, by reverence, 
 love, honor, uprightness, righteousness, and 
 goodness. We confess thy providential Spirit in 
 thy inspiring word that thou hast spoken all 
 along the line of human generations, and art 
 ever speaking to thy beloved human race. En- 
 large our thoughts and sympathies to think of a 
 human world, to think of that which we call 
 " humanity, " the life of God on earth, the 
 manifestation of thy Spirit in man, with love 
 and honor and pity ; to think with joy and grati- 
 tude of that crowning, mysterious life the life 
 of thy Son Jesus Christ, leader of our salvation, 
 captain of the victorious hosts that shall conquer 
 for the kingdom of God. 
 
 Let thy blessing now be upon all those whom 
 we think of in our hearts, whom in our medita- 
 tive moods we would name before thee, those 
 who are not with us, who may be far away across 
 
 135 
 
lands and seas, who are pursuing their own voca- 
 tions in the name of God and by the help of his 
 Spirit, wherever they may be encourage and 
 inspire them, and let them cheerfully and faith- 
 fully follow the appointments of thy providence. 
 And let thy blessing be with those who are in 
 places of special power and authority, of wis- 
 dom, teaching, or divine appointment; let thy 
 blessing be upon all institutions of learning, law, 
 religion, may they have in them all grace and 
 favor and wisdom, and may they instruct in the 
 ways of God, in all truth and power and beauty. 
 Let thy blessing, we pray thee, be upon those 
 who are unknown to the great world, but not for- 
 gotten by thee, in whose hearts there is going on 
 the work of thy eternal kingdom, in whose minds 
 and earthly experience there is being wrought 
 out a great and mighty problem of which the 
 world knows little, and yet for which the world 
 was made; and let us all, each one in his place 
 and vocation, feel that we have a divine appoint- 
 ment, a vocation of God, a calling from on high. 
 Let thy blessing be upon the city and all the 
 people thereof; upon the high, the low, the rich, 
 the poor, and those who know not their right 
 hand from their left. Lead, guide, protect, and 
 bless; and let thy people be led forward to bet- 
 ter things than they know, taught by thy 
 Spirit, guided by thy providence, and led for- 
 
 136 
 
ward to greater and greater experience which 
 shall be fulfilled at last in thine own good time, 
 in some kingdom of God here or there. 
 
 Almighty One, forgive our sins; hear our 
 prayers, for thy name and mercy's sake forever 
 and ever. AMEN. 
 
 137 
 
OCTOBER 20, 1889 
 
 GOD, our Father, Holy One, we come to thee; 
 thou art onr Refuge, our Rock, our Defense. We 
 thank thee for thy protecting care, for the 
 bounty of thy providence, the goodness of thy 
 paternal love, the wise chastisements of thy 
 righteousness and thy truth. We thank thee, 
 and we confess in all this changing scene of the 
 outward world, we confess thy power, thy pres- 
 ence, thy interest, and thy love in the human 
 world. The earth turns, suns rise and set, rains 
 fall, and clouds are spread a.bove us; the ocean 
 rolls in thine almighty hand ; the mountains are 
 firm in the strength which thou hast established ; 
 and all the scenes of earth, and all the vicissi- 
 tudes of human existence are ordered and di- 
 rected and controlled by thy omnipotent hand. 
 Let reverence and holy fear be in our minds; 
 and through rifts of earthly clouds may thy 
 people have gleams of eternal beauty, of glories 
 and grandeurs, of ineffable things, of God and 
 his Spirit. 
 
 Almighty One, we acknowledge with humble 
 hearts our weaknesses and our sins; and we 
 
 138 
 
pray for that forgiveness when we do sincerely 
 forsake our sins, we pray for that forgiveness 
 which removes them from us as far as the east 
 is from the west ; and may we have that divine, 
 that beatific sight of thy goodness, thy perfec- 
 tion, and thy beauty, that shall lead us to say, 
 "Let thy reproofs come upon us, let thy hand 
 rest heavily upon us, if we may but be purified 
 from our earthly dross and made fit for thy com- 
 panionship, thy friendship, and thy love." 
 
 Almighty God, we thank thee for the pleasant 
 things of our earthly lot, for its kindly charities, 
 its pities, its loves, its victories of pain and glad- 
 ness ; we thank thee for the companionship and 
 dependence of those who are dear to us, for those 
 to whom we owe unspeakable debts of grati- 
 tude, eyes that are to us the gate of heaven, 
 and hearts that we never for a moment dis- 
 trusted, these things, we would think with 
 divine imagination and pure feeling, are earthly 
 symbols of what we may find in thee. And so as 
 years increase, may feeling grow deeper, may 
 thought ascend higher, may imagination rise on 
 stronger wings and with greater power, and may 
 we have no reason to ask "Why?" or "Where- 
 fore?" inasmuch as the kingdom of God shall 
 be within us, God is, and we are, and we are 
 at peace. 
 
 Let thy blessing, Almighty One, be abroad 
 
 139 
 
over all the human world, upon our common 
 country and beloved land, upon the common- 
 wealth of our state, upon the city and the 
 dwellers therein. Cherish, by thy Holy Spirit, 
 all goodness in the hearts of thy children ; chas- 
 tise, rebuke, bless, console, and comfort them, 
 according to their wants; and let no heart chal- 
 lenge thy wisdom or thy grace, or ask thee 
 "Why?" or "Wherefore?" AMEN. 
 
 Almighty God, our Father, let thy Spirit in 
 the depths of our hearts convince us of truth, of 
 our own sins, our need of thy purifying fires ; 
 and may we look up to thee with imploring 
 prayer, saying, "Let my soul live, and it shall 
 praise thee; and let thy judgments help me." 
 And so may new heavenly light be shed abroad 
 on all our earthly course ; may new courage come 
 into our hearts, new fortitude into our breasts, 
 and a wonderful vision of moral beauty into our 
 minds. AMEN. 
 
 140 
 
OCTOBEE 27, 1889 
 
 GOD, our Father, we thank thee for thy pro- 
 tecting care, that again we are permitted to come 
 to our place of devout prayer and contempla- 
 tion, to lift up our hearts and voice to thee, to 
 confess our sins, to bow down humbly before 
 thee, and to rise up in joy and gladness. We 
 praise thee; we give thee glory and honor and 
 power and majesty, thou Almighty One, terri- 
 ble in glory, beautiful in praises, and, in thine 
 everlasting love, the life and light and hope and 
 peace of all thy children. We thank thee for the 
 common things of our earthly lot ; and we thank 
 thee more for the unspeakable gift of thy Spirit 
 that thou hast given us, by which, in the midst 
 of many perplexities and trials and griefs and 
 pains, amid all the disappointments and crosses 
 and uncertainties of our earthly lot, we have a 
 sustaining power, a mysterious grace, a heaven- 
 ly love ; a power of trusting in thee, of hoping in 
 thee, and believing that somehow, in some way, 
 and at some time greater good shall come out of 
 our evil, and that thy wisdom and thy power are 
 ever for us, and that the penitent, the sorrowful, 
 
 141 
 
and the broken-hearted thou wilt lift up to joy 
 and peace. 
 
 Hear us now, God, in our lowly prayer, our 
 humble penitence, our longing cry. Forgive 
 our sins; forgive our indifference; pardon our 
 weaknesses; lift us up and strengthen us, and 
 make us stand by the might of thy Spirit. 
 
 We thank thee, Almighty God, that thou hast 
 lifted up upon us the light of thy countenance, 
 and that, in the word and face of thy Son Jesus 
 Christ, thou hast revealed thyself and art reveal- 
 ing thyself to us continually. We bless thee for 
 all the grace and charity and benignity of human 
 life, for the laugh and rollick of childhood, 
 for the sweetness and promise of youth, for the 
 strength of manhood, and for the gentle wisdom 
 and grace of age ; and we bless thee that, through 
 many vicissitudes of trial, of uncertainty, 
 through much teaching and deep experience of 
 the world, there are rifts of light through the 
 clouds, there are gleams of peace to troubled 
 hearts, and that there are solitary moments 
 of gladness and joy and hope. And we 
 thank thee, Almighty God, for those com- 
 mon outward gifts and pleasures and satis- 
 factions which belong to us in this life, 
 which are blessings to our minds and hearts if 
 rightly used for the kingdom of God, but which 
 at length we dismiss as a wise man dismisses a 
 
 142 
 
faithful servant whose services he no longer 
 needs. We thank thee for our daily safety and 
 ability to go about our affairs, for the satisfac- 
 tion we have in our affairs, for the reasonable 
 gratification we have in overcoming difficulties, 
 making a way plain, in triumphing over this out- 
 ward world by skill, by wisdom, by learning, by 
 industry; and may we in all this school of life 
 and teaching, may we learn and know some- 
 thing better than the things we handle, and may 
 we learn that we ourselves are no parts of the 
 things; and may we remember that, through 
 faithfulness and honesty and uprightness and a 
 pure heart and upright will, we may be in this 
 humble, dusty way of earth entering continually 
 the kingdom of God; and so may success or 
 disappointment, trial or joy, tears or gladness 
 bring to our hearts the rich treasures of wisdom, 
 the rich strength of peace. 
 
