Our Unitarian Gospel

by Minot J. Savage

So I believe in prayer in that sense, that it may and does change the spiritual attitude of the soul towards God so that we come into entirely new relations with him, and the spiritual life in us grows, unfolds, becomes beautiful and sweet, not because we have changed God, but because we have got into a new set of relations with him.

If I thought that I could change God by a prayer, that I could interfere in the slightest degree with the working of any of the natural forces, I would never dare to open my lips in prayer again so long as I live. We do not need to change God: we need simply to change our attitude towards him, change our relations to him. Is not this true in every department of human life? How is it that you produce results anywhere? You wish a mountain stream to work for you. Do you change the laws of motion? You adapt your machinery to those laws of motion, and all the power of God becomes yours. You do not change him, you change yourself, your attitude towards him. And so in every one of the discoveries, in every one of the revolutions, that have come to the world, simply by discovering God's methods, and humbly adapting our ways to those methods Thus the forces of God, which are changeless and eternal, produce for us results which they would not have produced but for adapting our lives to the working of their ways.

A great many people do not think they ever pray. I have never seen a man yet who did not pray. You cannot live, and not pray: you cannot escape it if you try. Take Montgomery's famous old definition, "Prayer is the soul's sincere desire, Uttered or unexpressed, The motion of a hidden fir That trembles in the breast."

Soul's sincere desire. Yes, the body's desire, the mind's desire, the heart's desire, any desire, any outreach of life, is a prayer, an appeal for something that only the universe, that only God, can bestow. So, no matter whether you think you are religious or not, you are a praying man so long as you are a living man; and you cannot escape the fact if you try. It is merely a question whether you are a loving praying man or some other kind.

There is another aspect of prayer to which I wish to call your attention. Prayer is the refuge of a soul in trouble. It does not mean here, again, that you change God any. Can you not understand what it means to go to God, as it were, and fling yourself, like a child, against his breast and feel yourself folded in the everlasting arms? Your sorrow may not be removed, the burden may not be taken away, the life of your friend may not be saved, the sickness may not be healed; but there is comfort, there is strength, there is peace, there is help. Why, even in our human life do you not know how it is? You go to some friend you trust and love with your trouble. Perhaps he cannot lift it with one of his fingers; but he can tell you that he loves you, he cares, he would help you if only he were able. He can put his arm around you, he can say, God bless you; and you are stronger. You go away with lifted shoulder and with head that fronts the heavens; and you are able to bear the burden. Is there nothing akin to this in the sense of coming into intimate relations with the eternal Father, when troubled, pressed, when the outside world is dark, and feeling that here is refuge in a love deeper, higher, unspeakably more tender than that of the dearest friend that ever lived?

And this suggests another point. I have no doubt that sometimes, in my attempts to lead the devotions of this congregation, I use words which, if I were to sit down and critically analyze, I could not logically justify. I do not mean to; but, perhaps, sometimes I do. What of it? When my children were small, and my little boy came and climbed up in my lap and expressed himself in all sorts of illogical and foolish ways, telling me every sort of thing he wanted, impossible things, unwise things, things I could not get for him, things I would not get if I could, because I thought myself wiser than he, did these things trouble me? I loved to have him pour out his whole little soul into mine, because he was my child and because I did not expect him to be over-wise. It was this simple touch of kinship, this simple communion of father and child, which was sweet and tender and true.

So I believe with my whole soul that God loves us, his little children, with an unspeakable tenderness, a tenderness infinitely beyond that with which any earthly father ever loved a child, and that we can go to him freely and pour out our hearts, whether it is wise in expression or unwise; only let us do it with the feeling, "Not my will, Father, but Thine, be done," not as though we were trying to persuade him to do things for us that he would not otherwise do, but merely as the pouring out of our gratitude, our tenderness, our love.

There is another thing that needs just a word of suggestion. I believe that we ought to pray to God, not in the sense of begging for things, but sympathetically bringing in the arms of our sympathy all those we love and all those we hate, if there are any, and all things that live on the face of the earth. There is a hint of what I mean in those beautiful words of Tennyson's:

"For what are men better than sheep or goats That nourish a blind life within the brain, If, knowing God, they lift not hands in prayer Both for themselves and those who call them friend? For so the whole round earth is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God."

Let us reach out our arms of sympathy to all the world and bring the world sympathetically into the presence of our Father. So our own hearts and loves will broaden, until they, too, are divine.