He, therefore, who makes so little of God as to forget to adore and thank Him becomes inferior to the very pagans who, sunk in the darkness of corruption and superstition as they were, did not, however, forget their first and natural duty to the Maker.  Neglect of this obligation in a man betrays an absence, a loss of religious instinct, and an irreligious man is a pure animal, if he is a refined one.  His refinement and superiority come from his intelligence, and these qualities, far from attenuating his guilt, only serve to aggravate it.

The brute eats and drinks; when he is full and tired he throws himself down to rest.  When refreshed, he gets up, shakes himself and goes off again in quest of food and amusement.  In what does a man without prayer differ from such a being?

But prayer, strictly speaking, means a demand, a petition, an asking.  We ask for our needs and our principal needs are pardon and succor.  This is prayer as it is generally understood.  It is necessary to salvation.  Without it no man can be saved.  Our assurance of heaven should be in exact proportion to our asking.  “Ask and you shall receive.”  Ask nothing, and you obtain nothing; and that which you do not obtain is just what you must have to save your soul.

Here is the explanation of it in a nutshell.  The doctrine of the Church is that when God created man, He raised him from a natural to a supernatural state, and assigned to him a supernatural end.  Supernatural means what is above the natural, beyond our natural powers of obtaining.  Our destiny therefore cannot be fulfilled without the help of a superior power.  We are utterly incapable by ourselves of realizing the end to which we are called.  The condition absolutely required is the grace of God and through that alone can we expect to come to our appointed end.

Here is a stone.  That that stone should have feeling is not natural, but supernatural.  God, to give sensation to that stone, must break through the natural order of things, because to feel is beyond the native powers of a stone.  It is not natural for an animal to reason, it is impossible.  God must work a miracle to make it understand.  Well, the stone is just as capable of feeling, and the animal of reasoning, as is man capable of saving his soul by himself.

To persevere in the state of grace and the friendship of God, to recover it when lost by sin, are supernatural works.  Only by the grace of God can this be effected.  Will God do this without being asked?  Say rather will God save us in spite of ourselves, or unknown to ourselves.  He who does not ask gives no token of a desire to obtain.

CHAPTER XXX.  PETITIONS.

For all spiritual needs, therefore, prayer is the one thing necessary.  I am in the state of sin.  I desire to be forgiven.  To obtain pardon is a supernatural act.  Alone I can no more do it than fly.  I pray then for the grace of a good confession—­I prudently think myself in the state of grace.  Were I for a moment left to my depraved nature, to the mercy of my passions, I should fall into the lowest depths of iniquity.  The holiest, saintliest of men are just as capable of the greatest abominations as the blackest sinner that ever lived.  If he does not fall, and the other does, it is because he prays and the other does not.