 Almighty God, thou knowest us altogether; 
 we need not pray much to explain ourselves to 
 thine eternal and all-piercing Spirit. We are 
 men of the world; we have the passions of the 
 world ; but we have a light within, a light of thy 
 Spirit, a divine guidance; and we beseech thee 
 to help us to walk by that guidance, and give us 
 the inspiration of that Spirit ; and may we come 
 into communion with thy truth through the gos- 
 pel of thy Son Jesus Christ. May we see in him 
 
 143 
 
the wisdom of God, the power of God; and in 
 walking in his footsteps, in looking to his divine 
 example, in ascending into the celestial moun- 
 tains of his trials and temptation, may we bear 
 testimony in our hearts that we too are taught, 
 chastised, reproved, and beckoned upward. 
 
 Almighty God, hear our prayer; forgive our 
 sins; lead us always in a plain path of duty; 
 help us to bear our afflictions well, and to bear 
 our prosperity and our successes with modest 
 and humble minds ; and whatever comes, may we 
 not be too much surprised or changed in our 
 hearts; and when at last thou callest, may we 
 each one be ready and answer, "Here am I." 
 AMEN. 
 
 O Holy Father, inspire our hearts now by thy 
 Spirit to think and feel the things that we do 
 most truly believe ; and give depth and power to 
 the stream of experience, that wisdom and good- 
 ness, and truth and moral beauty, may be a kind 
 of common sense to our hearts, to our minds and 
 Our souls. Let thy teaching be adapted to our 
 weakness, to our ignorance, and to our want. Be 
 gentle with us in our impatience, in our short- 
 sightedness, and teach us how little we know, 
 and yet kindle in our hearts an inextinguishable 
 hope, a divine trust, a mighty conquest of faith. 
 AMEN. 
 
 144 
 
NOVEMBEE 3, 1889 - MOENING 
 
 WE are come again to our place of prayer; 
 God, Almighty Maker, Everlasting Friend, our 
 Father in heaven, by thy gracious and inspiring 
 Spirit, come to thy people now. Come, bring- 
 ing gentle thoughts and pure feelings and sweet 
 humility and penitence to their hearts; and as 
 we rise up and bow down before thee, and lift up 
 our prayer and song, let our hearts be instructed 
 by thy presence, inspired by thy gracious Spirit ; 
 and may thy providence, thy wisdom, thy good- 
 ness, and thy power all seem to our believing 
 minds to be on behalf of us, thy children. 
 
 We come from many distances of thought and 
 feeling, and action and experience. Thou know- 
 est every heart, every mind, every will. We 
 come from far and nigh; from cares, pursuits, 
 troubles, trials, joys, satisfactions, and peace. 
 Thou givest to us all our share of pain or joy, of 
 gladness or tears; and may we have no selfish- 
 ness about it; may we not be too much engaged 
 with wonder and surprise at thy providence, 
 and at the vicissitudes of human life; but may 
 we flee from all that to the heights of inaccessi- 
 
 145 
 
ble peace, where we trust and believe and hope 
 in thee fully, and feel that we are safest when 
 we are altogether in thy hand. 
 
 We bless thee, Almighty God, and we confess 
 thy ever-present and eternal Spirit working for 
 us, that, in the vicissitudes of our earthly life, 
 the things which we have most dreaded have 
 sometimes turned out to be best ; and that those 
 things which we have thought the best when 
 they were nigh, when looked back upon in the 
 genial light of distance and the temper of expe- 
 rience, we see that they were not so good as we 
 thought them. May we learn, Almighty One, 
 may we learn of thee that there are treasures of 
 wisdom yet to be unfolded to us far greater than 
 we have yet known on earth ; and as we think of 
 that innumerable company who have moved on 
 beyond these earthly horizons, may we think of 
 them as exalted, exalted above the earth, with 
 purer insights, purer affections, stronger wills, 
 and, as they stand with undazzled eyes in thy 
 presence, they know thee better, they love thee 
 more, and they serve thee with happier will. To 
 that innumerable company we would be joined 
 in holy sympathies, in devout gratitude, in holy 
 recollections, and in immortal hopes; and may 
 we learn, as life bears us on upon its mighty 
 stream, may we learn to think more and more 
 that our earthly lot is a part of our eternal be- 
 
 146 
 
ing; that now is our immortality, that now is 
 our eternal life ; and that, if we are living a life 
 in God, obedient to his will, in pure affection 
 toward one another, when we go hence, we have 
 but to live on and on in the same ever-ascending 
 course ; we will not change our love ; we will not 
 abolish our consecrated will; but inspired anew 
 and infused by thy life, rise on wings of power 
 to thy presence, thy glory, and thy grace. 
 
 Almighty One, hear our prayer; forgive our 
 sins; pity our weaknesses; be compassionate 
 with our ignorance and our bad temper; and in 
 all things chasten us by thy word and command- 
 ment; and may we be so childlike and faithful 
 and sinless, as to feel that thy chastisements are 
 sweet. 
 
 Almighty God, now let thy blessing be abroad 
 upon all the earth, as wide as the beams of the 
 sun; and, as the waters fill the sea, so let thy 
 righteousness come down upon the nations and 
 upon the world. Go forth by thy Spirit, en- 
 churching thyself in this human world, leading 
 it by thy providence, inspiring it by thy Spirit, 
 and lifting up thy people forever and forever. 
 AMEN. 
 
 God, our Father, around thy throne the in- 
 numerable hosts do cry continually, ' ' Holy, holy, 
 holy, Lord." Let our prayers join the heavenly 
 147 
 
company; let our praise echo in the heavenly 
 places ; and here, on earth beneath, may we feel 
 that Heaven is begun, that we belong to the 
 great communion of saints, of whom Jesus 
 Christ is first, and the little child that last fled 
 is last. And so may our great communion be 
 with thee and thy beloved forever and forever. 
 AMEN. 
 
 148 
 
NOVEMBEB 3, 1889 - EVENING 
 
 GOD, our Father in heaven, as the curtains of 
 night fall around the dwellings of men, we come 
 again to spend an hour in this place of prayer 
 and teaching, and we implore thy gracious pres- 
 ence, thy enlightening Spirit, thy forgiving love, 
 thy protecting care. Over all the earth stillness 
 reigns. The hosts of night are marshaled upon 
 the heavenly plain ; the sea rolls in the hollow of 
 thine hand; the mountains stand fast by thy 
 power ; man rests from his labors, and his heart 
 is refreshed by thoughts of God too great to be 
 numbered, even beyond the number of the sands 
 of the sea. 
 
 We implore thy blessing, Holy Father ; we im- 
 plore it upon ourselves, upon our homes, our 
 friends, those whom we love, and we implore it 
 for thy common human family, for every land 
 and race on earth. Let thy truth be glorified, 
 the truth of thy works, the truth of thy ways, 
 the truth of thy word, the truth as it is in thine 
 eternal righteousness, in thine almighty power, 
 in thy perfect goodness and love. And teach us, 
 men of the world with common cares and com- 
 
 149 
 
mon duties, as we enter into the common expe- 
 riences of thy human race, may we feel that we 
 belong indeed to a great cause, that we are 
 allied to an almighty purpose; and, according 
 to our best and humblest thought, according to 
 our purest vision and our sincerest reason, may 
 we join ourselves to that cause, and be partakers 
 of the eternal will. 
 
 Let thy blessing be upon us now, upon the 
 homes which we have left to come here, upon 
 those who are separated from us by distances of 
 time or space, across sea or land; and may we 
 have confidence and simple faith that those who 
 look up to thee and trust to thee, wherever 
 they are upon the earth, cannot be far apart. 
 AMEN. 
 
 150 
 
NOVEMBEE 10, 1889 MOENING 
 
 GOD, our Almighty and Everlasting Friend, we, 
 thy people, are come again to our place of 
 prayer. The day is bright ; the sun shines clear, 
 and the earth is blessed beneath its genial 
 beams ; and the heart of man, tried and afflicted, 
 or rejoicing and glad, lifts up its voice and 
 prayer to thee. 
 
 Almighty One, glorious in praises, great in 
 power, above all in beauty, stronger than 
 strength, we implore thee ; we rise up and bow 
 down before thee; we bring thee gifts of a con- 
 trite heart, of a pure spirit, of devout faith and 
 filial love. 
 
 We thank thee, thou giver of all our good, for 
 the ever-common gifts of thy providence, for 
 thy steady power, thy patient love, thine ever- 
 lasting and long-suffering goodness and truth. 
 We thank thee for the common blessings of our 
 lot, so common, as day and night, morning 
 and noou, daily bread and divine gifts of love, 
 holy charities of our daily life, and many bless- 
 ings descending from the past and hopes that 
 dawn in the future. 
 
