I
never quite understand. You always speak as if it played a great part in
your life, and yet I never am sure what exactly it means to you."
"You might as well say," he said, smiling, "that you never felt quite sure
what breakfast meant to me."
He stopped and looked at me for a moment. "Do we know what anything
_means_? We know what prayer _is_, at any rate--one of the
commonest and most natural of instincts. What is your difficulty?"
"Oh, the usual one," I said, "that if the God to whom we pray is the Power
which puts into our minds good desires, and knows not only what is passing
in our thoughts, but the very direction which our thoughts are going to
take--reads us, in fact, like a book, as they say--what, then, is the
object or purpose of setting ourselves to pray to a Power that knows our
precise range of thoughts, and can disentangle them all far better than we
can ourselves?"
"Why," said Father Payne, "that is pure fatalism. If you carry that on a
little further it means all absence of effort. You might as well say, 'I
will take no steps to provide myself with food--if God is All-Powerful, and
sends me a good appetite, it is His business to satisfy it!"
"Oh," I said, "I see that. But if I set about providing myself with
breakfast, I know exactly what I want, and have a very fair chance of
obtaining it. But the essence of prayer is that you must not expect to get
your desires fulfilled.
Pages:
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396