"It is abundantly clear that answered prayer encourages faith and personal relations in a way which broad principles only cannot effect. As the Spectator put it many years ago, much that would be positively bad for us if given without prayer, is good if sent in answer. We feel (do we not?) that all the evil of the world springs from mistrust of God. Nothing can recover us from this state of alienated unrest like answered prayer."
Life of F. W. Crossley, Rendel Harris.
"Prayer will in time make the human countenance its own divinest altar; years upon years of true thoughts, like ceaseless music shut up within, will vibrate along the nerves of expression until the lines of the living instrument are drawn into correspondence, and the harmony of visible form matches the unheard harmonies of the mind."
The Choir Invisible, James Lane Allen.
OCTOBER 12
"Pray, till prayer makes you forget your own wish, and leave it or merge it in God's will. The divine wisdom has given us prayer, not as a means whereby to obtain the good things of earth, but as a means by which we learn to do without them; not as a means whereby we escape evil, but as a means whereby we become strong to meet it. 'There appeared an angel unto Him from heaven, strengthening Him.' This was the true reply to the prayer of Christ."
F. W. Robertson.
"Never let us get into the common trick of calling unbelief—resignation; of asking, and then because we have not faith to believe, putting in a 'Thy will be done' at the end. Let us make God's Will our will, and so say 'Thy will be done.'"
Charles Kingsley.