 151 
 
We sometimes feel afflicted ; we are sometimes 
 much perplexed; sometimes we are broken- 
 hearted ; but we have ever had a mysterious gift 
 in our hearts, the gift of trusting in thee, of 
 hoping in thee, and of believing that somehow, 
 in some way, at some time, eternal good will 
 come of all our apparent evil, of all our weak- 
 ness, our shortcomings, our frailty, or our sins. 
 And we pray thee, Almighty God, that as we 
 look up to thee with such trust and implore thy 
 guidance with believing hearts, thou wilt temper 
 our minds to accept the events of life and provi- 
 dence as they come; to accept them not only as 
 inevitable, or as cruel fate, but as the wise cor- 
 rections of one who sees the end from the begin- 
 ning, who knows what is best, and who will do 
 what is best for every soul of man. 
 
 We thank thee, Almighty One, that when this 
 earthly life and lot are over, we may trust 
 to the same Almighty Providence; that we may 
 go forth to new spheres of being, to a new thea- 
 ter of action and life and thought, where our 
 faith shall be clearer, thy presence shall be more 
 manifest, and thy love shall warm and inspire 
 our hearts more fully. And we thank thee that 
 we can and may trust those who have gone be- 
 fore us to that field and sphere and theater of 
 spiritual life; that we may trust them to him 
 who saith, "All souls are mine." Thou hast 
 
made them; thou hast inspired them; thou hast 
 appointed unto them their discipline, their trials, 
 their struggles, their pain, their grief or their 
 loss, their joy or their gratitude; and we may 
 commit them to thee. And we bless thee for all 
 the flood of infinite goodness and wisdom and 
 grace that flows down to us from on high from 
 the higher places of spiritual life, where dwell 
 those whom we remember, an innumerable com- 
 pany, into whose lives and inheritance we have 
 entered, and in whose hope we live and still 
 have our being. 
 
 Almighty One, forgive our sins; let thy bless- 
 ing be abroad upon all the children of men ; bless 
 and inspire the people of our land ; guide and in- 
 struct our government and administrators of 
 law, manners, religion, and teaching; and let 
 them all look forth on the fair procession of the 
 spiritual life of man. Let thy benediction be 
 upon all the suffering ones, the poor, the op- 
 pressed, the obscure, and the unknown ; and may 
 our human sympathies be so increased that all 
 our distinctions and all our pride and coldness 
 shall be lost forever in the greater thought that 
 we are simply human, and belong to the common 
 family of God on earth. AMEN. 
 
 Father in heaven, hear our prayer, uttered 
 or unexpressed, and by thy Spirit kindle the 
 
 153 
 
deepest and loveliest things and thoughts in our 
 hearts. Increase that light in us that lighteth 
 every man that cometh into the world; enlarge 
 our sympathies to the breadth of true human 
 feeling and divine grace ; and may it be enough 
 for us that, living faithfully and honestly and 
 devoutly here with one another, we may com- 
 mend ourselves to God the faithful God for- 
 ever and ever. AMEN. 
 
 154 
 
NOVEMBER 10, 1889 - EVENING 
 
 ALMIGHTY GOD, our Father in Heaven, let thy 
 blessing and thy Spirit be upon us now, as we 
 are come in the evening hour to our place of 
 prayer, of teaching, and of song. Let thy bene- 
 diction be upon the homes which we have left, 
 the friends that are there; let thy blessing, too, 
 go abroad o'er the whole world, genial as the 
 beams of the sun, protecting, silent, and still as 
 the shadows of the night. 
 
 We thank thee for thy ever-constant and 
 never-failing goodness, for thy strong and steady 
 hand, leading us forward in places which we 
 know not and where we should lose ourselves; 
 for the enlightenment of thy Spirit, and the 
 abundant gifts of thy grace, enlightening our 
 minds, persuading our hearts, soothing our pain, 
 and turning all things for our good. And let 
 thy benediction, we pray thee, be everywhere, 
 wherever there is a human heart, a human life 
 to be taught and led and instructed by thee. In- 
 crease in us, we pray thee, that genial and gener- 
 ous feeling which is of the power of thy Spirit 
 and thy grace to be in sympathy with thy 
 
 155 
 
truth, in sympathy with human life and with 
 human hearts. 
 
 We ask thy blessing, Almighty God, and we 
 commend to thy power and providence, all those 
 influences, those institutions, those teachings, 
 those words of truth and right, which are the 
 forerunners of thy kingdom on earth; upon 
 every institution of learning, of law, of religion, 
 of good government, and all that pertains to 
 man's spiritual and moral being, to his welfare 
 on earth, and to his final destiny. 
 
 Almighty God, let thy blessing be upon the 
 people of the city, upon all classes and fortunes 
 and conditions, upon all little children, young 
 persons, those of mature years, the venerable 
 and experienced and wise; over all classes and 
 fortunes and conditions let the same good provi- 
 dence preside, let the same paternal love and 
 patience and wisdom reign, and let all be blessed 
 in thee, the common Father and God of all. 
 AMEN. 
 
 156 
 
NOVEMBER 17, 1889 - MOENING 
 
 GOD, our Father, Infinite and Holy One, Maker 
 of all things, Sustainer of all things, Inspirer of 
 men, our Father in heaven, our Almighty 
 Friend, we are come again to our place of 
 prayer according to our consecrated custom, 
 according to the way and habit of our heart, ac- 
 cording to our consecrated will and pure feeling. 
 We are come to offer our prayer, to lift up our 
 song, to listen to thy word, and to rise on wings 
 of power to thy presence. Come now to thine 
 own; come to the hearts that know thee, and to 
 the hearts that wait for thee ; come to our weak- 
 ness and our want, our frailty and our sin ; and 
 lift up thy people forever and forever. 
 
 We own thy blessing and thy goodness, thy 
 providence that is plain and thy providence that 
 is mysterious; we would accept them both with 
 filial minds, with intelligent hearts, with humble 
 and lowly feeling. For the common blessings of 
 life we thank thee. May no habit or custom ever 
 dull their beauty; but with ever-fresh inspira- 
 tions and moments of divine illumining, may we 
 see the beauty of the grass beneath our feet, and 
 
 157 
 
may the very walks in which we tread be as sap- 
 phire and rubies and gold to our sight; and in 
 our dwellings, among those we love, in the 
 special seclusion of our hearts and our lives and 
 our loves, may there thy kingdom beam upon us 
 with celestial glories in the common things of 
 our daily lot, in those whom we meet day by 
 day and hour by hour, and become so accus- 
 tomed to them that there may be a veil drawn 
 before their goodness. Almighty God, may we 
 believe in the loveliness of human hearts, the 
 beauty of human life ; and may we travel into no 
 distant world or custom or clime, but learn that 
 the besetting God is ever near, encompassing us 
 behind and before, and laying his hand upon us 
 in infinite wisdom and infinite love. 
 
 Almighty God, let thy pitying care be upon all 
 the distressed, the unfortunate, the poor, the 
 wandering, the wicked. Check the proud and 
 vain ; lift up the fallen ; comfort and console the 
 broken-hearted; and according to thine infinite 
 and inspiring will help, comfort, chastise, re- 
 buke, and bless thy people everywhere. 
 
 thou Infinite and Holy One, thou infinite, 
 unique, and eternal Love, would that my heart 
 were as thy heart, and that wholly ! And may it 
 be even so with all thy people, thou Infinite God 
 of eternal life. AMEN. 
 
 158 
 
God, our Inspirer, quicken our hearts by thy 
 Spirit now to discern thy near-by truth and pres- 
 ence; and, in manifestations of that truth and 
 presence, may we ever adore the besetting God, 
 the inspiring One. Let thy fullness be poured 
 in ample floods upon our receptive and teachable 
 hearts, giving us wisdom, giving us grace; and 
 let moral beauty dawn upon us from thine in- 
 finite and eternal Spirit. AMEN. 
 
 159 
 
NOVEMBER 17, 1889 EVENING 
 
 GOD, our Father in heaven, we are come again 
 to our place of prayer. From the heights of 
 revering thought, of true and pure feeling, of 
 reverence for thy word and thy providence, we 
 would look abroad upon thy ways with man on 
 the earth. We adore with reverent and devout 
 minds that solemn procession of history which 
 moves forward beneath thine enchurching 
 Spirit, guiding mankind in doubts and perplex- 
 ity, in wickedness and in wrong, to serener 
 heights of patience, of pure acts, of charity and 
 good, and giving fuller gleams of that eternal 
 kingdom which thy Son did preach. We adore 
 with reverent awe, with holy fear, and with in- 
 spiring hope the progress of thy truth. We 
 grieve over the darkness, the wrong, and the sin 
 of the world; and we would grieve and repent 
 sincerely over our own ignorance, our darkness, 
 and our sins. And those sins which we do sin- 
 cerely repent of, God, remove them from us, 
 we pray thee, as far as the east is from the west ; 
 and may we have something of that experience 
 which the finest spirits of mankind have had 
 
 160 
 
the experience which taught them that there was 
 no contradiction between thy will and their will, 
 that they have been led by thy hand and in- 
 spired by thy Spirit, and that in days of tumult 
 and trial, and in the last earthly extremity, they 
 have had a great and exceeding peace. 
 
