“I, that still pray at morning and at eve, Loving those roots that feed us from the past, And prizing more than Plato things I learned At that best Academe, a mother’s knee, Thrice in my life perhaps have truly prayed, Thrice, stirred below my conscious self, have felt That perfect disenthralment which is God.” _Lowell’s “Cathedral.”_ “The aim of prayer is to attain to the habit of goodness, so as no longer merely to have the things that are good, but rather to be good.” _Clement of Alexandria._ PRAYER. We come now to the human search for a divine fellowship and companionship. Its complete history would be the whole story of religion. In this little book I shall speak only of certain definite human ways of seeking fellowship with God, namely, of prayer. Prayer is an extraordinary act. The eyes close, the face lights up, the body is moved with feeling, and (it may be in the presence of a multitude) the person praying talks in perfect confidence with somebody, invisible and intangible, and who articulates no single word of response. It is astonishing. And yet it is a human custom as old as marriage, as ancient as grave-making, older than any city on the globe. There is no human activity which so stubbornly resists being reduced to a bread and butter basis. Men have tried to explain the origin of prayer by the straits of physical hunger, but it will no more fit into utilitarian systems than joy over beauty will. It is an elemental and unique attitude of the soul and it will not be “explained” until we fathom the origin of the soul itself! But is not the advance of science making prayer impossible? In unscientific ages the universe presented no rigid order. It was easy to believe that the ordinary course of material processes might be altered or reversed. The world was conceived as full of invisible beings who could affect the course of events at will, while above all, there was a Being who might interfere with things at any moment, in any way.