5. According to our modern thinking there can be no question of any influence upon a Deity exalted above time and space, omniscient, unchangeable in will and action, by the prayer of mortals. Prayer can exert power only over the relation of man to God, not over God Himself. This indicates the nature and purpose of prayer. Man often feels lonely and forlorn in a world which overpowers him, to which he feels superior, and yet which he cannot master. Therefore he longs for that unseen Spirit of the universe, with whom alone he feels himself akin, and in whom alone he finds peace and bliss amid life’s struggle and unrest. This longing is both expressed and satisfied in prayer. Following the natural impulse of his soul, man must pour out before his God all his desires and sighs, all the emotions of grief and delight which sway his heart, in order that he may find rest, like a child at its mother’s bosom. Therefore the childlike mind believes that God can be induced to come down from His heavenly heights to offer help, and that He can be moved and influenced in human fashion. The truth is that every genuine prayer lifts man up toward God, satisfies the desire for His hallowing presence, unlocks the heavenly gate of mercy and bliss, and bestows upon man the beatific and liberating sense of being a child of God. The intellect may question the effect of prayer upon the physical, mental, or social constitution of man, or may declare prayer to be pious self-deception. The religious spirit experiences in prayer the soaring up of the soul toward union with God in consecrated moments of our mortal pilgrimage. This is no deception. The man who prays receives from the Godhead, toward whom he fervently lifts himself, the power to defy fate, to conquer sin, misery, and death. “The Lord is nigh to all them that call upon Him, to all that call upon Him in truth.”(868) 6. To pray, then, is to look up to God and to pour out before Him one’s wishes, thoughts, sorrows, and joys. Certainly the All-knowing does not require to be told by us what we desire or what we need. “For there is not a word in my tongue, but lo, O Lord, Thou knowest it altogether.”(869) But we mortals merely aspire toward Him who bears the world on His eternal arms, to express in His presence our agony and our jubilation, because we are certain of His paternal sympathy. When we praise and extol Him for the happiness and the many pleasures which He has granted us, He becomes the Partaker and Protector of our fortune, just as He is our sympathetic Helper when we cry out to Him under the burden of sin or grief, in the anxiety of danger or of guilt. Every genuine prayer realizes deeply the truth of the words, “Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He will sustain thee.”(870)