 Let thy blessing, we pray thee, be a hallowed 
 and consecrated benediction upon all the insti- 
 tutions of society that promote the welfare of 
 man, the good of the people, the cherishing and 
 teaching of human love, the guide of the spirit 
 of man; and as our years increase and our ex- 
 perience grows deeper, may we learn that the 
 chief thing, the chief thing on this earth, is not 
 a thing but a being an immortal nature man, 
 thy child, thy son. May we learn to look upon 
 human society as more beautiful than worlds or 
 stars; that we may look upon justice as more 
 wonderful and more glorious than any proces- 
 sions of the seasons, than any revolutions of the 
 earth, than any motions of systems and of suns ; 
 and may truth be more beautiful than the morn- 
 ing, and wisdom fairer than the skies, and love 
 sweeter than any landscape, sublimer than the 
 sea, and stronger than the mountain; and so, 
 having the beatific vision in our hearts, may we 
 have something of celestial light beaming up- 
 on our minds; and, inspired by a great hope, 
 may we have great generosity of feeling, great 
 
 161 
 
courage of thought, great persuasion and convic- 
 tion. And do thou grant, Almighty God, as in 
 thy wisdom shall seem best, the fulfillment of the 
 prophecies of thy word, spoken by those who 
 have seen in sublime vision of truth and love, 
 and in the wisdom of God, the coming of an 
 eternal kingdom a kingdom of power and of 
 peace, a kingdom of unspeakable glory. And 
 may those of us who shall never see that king- 
 dom here on earth, may we live and die in the 
 grateful and devout expectation that we shall be, 
 and are, partakers of that kingdom in scenes be- 
 yond this world. And so let thy people be 
 blessed and lifted up forever and forever. 
 
 We ask thy blessing upon all the people of the 
 city to-night ; upon every home and habitation of 
 man; upon all classes and conditions and for- 
 tunes of human life. Watch with those that 
 watch; pray with those that pray, and listen to 
 their prayer; and let thy benediction, thy chas- 
 tening grace, thy retributive mercies be with 
 those who are gone astray in paths of wrong and 
 wickedness; and do thou chastise, redeem, and 
 bless all thy children according to thy wisdom, 
 thy goodness, and thy power. AMEN. 
 
NOVEMBEE 24, 1889 
 
 GOD, our Father in heaven, we lift up our 
 hearts to thee in devout prayer and gratitude; 
 we humbly confess our sins and we look up to 
 thee for thy free and abundant grace to remove 
 our sins from us as far as the east is from the 
 west. Pity our weaknesses ; reprove our wrong ; 
 and by thy good Spirit lead us in paths of 
 beauty and truth and peace. 
 
 We confess, with holy reverence, thy guidance 
 of thy people hitherto, and that thou dost lift 
 them up forever and forever. We own thy 
 protecting power and guiding Spirit in the life 
 of the world, in the life of the Church of thy 
 Son Jesus Christ; and we pray that the vision 
 of prophets and saints and martyrs, and the 
 prophetic word of thy Son, may in the eternal 
 years of God be fulfilled. May the time come 
 when that Spirit of truth the Spirit of God 
 shall so inspire and dwell and abide in the hearts 
 of men that there shall be peace in thy holy 
 mountain, truth in all thy temples ; and that the 
 heart of man shall everywhere rejoice in the 
 abundance of the grace and beauty of God. 
 
 163 
 
Heal all our weaknesses, our prejudices, our 
 evil passions ; lift up our hearts into that greater 
 and mightier kingdom of thy will and of thy 
 love; and help each one of us to enter into this 
 kingdom in his own heart, in his own home, and 
 in his relations to his fellow men. Help us in 
 our dwellings, in our homes, to live in the large 
 grace of a pure affection, of an upright will, a 
 true feeling, and a devout and reverent heart. 
 Shine by thy gracious Spirit upon the towers 
 and citadels of the New Jerusalem ; bring forth 
 in the hearts of men the glad fruits of righteous- 
 ness; and may the time come when man shall 
 have no cause to say to his fellow man, ' ' Know 
 ye the Lord," inasmuch as all shall know thee, 
 from the least to the greatest, and shall be 
 blessed in obedience to thy will. 
 
 Let thy blessing be to-night upon all the peo- 
 ple of the city upon every class and condition 
 and fortune of human life and human lot ; upon 
 every age and experience; upon every trial of 
 sorrow or of joy, of prosperity or adversity ; and 
 let all the people be blessed in thee, the common 
 Father of all. Let thy gracious providence and 
 protecting care be upon all men everywhere. 
 Chastise, correct, guide, lead forward thy people 
 forever and forever. AMEN. 
 
 164 
 
DECEMBER 1, 1889 
 
 GOD, our Father in heaven, we look up to thee; 
 we thank thee for thy protecting care, for thine 
 upholding providence, for thine inspiring Spirit, 
 and for thy love toward us manifested in Jesus 
 Christ, thy Son. We thank thee for the day; 
 for its respite from the usual cares and duties of 
 life; for its blessed opportunity of home, of 
 friendship, of thy house of prayer and hymn 
 and teaching; and for all the blessings of tradi- 
 tion and of truth that gather around it. 
 
 And now we ask thy blessing on us, as with 
 sincerity of mind and devoutness of heart we 
 lift up our prayer to thee, and ask thee to bestow 
 upon us all the good that thou knowest we 
 need, the good of thy Spirit, of thy grace, of 
 thy forgiving love, thy tender and paternal ad- 
 monitions, and thy wise reproofs. Give us, we 
 pray thee, by thy good providence seconding our 
 honest labors, give us the things of this life that 
 are good for the body, and are thy providence 
 and the ways of thy provision for the children 
 of men. 
 
 We thank thee for the refreshing rain; we 
 
 165 
 
thank thee for dwellings whose walls are 
 adorned with many blessed vines of human af- 
 fections, consecrated to our hearts by pleasant 
 memories, and in which we may have some 
 thought and some realization of what thy people 
 have ever called the kingdom of God. And 
 we ask thy blessing, Almighty God, upon all the 
 people, upon every class and condition and for- 
 tune of man. Assuage the passions and preju- 
 dices of men ; awaken their minds from the deep 
 slumbers of ignorance and passion and strife; 
 and bring in the light of a better truth, a purer 
 affection, and a more divine grace ; and may we 
 all be led to feel how feeble and how small is our 
 individual share yet in the wonder, the glory, 
 and the power of the kingdom of God ; and may 
 we ever expect more and more of thee; may we 
 ever believe in thee for the best things ; and may 
 our faith in thee be worthy ourselves and 
 worthy thee, thou Almighty and All-loving One. 
 Holy Father, hear our prayer; forgive our 
 sins; lift us up from every weakness, and make 
 us able to stand, to stand upon our feet in 
 justice, in righteousness, in purity of purpose, 
 and in upright will, to serve God with our fel- 
 low men, careless for this or for that, if only God 
 speaks to us and we shall hear. AMEN. 
 
 166 
 
DECEMBEE 8, 1889 - MOENING 
 
 GOD, thou who art to be feared and reverenced 
 by all intelligent creatures, we look up unto 
 thee with devout and humble feeling, with peni- 
 tent and contrite hearts; we cast ourselves upon 
 thine almighty arm, and implore thee for all we 
 need. "We thank thee for thy protection; we 
 thank thee for thy paternal providence; and 
 more, and most of all, for thine inspiring Spirit 
 that gives discernment to the heart of man. We 
 look abroad upon the world around us; we be- 
 hold Nature in her beauty, in her glory, in her 
 terror and her storms, these are the vestures 
 of the Almighty. Thy power is seen in the 
 heavens above and upon the earth beneath, and 
 abroad upon the great deep. The mountains 
 stand fast by thy power ; the forests wave in the 
 winds of heaven; and the earth and day and 
 night are firm and strong in thy presence and in 
 thy Spirit. But these are the things of thy crea- 
 tion, the things of thine upholding, and the 
 things of thy power; they know thee not; the 
 mountains know thee not; the sea speaks no 
 word of prayer; the fair fields of living green 
 smile beneath the sun or drink the gentle rains 
 
 167 
 
of heaven, but return no gratitude; while the 
 heart of man discerns in these thy power, 
 thy goodness, and thy inspiration; 'tis the 
 heart of man alone that can welcome thee as 
 a divine guest, that can receive thee with heaven- 
 ly hospitality, and bless thee for thy Spirit and 
 thy grace. God, give us, thy children, we 
 beseech thee, this divine, this heavenly grace to 
 stand apart from the outward world and to look 
 upon it; to retire from the outward world to 
 the world within, undelayed by outward glories, 
 undazzled by brilliant suns or stars, and in safe 
 retreat in thy eternal strength. 
 
