What Is Worth While: A Poem

PRAYER. 969

death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me, thy rod, and thy staff they comfort me. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever." What cheerfulness, courage, peace and holy gratitude, Lreathe through this noble composition! Truly, they are the rewards of placing confidence in God, and are everlasting sources of happiness. It has been said that there is no greater argument in the world of a man's spiritual weakness, and the falseness of his heart, in the matter of religion, than his backwardness in saying his prayers: so weary of their length, so glad when they are done, so ready to put an excuse. Yet it is no labor, nor trouble, he is thus anxious to avoid, but the begging of a blessing and receiving it: honoring his God, and by so doing, honoring himself, too. God is the highest object to which the soul in all its powers can be directed. None ever trusted in him without increasing in spiritual strength, and discovering more and more of his plans, and of the depth of his wisdom. The humble Saint knows that prayer is his chief security in seasons of difficulty and temptation. Compared with eternity, his life is almost nothing; yet such is his present weakness, that he is seldom able to preserve an equal tenor through this portion of existence. Distresses come upon him before he is aware, and find him ill prepared. Past failures render him justly distrustful of himself; and his happiest hours are saddened with the thought that perhaps temptations may hereafter arise too powerful for his strength: or a new state of things might mind from spiritual pursuits, and steal from insensibly turn his him what hope and joy he had been laboring to attain. In the midst of all his difficulties, however, he has the hope that spiritua strength and knowledge may always be derived from his heavenly Father, in proportion to his needs. How happy it is to believe, with a steadfast assurance, that his petitions are heard even while he is making them; and how delightful to meet with a proof of it in the effectual and actual grant of them. The Latter-day Saints have proved that mighty is the efficacy of such intercessions to avert judgments; how much more available, then, may they be to secure the continuance of blessings. The Savior, in teaching his disciples how to pray, said that