VI.

EASTERN EVENING PRAYERS.

EVENTIDE.

The following beautiful evening prayer, the burden of which is guardianship from sin, and deliverance from the power of temptation, is from an ancient service called the Pentecost Vespers of the Eastern church.

"Blessed art thou, Almighty Master, who hast granted us to pass through this day, and to reach the beginning of the night.

"Hear our prayers and those of all thy people; and forgive us our sins voluntary and involuntary, and accept our evening supplications, and send down on thine inheritance the fulness of thy mercy and thy compassion.

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Compass us about with thy holy angels. "Arm us with the armor of thy righteous

ness:

"Fence us around with thy truth:

"Guard us with thy power.

"Deliver us from every assault and every device of the adversary, and grant us to pass this evening and the ensuing night, and all the days of our life, in fulness of peace and holiness, without sin and trembling.

"For it is thine to pity and save, O Christ, our God."

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VII.

ST. BONAVENTURA.

"O buonaventura!" (O happy event!) is said to have been the utterance of Francis of Assisi, when he found that his prayers for the recovery of a child from sickness had been answered.

The child was given the name of Bonaventura. He was born 1221 A. D., and died at Lyons 1274.

He lived an ascetic life, wrote several theological works, and exerted a great influence on the times. Dante places him, in his great poem, among the saints in Paradise, and Luther held his religious life in high esteem.

"Ah, sweet Jesus, pierce the marrow of my soul with the healthful shafts of thy love, that it may

truly burn, and melt, and languish, with the only desire of Thee; that it may desire to be dissolved, and to be with Thee: let it hunger alone for the bread of life: let it thirst after Thee, the spring and fountain of eternal light, the stream of true pleasure; let it always desire Thee, seek Thee, and find Thee, and sweetly rest in Thee."

VIII.

ST. AUGUSTINE.

RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND DEVOTIONS.

That was a notable event in Christian history which took place on the 25th of April, 387 A. D., in the cathedral church of Milan. The early Christians, freed from the tyranny of long persecution, and rejoicing in the new triumphs of the Gospel, came flocking towards the church, under the soft purple sky of the Italian spring. A convert of wonderful gifts, influence and promise, was that day to enter the baptismal waters, led by the venerable Ambrose. That catechumen was St. Augustine, then thirty-two years of age.

His experience had been a remarkable one,