01.A 02. Prayer Universal
II. PRAYER UNIVERSAL “0 thou that hearest ’prayer, unto thee shall all flesh come.” — Psalms 65:2,
If reaching out after a Supreme Being is prayer and bowing down to idols is religion, then prayer has ever been coextensive with the idea of religion; then men have always prayed. Prayer is an instinct. Wherever men have believed in a Higher Power — and such belief has always been universal — there they have not waited for an argument to prove the possibility of entering into converse with such a Being, but have taken for granted and acted upon the privilege of so doing.
Rather than a command from the Deity, prayer has been a specific demand of man’s own nature. Prayer is the heart of religion. Prayer is religion. It is the connecting link between God and man.
If you could lift yourself far above the earth and look down upon its people, you would see them everywhere bowing down to the Being whom they conceive to be their God. The Mohammedan in his Mosque, the Jew in his Synagogue, the heathen in his Temple, everywhere, upon lonely deserts and wild promontories, in crowded cities and costly cathedrals, you would see them praying. An ancient historian has said that you could travel the world over and find cities without walls, [^without letters, without kings, without P^ wealth, without schools or theaters, but a city without ajemple or where people did not pray you would never see.
What is true of other religions is true of our own. The Christian is preeminently a person of prayer; not that he did not pray before, but that what was then a blind instinct becomes now an intelligent principle. What then was a dictate of his own nature gives place now to the promptings of God’s Spirit within him. What then he was led to do out of sheer necessity he now esteems the sweetest of all his privileges. What then he sought by sacrifice and penance he now obtains as gracious bestowal in answer to his petition. What then he untook with fainting heart he now pursues with boldness by the “new and living way.” What then he sought to use as a means toward temporal blessing becomes now the channel of spiritual grace as well. What then was a mere pleading in his own behalf becomes now a gracious intercession for others as well. What then was mere asking of an infinitely removed Divinity is now the most intimate communion with the God and Father of us all. This is the difference between heathen prayer and Christian prayer.
Deprive the unregenerate man of prayer, and though his prayers avail not you make him miserable and forlorn; deprive the Christian of prayer and you not only deprive him of his sweetest privilege and dearest solace, but you take from him the key that open sets the storehouse of his God; you not only take away his chief support, but you cut the nerve of his religious life; you rob him of his “vital breath.”
“ For what are men better than sheep or goats That nourish a blind life within the brain, If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer Both for themselves and those who call them friend? For so the whole round world is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.”