But could not all these things be brought about without a single prayer?  Not according to the plan of man’s education which God has adopted.  Whether he could well have made a plan by which material blessings could have been bestowed upon men who do not ask for them, I do not know.  The ravens and all animals are fed without a single prayer, for they are not fitted or intended to hold communion with God.  But a prayerless race of men has never been fed long; it has soon ceased to exist.  God’s plan of salvation and ordering of the universe involves prayer as a means of blessing and good things as an answer to prayer.  God says, I make you a co-worker with me.  I will help you in everything; but you must call on me for help, or you will forget that I am the source of your help and strength, and thus having lost your communion with me will die.  “When Jeshurun waxed fat he kicked.”  This is the oft-repeated story of the Old Testament and of all history.  And thus, while material blessings are given in answer to prayer, these are not the chief end for which prayer is to be offered.

Prayer is a means of conformity to environment, of godlikeness.  How do you become like a friend?  Of course by associating and talking with him.  And why does it help you to associate with a hero?  Simply because you cannot be with him without being inspired with his heroism.  And so while I may pray for bread and clothes and opportunities, and God will give me these or something better; I will, if wise, pray for purity, courage, moral power, heroism, and holiness.  And I know that these will stream from his soul into mine like a great river.  And so I may pray for bread and be denied; for hunger, with some higher good, may be far better for me than a full stomach.  But if I pray for any spiritual gift, which will make me godlike, and on which as an heir of God I have a rightful claim, every law and force in God’s universe is a means to answer that prayer.  And best of all, if I pray for the gift of God’s Spirit, that is the prayer which the whole world of environment has been framed to answer.

But this I can never have unless I hunger for it.  I can never have it to use as a means of gaining some lower good which I worship more than God.  God will not and cannot lend himself to any such idolatry.  I must be willing to give up anything and everything else for its attainment.  Otherwise the answer to the prayer would ruin me.

I cannot grasp the higher while using both hands to grasp the lower.

Thus religion is the interpenetration and permeation of my personality by that of God.  And prayer is the communion by which this permeation becomes possible.  And faith is the vision of these possibilities, the being persuaded by them, and the resolute purpose to attain them.  And faith in Christ is confiding communion with him and obedience to his commands that his divine life may flow over into me and dominate mine.  And common-sense, and the more refined common-sense which we call science, can show me no other means to the attainment of that godlikeness which is the only true conformity to environment.