 Almighty God, we thank thee for, and we con- 
 fess thee in, thine eternal, unfailing law the 
 law that holds the worlds in place, that keeps 
 them in their courses, that restrains the sea with- 
 in its bounds, that sends the rain upon the earth, 
 and pours rivers towards the eternal floods of 
 the ocean. In these we revere thee ; but more in 
 the heart of man, in the law of thy righteous- 
 ness, thy goodness, and in the beauty of thy 
 holiness. And may we be partakers, Almighty 
 One, of something of thine own greatness and 
 glory; may our consciences respond quickly to 
 thy least command; may our hearts leap up 
 gladly to love thee ; may our wills be blessed in 
 thee in obedience to thee; and may an eternal 
 Rock ever be our refuge and our strength. 
 
 168 
 
We ask thy blessing, Holy One, upon our 
 homes, upon our kindred and our friends, 
 wherever they are on the earth ; and we pray for 
 those too who are in heaven, blessed as they are 
 indeed in the nearer presence of God. And may 
 we all live as in thy presence wherever we are; 
 and by sea or land, by night or day, may we be 
 living a spiritual life, hid in the eternal life of 
 the Lord. AMEN. 
 
 thou Searcher of all hearts, ' * Search me and 
 know me, and see if there be any wicked way in 
 me, and lead me in the way everlasting.'* Let 
 that be the prayer of thy servants, and by thy 
 Spirit purify the spiritual rays that dawn upon 
 our minds ; and amid worlds and suns, amid per- 
 plexity or danger or fear, may we ever be secure 
 in thine eternal Spirit and thy eternal life. 
 AMEN. 
 
DECEMBEK 8, 1889 EVENING 
 (After the death of Jefferson Davis.) 
 
 THOU ALMIGHTY CfoD, Infinite and Holy One, 
 we adore thy power and thy providence; we 
 bless thine inspiring Spirit and paternal love; 
 and we come again, in the evening hour, to our 
 place of prayer, and we look up to thee with 
 devout and holy feeling. We confess our sins, 
 our weaknesses, and our oft going astray; and 
 we pray thee to receive us, as we are returned 
 to thee and remind ourselves of thee, our 
 strength, our refuge, and our rest. 
 
 For all tokens of thy power in the world 
 around we ever bless thee ; for the tokens of thy 
 providence in the world of mankind we ever re- 
 joice and are glad with reverent joy and glad- 
 ness; and we thank thee for every token of a 
 divine guidance, a divine power that the life of 
 man affords, that in all ages and times and 
 periods thou hast had witnesses of thee in saints 
 and prophets and martyrs; that thou hast been 
 with thy people evermore; and that every wise 
 cause, and every just enterprise and power of 
 
 170 
 
man, has been promoted by thy providence and 
 thy will. 
 
 We thank thee, Almighty God, for our coun- 
 try, for its fair and large domain, for its 
 happy people, its thronging industries, its insti- 
 tutions of learning, of law and religion; and 
 that, under the protection of a wise and great 
 constitution that looks upon all men as equal, 
 equal before God, we thank thee that the peo- 
 ple have peace. And we ask thy blessing, Al- 
 mighty Father, that all the memories of the past, 
 that all the strifes and war of the past, may be 
 year by year forgotten ; and as the gentle stream 
 of history flows on toward the eternal sea may 
 prejudice be assuaged, may good feeling be 
 kindled, and may commerce and intercourse and 
 learning and religion flow like rivers of goodness 
 and blessing through all our land. 
 
 Almighty Father, we ask thy blessing, and we 
 implore thy inspiring Spirit, for every just and 
 generous sentiment, for every magnanimous 
 feeling, for every word of faith and confidence 
 and truth. Let thy people be led by thy provi- 
 dence ; let them be guided by a pillar of cloud by 
 day and of fire by night ; and here may blessing 
 and honor abide forever and forever. 
 
 Let thy blessing be upon all the people of the 
 city upon all classes and fortunes and condi- 
 tions of men. Chastise, reprove, bless, pity, and 
 171 
 
lift up, according to the want, the distress, the 
 weakness of the waywardness of all mankind, 
 and let all thy people be blessed in the common 
 eternal good-will of God. AMEN. 
 
 172 
 
DECEMBEB 15, 1889 
 
 INFINITE AND HOLY ONE, in the evening hour 
 we are come again to our place of prayer. For 
 the quiet day, for its freedom from common 
 duties and labors, for its happy opportunities 
 for occasion of thought and teaching, and medi- 
 tation and prayer, we thank thee. We thank 
 thee for homes consecrated by many charities; 
 for life sweetened by many pure affections ; and 
 for all the consecration which these receive from 
 thy blessing and thy Spirit. And we look to thee 
 now with gratitude, and ask from thee more and 
 more. We ask from thee the abundant enlight- 
 enment of thy Spirit that gentle, heavenly and 
 gracious influence which, descending upon the 
 hearts of men from the Spirit of God, leads them 
 into all truth, illumines their minds with celes- 
 tial light, and gives beauty and order and law 
 and inspiration and love to our being. 
 
 Almighty One, look upon us, we pray thee, 
 with all those feelings which thou hast taught us 
 in thy word and by the gospel of thy Son that 
 thou dost hold toward all thine earthly children. 
 Look with patience upon our ignorance, our 
 173 
 
weakness, our forgetfulness, or our indifference. 
 Awaken our minds to finer sensibilities; inspire 
 our imaginations that we may see truth from 
 afar, and seeing and feeling that we belong to 
 thy family, that we receive our life from thee, 
 and our nature is like thine own, may we feel in- 
 deed that we have a great destiny, a great hope, 
 an inextinguishable being. 
 
 We thank thee, Almighty God, for those rich 
 treasures of the past that have come down to us, 
 and are a source of enjoyment to us, for the 
 lives of the great and the good, the humble and 
 the true, those who have imbued the world with 
 something of their own beauty, who have in- 
 spired the heart of man with something of the 
 truth they received from God, and have handed 
 it down to us ; and may we hand it down to the 
 generations that come after us. Thou hast had 
 a royal line of heroes and martyrs and saints; 
 they have been here and there upon the earth in 
 all periods of time and history, men and 
 women who were ready to live or die for the 
 truth, and who gloried in their devotion and in 
 their self-surrender to what they thought best 
 and truest. 
 
 Almighty God, inspire us with deeper senti- 
 ments for the common daily duties of human 
 life, the daily round of life, its ever-returning 
 cares, its monotonous anxieties, that they all 
 
 174 
 
may be lifted up and glorified, and made the 
 teaching and discipline which fit us for immortal 
 life. 
 
 Holy Father, we ask thy blessing upon all thy 
 people to-night. Let thy blessing be upon every 
 dwelling. Comfort those who are in trouble and 
 distress; help them to bear their troubles, and 
 give them a word of comfort and help in their 
 distress; and increase our human sympathies 
 until we feel that our great distinction is that 
 we are human. AMEN. 
 
 175 
 
DECEMBEE 22, 1889 
 
 GOD, our Father, all creatures praise thee ; thy 
 works praise thee; and our hearts bless thee. 
 Thou Spirit of eternal life, thou all-holy and all- 
 good, come by thy gracious Spirit to thy people 
 now, and give us that divine communion with 
 thyself which is the life of our life and the light 
 of our light ; and let the beauty of the Lord our 
 God be upon us, something of the beauty of 
 thine eternal excellence, the beauty of thy joy, 
 the beauty of thy love. We are very poor and 
 needy, and our need is our blessing; that we 
 need thy Spirit, that we need thy grace, that we 
 need thy strong supporting hand and thy holy 
 providence, thy paternal care, is indeed our 
 blessing. 
 
 Thou who in thine eternal strength knowest 
 no change or shadow of age, look down with 
 gentle and tender regard upon us in our earthly 
 vicissitudes, in our changing seasons and years, 
 in our feeble or failing earthly days, and give us 
 to know and feel and to be partakers of thine 
 eternal strength. 
 
 We come to thee, God, to our place of 
 
 176 
 
prayer from the daily experiences of human life. 
 Some of us come in joy and gladness, some in 
 pain and tears ; give us all to rejoice in God, our 
 Maker; to rejoice in his commandment, in the 
 strength and power of his hand, in the tender- 
 ness of his mercies and the righteousness of his 
 retributions; and so may we feel that here on 
 earth we are entering into that higher life that 
 belongs ever to the sons of God. 
 
 We thank thee, Holy Father, for all the kindly 
 charities, the hallowed loves, the sacred bonds of 
 our earthly lot. We thank thee for the sympa- 
 thies we have for our fellow beings, that when 
 they are in distress, we are in distress ; that when 
 they are cast down, we feel that we put our 
 hands, feeble though they are, beneath them and 
 lift them up. And we thank thee that we may 
 humbly feel that in these divine sympathies we 
 have something in our hearts of a revelation of 
 thy heart ; and may we in our best moments cry 
 unto thee, "0 that my heart were as thy heart, 
 and that wholly." 
 
