WHAT THE CHURCHES ARE DOING.

Press, Volume XLIX, Issue 14830, 22 November 1913, Page 16

WHAT THE CHURCHES ARE DOING.

CANON CHARLES OX PRAYER. Dr. R. H. Charles, the new Canon of Westminster, in an address on prayer at Westminster Abbey last month, insisted that prayer is a necessity of tho spiritual life. No life can attain its best that omits either public or private prayer. The object of prayer, he continued, was not, as the heathen conceived it, to alter God'- will and bend it to ours, but to bring our will into harmony with His. Passing on to tho conditions or prayer, Canon Charles showed that earnestness was the first essential. The prayer that God grants must be the expression of the chief desire of the heart, and not one merely amid a, crowd of things competing for allegiance. But earnestness is not the only condition. Not a few who did not believe in a personal God yet gave, themselves earnestly to prayer, believing tUat prayer exercised upon them a beneficial reflex influence. But prayer is not an attempt of tho mind to operate upon itself by expressing the thought and personating tho desires of devotion, or an effort to cleanse and uplift ourselves to self-knowledge through inspiring confession or tho agonies of repentance. Such experiences could not soothe our sorrows or lift our hearts into peace. Prayer in its essence is the direct and persona.! communion of the spirit of man with God, a communion as real as the daily intercourse of man with man.

NEWS AND NOTES FOR PULPIT AND PEW.