Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898).djvu/333

Rh Physical sensation, not Soul, produces ecstasy and emotions. If spiritual sense always guided men at

such times, there would grow out of those ecstatic moments a higher experience and better life, with more devout self-abnegation and purity. A self-satisfied ventilation of fervent sentiments never makes a Christian. God is not influenced by man. The “divine ear” is not an auditorial nerve. It is the all-hearing and all-knowing Mind, to whom each want of man is always known, and by whom it will be supplied.

The danger from audible prayer is, that it may lead us into temptation. By it we may become involuntary

hypocrites, uttering desires which are not real, and consoling ourselves, in the midst of sin, with the recollection that we have prayed over it, or mean to ask forgiveness at some later day. Hypocrisy is fatal to religion.

A wordy prayer may afford a quiet sense of self-justification, though it makes the sinner a hypocrite. We never need despair of an honest heart; but there is little hope for those who only come spasmodically face to face with their wickedness, and then seek to hide it.

Such prayers are indexes which do not correspond with the character. They hold secret fellowship with sin. Such hypocrites are spoken of by Jesus as “whited sepulchres, full of uncleanness.”

If a man, though apparently fervent and prayerful, is impure, and therefore insincere, what must be the

comment upon him? If he had reached the loftiness of his prayer, there would be no occasion for such comment. If we feel the aspiration, humility, gratitude, and love which our words express,