 Almighty God, thou Father of man, thou 
 Maker and Sustainer of the worlds, give us a 
 dwelling-place in the strength of thine eternal 
 power and truth and commandment, peace in 
 thine inspiring Spirit, and hope in thy great 
 promises. Let thy blessing be upon us, we pray 
 thee, and upon all thy human family everywhere 
 177 
 
on earth, everywhere in heaven. Let thy Spirit 
 and thy grace comfort, inspire, encourage, and 
 bless. Forgive our sins, and help us to forsake 
 them ; and by thy wisdom do thou be wiser than 
 our understanding ; and by thy strength do thou 
 be stronger than our strength. AMEN. 
 
 Almighty God, our Father, inspire by thy 
 Spirit every good sentiment and pure desire in 
 our hearts. Give us that depth of wisdom to 
 know our wants, and knowing our wants may 
 they be supplied from divine and eternal foun- 
 tains; and may we increase in wisdom, may we 
 increase in moral and spiritual life, and may we 
 see that the eternal rock of safety and strength 
 is within ; a feeling of being at one with thee, at 
 one with ourselves, at one with the world. AMEN. 
 
 178 
 
JANUAEY 5, 1890 MOENING 
 
 GOD, our Father, thou Almighty and All-glor- 
 ious One, we comprehend thee not ; thou art past 
 our understanding, "We pass our days as a 
 tale that is told": "from everlasting to everlast- 
 ing, thou art God. " If in the midst of thy great- 
 ness and surrounded by the tokens of thine infi- 
 nite power, we are ever quite overcome and feel 
 that we are little and nothing, if in the midst of 
 thy works or in the whelming flood of thine eter- 
 nal years we feel our weakness, we feel that in 
 the crowds of the generations of men that are 
 moving on we are quite lost from thee and to thy 
 love and thy wisdom, God, may we remember 
 that thou dost count the stars ; that thou dost call 
 the hosts of heaven by name, even as a shepherd 
 of Israel called his sheep by name; that thou 
 holdest the ocean in the hollow of thine hand; 
 and unknown and little as we seem sometimes in 
 our moments of discouragement or doubt or de- 
 spair, may we remember that thy care is infinite, 
 thy love is boundless and ever-watchful, and that 
 the mountains in their eternal strength are not 
 so much to thee as one human heart. The moun- 
 179 
 
tain has no grief, it has no sorrow, it has no joy, 
 and if it ever seems to weep, it is but the rain 
 falling from the clouds. The ocean sends up its 
 eternal voice to thee, but it is not a prayer, it is 
 not a penitence, it is not a sorrow, it is not a joy. 
 Almighty One, may we cherish these things 
 these human things in our hearts, and ever be 
 refreshed and stand off against the world with 
 conscious power in the light of God. 
 
 We thank thee, Almighty One, thou Maker 
 and Guardian of our human days here on earth, 
 that there are so many of thy children that can 
 give testimony and witness to the goodness and 
 the mercy of God. Led by thy hand, cherished 
 by thy love, guarded by thy providence, the aged 
 man at evening, as he looks abroad upon the dis- 
 tant horizon or into the deep heaven, can say in 
 his heart, in silence and in peace, " Behold the 
 goodness and the mercy of God. ' ' The child looks 
 forward with boundless hope, and, bounding 
 with expectation and joy, knows not what is be- 
 fore him ; but he has been taught a gentle prayer 
 and his evening pillow is made smooth by the 
 thought that he has a Father in heaven ; and so 
 our earthly days, from childhood and youth and 
 manhood and age, are surrounded by, infused by 
 the immanent and ever-present God. 
 
 And now we pray thee, Almighty One, that 
 our hearts may use rightly every moment, every 
 
 180 
 
event, every occasion, and every thing; and for- 
 getting the steps taken in the past, may we make 
 a new beginning in the race for an eternal crown. 
 May we remember that we are surrounded by a 
 cloud of witnesses, not on earth merely or 
 chiefly, but the witnesses that have gone forward 
 and look down upon us from a higher sphere; 
 who sympathize with our struggles, who mourn 
 at our failures, and who rejoice at our success. 
 And so may our hearts be tempered and kept by 
 thy inspiration ; may we ever be awake to every 
 sense of duty; may we esteem conscience more 
 than any earthly goods ; and may we esteem our 
 greatest possession, the possession of power 
 over ourselves, to do right, to revere God, to do 
 justly, and to walk humbly. 
 
 Now, Holy Father, be with us, thy people ; be 
 with all men, thy children; let thy Spirit go 
 forth, enchurching itself in the human world. 
 May that kingdom of God which thy Son fore- 
 told and taught, may it be coming ; and may thy 
 human race be lifted and lifted nearer and near- 
 er to it ; and may we ourselves be partakers in it ; 
 and may that kingdom abide in our hearts. 
 
 Now let thy blessing be with all thy people 
 according to their wants, those who are grieved 
 and afflicted, those who are glad and happy, 
 those who are oppressed and cast down in 
 despair, all, all, may they have the Spirit, the 
 
 181 
 
blessing, and the care of God, the common 
 Father of all. AMEN. 
 
 God, hear now the prayer of thy people, that 
 that which is best in their hearts, in purpose and 
 in desire, by thy quickening Spirit and grace 
 may be abundantly fulfilled. Forgive our sins; 
 lift us up from all our downfalls and our des- 
 pair; and encourage us by thy word from on 
 high, calling us to victory, to duty, and to eternal 
 life. AMEN. 
 
 182 
 
JANUAEY 5, 1890 -EVENING 
 
 GOD, our Father, in the stillness of the evening 
 hour we are come again to our place of prayer. 
 The nightly hosts are marshaled upon the sky; 
 the earth turns upon its soft and silent axis; 
 day and night, morning and evening, noonday 
 and darkness are all subject to thy command- 
 ment; and all things, and all creatures, are sus- 
 tained by thy power and protected by thy care. 
 We confess with reverent and filial feeling that 
 care. We own with gratitude a wisdom greater 
 than ours, a knowledge that includes our igno- 
 rance, and a loving-kindness and a tender mercy 
 that are from everlasting to everlasting. 
 
 And now, Holy One, thou Eternal Spirit, 
 dwell in our hearts, we pray thee; kindle anew 
 that light that lighteth every man that cometh 
 into the world; and may we feel that the gospel 
 of thy Son is the renewal of our nature, the re- 
 viving of our power, the strength and annuncia- 
 tion of all that is best in us, of all that is true and 
 pure and good. May we understand his words 
 that he spoke, saying ''That he came not to de- 
 stroy, but to fulfill," to fulfill thy word spoken 
 of old ; to fulfill that common nature which thou 
 
 183 
 
hast given us of thyself ; to make us partakers of 
 life more abundantly. And may we see this life ; 
 may we enjoy its power ; may we be led, through 
 its grace and through its benediction, in the 
 simplest walks of life, in the humblest place of 
 duty ; and in all may we discern that it takes no 
 great theater of this world to hold the kingdom 
 of God; each one of us, in our places, in our 
 daily and ever-returning duties, in the constant 
 relation with our fellow beings, may we be con- 
 scious that we are governed by divine power, of 
 will, of conscience, of beauty, and of truth; and 
 may reverence for thee, and abundant sympathy 
 with our fellow men, be to us the constant wit- 
 ness that the Spirit of God is upon us; and as 
 thy Son ascended from his baptism and the 
 Spirit lighted upon him, saying, * ' This is my be- 
 loved Son, in whom I am well pleased," may we, 
 thy children, have something of the same divine 
 benediction, and know that we and God are one. 
 Holy Father, let thy tender care be in every 
 dwelling and in every heart ; let thy kingdom of 
 peace and righteousness and power be increasing 
 in glory and strength ; and as we, each one in thy 
 good time, go forward beyond these earthly 
 scenes, may we be satisfied with the appoint- 
 ments of Heaven, and may we trust that what- 
 ever is best for us will be done by almighty wis- 
 dom, goodness, and power. AMEN. 
 
 184 
 
JANUAEY 12, 1890 
 
 INFINITE AND HOLY ONE, we lift up our hearts 
 to thee in reverence and holy fear ; we bow down 
 in humble contrition and penitence; we praise 
 thee, we glorify thee, thou Lord God Almighty. 
 And come now, by thy gracious Spirit, to our 
 hearts, and reveal unto us the hidden things of 
 thy grace and thy love. Temper our minds to 
 the daily experience of our earthly lot ; and teach 
 us through all vicissitudes of change or disap- 
 pointment or decay to win the victory of our be- 
 ing, the triumph of our faith, the purpose of our 
 life, and to find that life hid with Christ's in 
 God. 
 
 We thank thee always for the common gifts of 
 thy providence, gifts that are so common that 
 we are quite inclined to forget them, daily 
 blessings, hourly comforts, which demand our 
 gratitude and our love, but which we are quite 
 disposed to think belong to us, as though we had 
 earned them by the labor of our own hands or 
 wrought them by our own skill. 
 
