PRAYER.
They pray.
To whom?
To God.
To pray to God,—what does this mean?
Is there an infinite power outside of us? Is this infinite power a unity, immanent and enduring,—necessarily material, because it is infinite, and if it lacked matter, in so far it would be circumscribed; necessarily intelligent, because it is infinite, and if it lacked intelligence, again it would be limited? Does this infinite power awaken in us the idea of the essence of things, while we can only ascribe to ourselves the idea of existence? In other words, is it not the Absolute of which we are the Relative?
While there is an infinite power outside of us, is there not an infinite power within us? Do not these two infinites (what a fearful plural!) rest one upon the other? Does not the second infinite depend upon the first? Is it not its mirror, its reflection, its echo, an abyss concentric with another abyss? Is this second infinite also intelligent? Does it think? Does it love? Has it a will? If both these infinites are intelligent, each of them has volition, and there is an Ego in the infinite above, as there is an Ego in the infinite below. The Ego in the one below is the soul; the Ego in the one above is God.
To bring by thought the infinite below in contact with the infinite above is called praying.
Let us take nothing from the human spirit; to suppress anything is wrong. Let us regenerate and transform it. Some of man's faculties are directed toward the Unknown,—thought, revery, prayer. The Unknown is an ocean. What is conscience? It is the mariner's compass of the Unknown. Thought, revery, prayer, these are great mysterious rays; let us respect them. Whither tend these grand radiations of the soul? Into the darkness; that is to say, to the light.
The grandeur of democracy is in its denying nothing and abjuring nothing of humanity. Next to the right of man comes the right of the soul.