But although a priest may give utterance to the noblest of sentiments, to the highest and purest aspirations of those human hearts whose mouth-piece he professedly is, if the spirit of sincere individual desire be not instilled into the spoken prayer that is supposed to represent the congregational will, performance of the office becomes a mockery of its intention, its expression as surely falling into nothingness as the echoes of the human voice fade to silence. But when the performance of public prayer is truly utilised to express the united wills of many individuals, such a concentration of desire must make for fulfilment by means as purely natural as those by which the laws of demand and supply operate in life—the medium between desire and its fulfilment being the operating power of will. If the efficacy of public prayer were more generally recognised, surely there might be added to orthodox liturgies an increasing power which would illuminate the idea of the divinity of man, witness to the glory of the government of God, and bring into a union of love the souls of the children of God. For word is the fruit of the Spirit which brings into being the germ of the deed that shall, at the appointed time, fulfil the purpose of its being.
To those thinkers whose spiritual perceptions have been quickened by the doctrine of the unity of Nature into recognition of God as the Spirit of Life present in all form, a connection between prayer and immortality will be plainly evident. But if the idea of the aim of prayer which accompanies the interpretation of Nature as the vesture of God be that of voluntary effort to become one with the Divine Will, what idea of immortality is the natural outcome of such belief?
If we assume Christ's conception of God to have been drawn from His interpretation of Nature as the vesture of the Divine Spirit of Life, we may expect to find some presage of His ideas relating to the immortality of man in His teaching concerning the meaning and function of prayer.
The so-called "Lord's Prayer" is commonly accepted as summarising His doctrine relating to the right rendering of prayer, and offers a remarkable illustration of that combined specific petition and spiritual acquiescence which is characteristic of His own employment of prayer.
In His dual capacity of reformer of a corrupted religious symbolism and innovator of new esoteric ideas, He sought to cultivate a new order from the old, not by grafting upon past habit and tradition the bud of an extraneous growth, but by inviting the co-operation of the free-will of men with the working of the natural laws of development, perceived by Him to offer a means of attaining to a higher plane of spiritual consciousness. When He told His disciples that "All things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive," He tacitly acknowledged the value of specific petitionary prayer, the right employment of which we know to be capable of providing an educational basis for the attaining of higher ideas of the relation between things material and things spiritual.
But His advocacy of all such specific petition was accompanied by a prefatory acknowledgment of God as the Father of man, the natural expression of His sense of union with the supreme Spirit and Source of Life. On the occasion of His own prayer before His betrayal, we find an expression both of His physical and spiritual desires. The man prays that suffering may be averted from him, while the spirit voices its longing to conform to God's Will and thus to obtain perfect union with the Spirit of Life in him and over him.
"Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt" (St Mark xiv. 36).
Is not this acknowledgment of the spiritual fatherhood of God, which here prefaces Christ's own employment of prayer, as well as His recommended form for the use of His disciples, another expression of the conception of God as the supreme Spirit of Life, manifested through love, and attested by the Spirit of Truth, which finds representation in His words and deeds and in His rite of communion?
Now, if we assume men's ideas of heaven and hell to be respectively the imagined realisation of desire and the compendium of fear, of a degree and kind consistent with their physical and spiritual evolution, and forming the basis of their prayer to God, an appreciation of the means and end of prayer as advocated by Christ should in some measure reveal His ideas on the subject of human immortality.