 Almighty God, forgive our weaknesses, pity 
 them, we pray thee. Teach us a better mind, and 
 
 185 
 
save us from the conceits of the world. We thank 
 thee, Almighty Father, that thou hast so richly 
 endowed our being, that in the humblest things 
 the spiritual mind can discern beauty and grace 
 and loveliness. The simplest acts of daily life 
 may have a halo of wonder and beauty around 
 them; and the simplest circumstances of our 
 earthly lot, the plainest duties, the daily round 
 of care, may have something more than sunset or 
 sunrise glory; and we thank thee for that peace 
 of heart which thy servants enjoy and which is 
 beyond all understanding of the wisdom of the 
 world. We thank thee, Almighty God, for, and 
 our hearts are lifted up as we read, the story of 
 self-renunciation of thy servant of old, who 
 would not quench his thirst with the water that 
 the mighty men brought to him, but he poured it 
 out rather as an oblation to God. We thank thee 
 for the story of that womanly heart which sought 
 to retrieve and bring back light and life and 
 peace to her heart as she broke the precious oint- 
 ment and poured it upon the head of Jesus. For 
 every act of moral beauty, for every act of spiri- 
 tual life, for every grace that adorns life and 
 gives wonder and mystery to our being, we thank 
 thee, thou Inspirer of all. 
 
 We pray for that wisdom, Almighty God, that 
 shall teach us to discern beauty and truth and 
 loveliness in our daily affairs, in our work, our 
 
 186 
 
plodding, our ever-constant and returning care. 
 May we see in thy providence a loveliness beyond 
 what the world calls success something for the 
 mind to rest on, something with which the heart 
 may be refreshed. 
 
 Holy Father, we ask thy blessing always upon 
 all our brethren, the common family of man. 
 Thy promises we cannot fathom ; the mystery of 
 time and events we can see into but a little way ; 
 but we bless thee that the upright man, that the 
 good and true heart, can do what it may, can 
 do its duty, and look up unto God and say, 
 "Now, thou Almighty and All-righteous One, thy 
 servant hath done what he could; do thou the 
 rest/' We ask thy blessing upon us, Holy Father, 
 that by thy Spirit and grace our hearts may be 
 so tempered and our wills may be so attuned, we 
 may live and act as we believe ; that we may put 
 our best thoughts and our best feelings into daily 
 practice ; and that the bare and rugged walls of 
 life may be entwined with beautiful vines of 
 charity, of loveliness, and of truth. All of 
 which we ask, as thy children, in the name of 
 thy Son Jesus Christ. AMEN. 
 
 Almighty God, our Father, receive now the 
 devout and humble desires and prayers of our 
 hearts. We wish that we were altogether at our 
 best ; we would that the best impulses, the purest 
 
 187 
 
desires, and true love controlled our lives; and 
 that our whole being was in accord with thy 
 divine grace and thy inspiring Spirit. Encour- 
 age us greatly ; strengthen us with eternal right- 
 eousness; and give us, thy children, wandering 
 wherever we may be, give us the peace of God, 
 which passeth understanding. AMEN. 
 
 188 
 
JANUARY 19, 1890 
 
 GOD, our Father in heaven, Maker of all things 
 and Inspirer of men, Holy Providence of our 
 lives, Eternal Spirit of life and joy and strength 
 and peace, we thy children come again in our ac- 
 customed hour to lift up our hearts to thee in 
 prayer, in solemn praise, in awful joy. We come 
 as we are, from the common daily experiences of 
 life, its ordinary cares, its perplexities, its 
 anxieties, its gladness, its joy, and its peace. 
 Whatever that daily life has been to us, whatever 
 it has brought to us of better experience and of 
 purer knowledge, we come now to confess all as 
 of thy Spirit and thy grace ; and we thank thee 
 for this divine providence of our earthly lot, by 
 which thou hast given us enough to do, work, 
 care, anxiety, provision, foresight, industry, 
 in these all we would see thy hand ; we would see 
 and own thy teaching; we would own thy guid- 
 ance and inspiring Spirit. 
 
 We pray thee, Almighty One, to help us with 
 fortitude of will and with pure feelings to re- 
 ceive thy blessings with gratitude and thy trials 
 with patient resignation. And may we think 
 189 
 
how little we know; and may we think how 
 blessed it is often that we know so little. Thou 
 art omniscient; thou knowest all things; thou 
 knowest the hearts of men ; in thy hands are the 
 issue of life and the issue of death. Why should 
 we need, feeble as we are, to know much? We 
 implore thee, God, to receive us into thine all- 
 protecting care, into thy wise and Holy Spirit; 
 and do better things for us than our wisdom can 
 think or than our hearts can wish or our hopes 
 can aspire. 
 
 Holy Father, we implore thee for those things 
 that thou knowest we most need, for a filial 
 heart, for wide and generous human sympathies, 
 for all that belongs to us that makes us peculiar- 
 ly human and peculiarly children of God. Al- 
 mighty One, forgive our sins, we implore thee, 
 and separate them from us as far as the east is 
 from the west. Those who are sincerely peni- 
 tent, let them be restored in the gladness and joy 
 and peace of thy forgiveness, and grant unto us 
 all, in the private experiences of our own hearts, 
 that increase in wisdom, that increase in love, 
 which shall lead us to believe in thee more fully, 
 which shall give us a complete triumph over the 
 illusions of the world; and if we live to age, to 
 experience, or to worldly honor, may we consider 
 the bloom of age, the wisdom of experience, and 
 the glory of worldly honor, to be the fact that we 
 
 190 
 
know thee, the ever-loving and true God, and 
 Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. And thus, 
 upon the summit of human days, may we look 
 abroad over all our earthly experience and ex- 
 claim with gratitude and trust and hope, " Be- 
 hold the wisdom, the goodness, and the mercy of 
 God." AMEN. 
 
 Almighty God, thou Maker of us all, impress 
 upon our hearts all their pure and true senti- 
 ments, and help us to believe, and to act as we 
 believe, the best things, tne best feelings, the best 
 thoughts. Increase our human regard ; give us a 
 higher elevation of human thought and feeling, 
 from which we can look upon ourselves as we 
 are, and upon our fellow men as we wish that 
 they were; and may thy holy providence, the 
 wise teachings of thy Spirit, may they all be 
 for us and for our fellow men, now and forever. 
 AMEN. 
 
 191 
 
JANUAEY 26, 1890 - MORNING 
 
 GOD, our Life and our Light, the clouds are 
 scattered; the sun comes forth in his strength; 
 thy glories are revealed in the constant and 
 eternal procession of thy power, thy goodness, 
 and thy love; and we are come, in the order of 
 our days and the customary hour, again to this 
 our place of prayer. We have left our homes, 
 endeared to us by their many kindly charities, 
 their walls entwined with pleasant vines of 
 beauty, love, and hope. Chastened, it may be, 
 by trials, deeply enriched by tender sorrows, en- 
 couraged and blessed by mortal hopes, we are 
 come here to our common place of prayer, to 
 make common supplication unto thee in the name 
 of that common nature which thou hast inspired, 
 and in the name of thy Son, the Captain, the 
 Leader and Guide of all. 
 
 We come with accustomed blessing to thee. We 
 have no new word to speak of our wants, our 
 weaknesses, or our sins; it is the same oft- 
 repeated story of childlike ignorance, of child- 
 like love, of childlike weakness, wandering, or 
 forgetfulness. But, God, however childlike we 
 
 192 
 
are or indifferent or forgetful, now coming back 
 to love thee, and then forgetting thee again, thy 
 goodness keeps on forever; thy patience is an 
 eternal strength; and thy love flows as a river 
 through the landscape, ever strong ; and thou art 
 never sorry that thou hast done us good. The 
 calling and the gifts of God have no repentance ; 
 thy heart is ever full; thy Spirit is ever going 
 forth; thou art ever enchurching that Spirit in 
 the common world of men. 
 
 We implore thy blessing now, Almighty One, 
 that our hearts, attuned to pure feeling, to rever- 
 ent and devout sentiments, to simple childlike 
 faith, may sit in heavenly places, and be taught 
 by thy Son and thy Spirit. 
 
 Comfort those who are in deep anxiety and in 
 sore distress ; lift up those who are almost over- 
 whelmed in despair; enlighten the minds of the 
 ignorant, and send rays of divine light and peace 
 and glory upon the souls that are imprisoned and 
 in darkness. Give thy Spirit abundantly to all 
 thy human creatures; inspire good men more 
 abundantly that their light may shine and that 
 their works may testify of God, our Father ; and 
 may we, in some humble earthly measure, be 
 imitators of thee children of God, in thy like- 
 ness, in thy love, following thy word and com- 
 mandment, and trusting to thee, and expecting 
 from thee all good. AMEN. 
 
