"To what wonderful depths and heights our prayers lead us when they are thus spontaneous and irrepressible! How well David has expressed the gratitude, the holy trust and majestic praise common to every devout child of God. 'The Lord is my shepherd,' is blessed affirmation of supreme trust, the naming of God's glorious gifts, the gratitude for peace, life, love, protection, friendship, all the heavenly blessings of God's presence in God's house. In this wonderful psalm we find, no doubt, no thought of waiting for future blessings, but a grand outpouring of thankfulness for the present. There are no petitions, no supplications, no reserves of praise, but simply the glad recognition and appreciation of the omnipresence and omnipotence of Good.
"It was the same feeling, tempered with a deeper solemnity, that prompted Jesus to say 'Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me,' as he was about to perform the mighty miracle of raising Lazarus.
"Thanks signify the accomplishment of the desire. His request of the Father was granted before he had even preferred it, for he knew the law and realized it—that God is life and knows not death—but the form of words was observed because that makes the law a visible fact.
"Father is the human naming for this divine Love that ever waits for the spoken word in order to be revealed. To Jesus it was the dearest and best name of all by which to address or speak to the one great Helper, Guide, Friend. 'Father, I thank thee,' was often on his lips, and it was to the 'Father who seeth in secret' that he bade his disciples pray.
"In the secret consciousness of oneness with the Father there may be no reservations, no concealments, no hypocritical bigotry, no thought of self, only a glad going out with all our heart and soul to the Father, a trustful acknowledgment of the Good. This is the attitude of true prayer.
"The devout soul is always praying, because it consciously lives with God. There are times of praise, adoration, extolment, when thankfulness is more exuberant, runs over into bursting joy, and times when longing desire carries us into the very bosom of God. We long for comfort, for love, for peace, with an unutterable agony of longing, and are met with an unutterable joy of satisfaction, if we but turn to Him and acknowledge, but an indispensable preliminary to prayer is fasting. The power of accomplishment in fasting and prayer equals a decree.
"The conditions upon which hinge our use of the divine power are, first,'putting away iniquity'—fasting; second, turning to God—prayer. Then comes the power to decree; then we see the truth of Jesus' promise: 'All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye have received them, and ye shall have them.' Then we look into the face of the Almighty and reflect the same power, are able to do a like work, make visible the things of His creation by speaking the word of acknowledgment, that they are already established.
"It was this kind of prayer that enabled the disciples to heal the sick, cast out demons and do all the wonderful works. Failure was simply a sign of unfaithfulness in prayer. 'Oh, ye of little faith!' was the Master's explanatory exclamation.
"Here was a most essential requisite—faith in the Father, who alone is the power; faith and trust in the invisible All. Why do we pray so much with no answer to even our most devout aspirations? Because, like the disciples, we have too little faith.
"The heart-weary mother has prayed for her son, and he still goes the 'broad way that leadeth to destruction,' as she thinks; but for her heart-weariness, which is but lack of faith, he might have been turned into 'paths of righteousness.' With her mind continually burdened with fear, dire forebodings and anxious doubts, she has asked, begged, beseeched the mighty Ruler of destinies to soften the heart of her wayward boy. Thankfulness that God has given to her child the common inheritance to all possible blessings, a pure spiritual nature, the reflection of the All-Good, has never entered her thought to express. Her mind is divided between a conception of good and a conception of its opposite—evil. The result is years of hopeless praying, years of hopeless waiting. 'A house divided against itself can not stand.'