Prayer tests life. If we only tried seriously to live up to our praying—it would have a powerful effect upon our character and conduct! We pray to be made unselfish; if we demanded of ourselves all that this means, it probably would restrain many selfish impulses in us and radically affect our treatment of others. It would set us in new relations to all about us. It would check in us the crafty desire, so common among men, to get the better of others in all transactions. Someone writes:

"God, that I might spend my life for others,
With no ends of my own;
That I might pour myself into my brothers,
And live for them alone."

What would happen in us, what change, what transformation, if this prayer were to be answered?

We pray to be made patient. If we are really sincere in this request, we shall find ourselves halted many a time in our impetuous moods, our tongues silenced on the very edge of angry outbursts, and our harsh and bitter feelings softened by an irresistible constraint toward quietness and gentleness.

There is no prayer that most Christians make oftener than that they may be made like Christ. It is a most fitting prayer, and one that we should never cease to make. But if we very earnestly wish to be transformed into Christ's likeness—we will find the desire growing into great intensity in our daily lives, and transforming them. It will affect every phase of our behavior and conduct. It will hold before us continually, the image of our Lord, and will keep ever in our vision—a new standard of thought, of feeling, of desire, of act, of speech. ~