 193 
 
Almighty God, our Father, fulfill now in our 
 hearts every pure desire, every heavenly thought, 
 and every sweet affection; and may gratitude 
 and blessing ever give us peace and joy in thy 
 providence and Spirit ; and even as thy gifts are 
 ever and ever without repentance, so if we have 
 gone abroad in a world of thy making and of thy 
 providence, if we have done any good, if we have 
 given any good gifts, may we never repent of 
 them. AMEN. 
 
 194 
 
JANUAEY 26, 1890 - EVENING 
 
 ALMIGHTY GOD, thou Inspirer of men, we thank 
 thee for thy protecting care. We invoke now thy 
 gracious presence and thy Holy Spirit. Let thy 
 providences be for all men ; thy Spirit inspiring 
 them with judgment and knowledge and reason 
 and understanding and righteousness. Bless thou 
 our common country, our beloved land; en- 
 lighten the minds of all rulers, the President of 
 the United States, his counselors, the Congress, 
 the governors of states, the elders of cities; 
 and everywhere may the minds of men be 
 illumined as by a light from above, and reason 
 itself transform to angelic moral beauty. 
 
 Let thy blessing be upon our city to-night. 
 May intelligence increase; may virtue abound; 
 may righteousness be our law, with generous 
 sympathies for our fellow men, and justness and 
 uprightness before God. Let thy blessing be 
 upon all those who are heavily tried or afflicted, 
 by poverty, by distress, by sickness; who are 
 brought nigh unto death. And over all, and 
 through all, and in all, do thou be the Inspiring 
 Spirit, the upholding Providence, the paternal 
 God. AMEN. 
 
 195 
 
FEBBUAEY 9, 1890 
 
 ALMIGHTY GOD, thou Maker and Inspirer of men, 
 we invoke thy blessing on us now, and implore 
 the enlightening light of thy Spirit, purifying 
 our minds and hearts and making us children of 
 the light those who love thee, who love the 
 truth, who love the ways of righteousness, who 
 love our neighbors, and who love God. Let that 
 gracious Spirit flow in divine grace and benedic- 
 tion among us ; let our common and daily duties 
 be adorned with unearthly beauty; and let us 
 find in the commonest occupations of life a teach- 
 ing of God, a teaching of eternal wisdom, a guide 
 and help of conscience, a purifying grace of our 
 minds and hearts. 
 
 We implore thy gracious benediction and thy 
 tender pity upon all who suffer in any way, 
 who suffer wrong, who suffer distress, who are in 
 any woe of body or of mind. Check the proud, 
 the thoughtless, and the selfish. Increase our 
 human feeling and our consciousness of depend- 
 ence upon one another; and may we feel and 
 learn more and more that our great distinction is 
 that we are human, that we belong to the com- 
 mon lot of man, that we belong to the common 
 
 196 
 
family of God, and that we can look up to him 
 imploring his mercy, his providence, and his 
 grace to guide us on to a great and common 
 destiny. 
 
 Father in heaven, forgive our sins; pity our 
 weaknesses; lift us up if we are fallen; encour- 
 age us if we are despairing; and may we all cry 
 from our hearts, "Lead me on, my Host." 
 AMEN. 
 
 197 
 
FEBEUAEY 16, 1890 MOENING 
 
 WE are come again to our house of prayer ; again 
 we lift up our voice in solemn joy and gladness, 
 in holy and devout meditation, imploring and be- 
 seeching thee, thou Almighty One. Thy going 
 forth, thy holy providence, thine ever-enchurch- 
 ing Spirit, are with us. Thou guidest us by thy 
 strong and merciful hand, and art wiser for us 
 than we can know or tell; and even in our for- 
 lorn and half -forgotten ways of thoughtlessness 
 and selfishness, thou art still pursuing the divine 
 husbandry of thy Spirit, and art teaching us in 
 ways that we know not, and leading us up to 
 heights from which we shall look back upon our 
 past folly and weep over it and be ashamed for 
 it. Lift us up, Almighty God, into such heights 
 now. Give us a clear illumination of divine re- 
 ligion and pure affection and penitent love, that 
 we may feel what manner of men we are, what 
 beings we are, what life we lead, what love sways 
 us, and what principle is our guide. 
 
 Holy One, we thank thee for the ever-present 
 privilege we have of looking abroad on thy works 
 and beholding thee in mountain, on the sea, and 
 
 198 
 
through gentle valleys and by great rivers, and 
 in the cataclysms of the world and the thorned 
 service of the earth. We find the wonders of thy 
 power in the parable of human life and being, in 
 our own souls and our character before God ; and 
 while no earthquake or storm or tempest quite 
 destroys the world, so may no folly of ours quite 
 ruin us, but by thy grace coming swiftly to our 
 rescue, the sun of thy Spirit beaming ever upon 
 us, may the good lessons of our experience come 
 to life again and make our hearts to shine with 
 beauty and be glad, and the gentle rains descend, 
 the sun shine, suns rise and set, and dews fall, 
 and all be green again. 
 
 Holy Father, impress us deeply, we pray thee, 
 by thine ever-present Spirit. Impress us with a 
 sense of the earnestness, the reality, the solem- 
 nity, and the hope of human life. Correct us 
 with wise severity, if thou wilt, and give us a 
 heart to desire that thou shalt never draw back 
 thy corrections until our hearts are indeed re- 
 newed renewed by thy Spirit, renewed by our 
 own experience. 
 
 Almighty God, we ask thy blessing upon all 
 our fellow beings. We pray to be lifted into some 
 serene height of human feelings, where we shall 
 see the world of men as it is, and we shall feel 
 that we are what we are, and no more and no 
 less. May the vague distinctions of life be ban- 
 
 199 
 
ished from our minds. May we learn to feel 
 with gratitude that our great distinction is that 
 we are human, that we belong to the common 
 family of God, and we are called to be sons of 
 God ; and may we be living in the world day by 
 day, admonished of the uncertainty of life, and 
 yet fully conscious that our mortality is but an 
 event in our being, and that thou wilt lead us 
 forward to new experience, to new fields of ac- 
 tion, and to the wonders and unspeakable power 
 of eternal life. 
 
 Almighty God, hear our prayer; forgive our 
 sins ; give us fortitude to meet every emergency 
 of life, every trial, every disappointment, and 
 every joy; and may we be ever strong in thee, 
 our Rock, our Refuge, our Defense. AMEN. 
 
 Almighty God, our Father, we thank thee for 
 serene heights of holy visions which, as we look 
 afar and see something of the hope and power of 
 thy grace and thy providence, we think better of 
 ourselves, however meanly we may think, we 
 think hopefully, we think wisely ; and our hopes 
 seem great enough to save us forever and for- 
 ever. For these visions we thank thee. And may 
 the outward world be a parable of our souls, a 
 parable of thy providence, of thy love, thy 
 Spirit, and thy grace evermore. AMEN. 
 
FEBEUAEY 16, 1890 EVENING 
 
 THOU unto whom all creatures look, and on 
 whom all creatures wait, thou openest thy hand 
 and givest meat to every living creature; thou 
 givest daily bread and providest for all the 
 creatures that thou hast made; thy holy provi- 
 dence is over the world of men; and as early as 
 time began thou didst have witnesses of thyself ; 
 and all the heights of the world blaze with 
 tokens of thy presence, thy guidance, and thy 
 power. Righteousness is thy throne and judg- 
 ment is thy dwelling-place forever; and though 
 justice be put off and thy kingdom is long com- 
 ing, yet it is sure; thy justice is eternal, thy 
 truth is ever-fast. 
 
 Almighty God, we implore thy blessing upon 
 our minds and hearts, that they may be con- 
 firmed in the ever-coming of God's kingdom, in 
 the continual advance and progress of man's 
 earthly lot and fortune, and in the improvement 
 and growth in power of his moral and spiritual 
 estate. Let thy blessing be upon all good insti- 
 tutions of society, upon all the courts of law, 
 upon assemblies and legislatures, upon schools 
 201 
 
of learning, upon churches of religion ; and may 
 religion, law, learning, charity, human good- 
 ness be increased and glorified in the world. Let 
 thy pities and tender mercies be upon all those 
 who are oppressed, whose lot is hard, whose for- 
 tunes are feeble, and who are feeble in their 
 own powers, feeble in the endowments of heaven, 
 such as are given to the common lot of man. 
 Lift up the oppressed; encourage and enlighten 
 those who are always on the verge of despair ; 
 and comfort and bless all according to thy good- 
 ness. And let wisdom, and righteousness, and 
 judgment prevail. 
 
 We ask thy blessing, Almighty God, upon the 
 people of the city to-night upon all classes and 
 conditions and fortunes of men ; upon the weak, 
 the wayward, the wicked; upon the strong, the 
 proud, or the haughty, that these may be chas- 
 tised, and that those may be looked upon with 
 tenderness and lifted up with infinite grace. En- 
 lighten our minds, we pray thee, by thy spirit, 
 to discern all goodness, to sympathy with all 
 human sinfulness, and to aspirations towards 
 thee for every human being. AMEN. 
 
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