Show PRAY WITHOUT CEASING The Christian world or more truly the evangelical churches marked the opening week of the new year with a feast of prayer This custom admirable admir-able and helpful grows with the years and Its practice suggests to the thoughtful observer whether a participant partici-pant In It Ot no the deep hold which prayer has in this the most enlightened enlight-ened ago of history upon a people iI i I which has reached n further intellectual I intellec-tual development than men have known heretofore Cheap flings at prayer and prayermakers arc common Those who do not practice and therefore are not cognizant of the nature and power of prayer find it easy to see In the practice mark of weak life I Is not long since the voice of one of tho shallow shal-low philosophers of our own time alluded I al-luded to prayer as an evidence of self i deception and persistent superstition Because prayer I has gone hand in hand with gross superstitions there are those who choose to assert that they arc one But the prayer faculty of the human soul goes down to the very base of the being Down the long story of the ethnic religions prayer has been I largely an element In worship and whether at the altar of Isis or the shrine of Diana In the ygrovcs of Venus Ve-nus the forest spaces of Woden the wild places glen to the rugged worship wor-ship of Thor In the mystic circles of the Druid about the bloody altars of the Aztec peoples in the kiva of the Indian or the lofty fanes of Christianity Chris-tianity prayer has been the chlefost element In worship This Is not to say that I has always been the same thing but rather that it has always been under whatever form in the lowest fctichlsm and the highest spirituality I an expression of a faculty as basic a any element of life I Is not of prayer I In Its development In any of Its more or less grotesque forms or Its associations associa-tions but rather of tho faculty Itself we speak at this time So far as we can go back Into the roots of history the human soul has always had Its voice of prayer and that voice survives sur-vives not because of custom or superstition super-stition hereditary tendency or grafted habit but Is so persistently present in all the souls stages of development de-velopment so automatic In Its outreachIng outreach-Ing to the things without It which It conceives to be higher stronger purer diviner than itself that one Is compelled to believe that It Is as normally organic or-ganic In the spiritual life as fundamental funda-mental In the higher nature as are the heart and the circulatory system In the physical Alan Is made to feel keenly physical limitation In his struggle with lifes fortuitous circumstances Instinctively In-stinctively he senses his spiritual limitation limit-ation and consequent dependence upon outside things without passing through any extended discipline The childs cry for help and comfort to the parent is the earliest evidence of any appreciation apprecia-tion of the lack in self which calls for complement from without And this tact leads us to believe quite apart from extraneous evidence or training that there Is something without to which the Creator has keyed l and attuned at-tuned the things within Mans soul needs a communion a correspondence cor-respondence with that nature Uko its own but Infinitely greater In power and extent lying without and above Itself Experience has demonstrated that this correspondence does not find Its media In things either purely physical or mental but In the action of that trusting trust-ing Impulse which reaches out from the heart to touch with its subtle fingers In Joy and love the abiding The soul may and does find a softening Influence In the beauty of the world through the media of eye and mind Its pettinesses may vanish In face of the still awesome awe-some granduer of the universe but the thing that brings the soothing for lifes deep pain that grasps the satisfying for lifes deep hungers and thirsts is In the action of that soulImpulse o that prayer faculty which leaps In Its appointed ap-pointed appeal to the great substance that stands behind the shadow of things that are Life is never so selfreliant or selfsufficient that the play of this faculty can be set aside without loss There Is no hour in life when man needs not the enrichment and the support sup-port that come from him who Is the other and greater part of every soul Hence the word of Paul to pray without ceasing is not hyperbole but Is a serious admonition to remember ever not only lifes dependence but also lifes great privilege of finding full answer to those cravings which are the truest evidences of Ufas own Insufficiency and are alike voices asserting with gulet firmness that the God who han matched to perfectly the needs and answers the lacks and satisfactions of his great uni verse will not leave tho noblest erica holiestlongings and Hubllmcat aspire tlonu of his chlcfcst and bunt creation unanswered And In the life of that creature man whuther lisping at mothers knee tho simple sweet Now I lay me amid the fierce conflicts or later life or the gray shadows that fall where the play Is nearly done despite cynicism materialism material-ism egotism or despair the Godgiven faculty will reach Its hands though atrophied almost unto death and demonstrate dem-onstrate In Its enduringness and passion pas-sion Its elemental quality And the Increase of knowledge the clearer Beltappreciation the severer teal nf f development are bringing men to sing Tennysons translation of Pauls exhortation More things nrc wrought bY prayer than mel dream of Thorrforc lot thy voice rise tko 1 fountain foun-tain niGht and clay P A S1MPKIN Pastor Phillips Congregational Church |