Now hear me while I pray,
Take all my guilt away,
Oh, let me from this day
Be wholly Thine!’
If one man’s experience was typical, that individual hymn with its ‘I’ and ‘My’ brought scores of people into a spiritual aggregate and made a ‘common supplication.’
“Much of the same thing happened in the bishops’ meeting not so long ago. We were having a prayer service, only that, and it must have continued for two and a half hours. One bishop’s prayer that night was simply a repeating of Whittier’s hymn:
‘Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our feverish ways;
Reclothe us in our rightful mind,
In purer lives Thy service find,