Page:The kernel and the husk (Abbott, 1886).djvu/303

Letter 26] Since writing the last paragraph I was interrupted; and now, returning to my letter, I feel strongly inclined to cancel the last two or three pages of apologetic argumentation; arguing about prayer seems so absurdly useless. Yet perhaps my remarks may weigh for something with you in your present oscillation. They may possibly prevent you from giving up, in a moment of virtuous logic, a habit which, once discontinued, is not easily resumed. Let them pass then; but let them not pass without a protest that they by no means express my sense of the vital necessity of prayer for a Christian. To me it seems the very breath of our spiritual life, as needful for peace and union with God as communion between children and parents is needful for domestic concord. Without it, faith must speedily vanish. Even a comparatively dull and lifeless petition at stated intervals has some value as a sign-post, indicating the road on which we ought to be travelling though our feet may be straying elsewhere. But in truth real Christian prayer (mostly silent) should be, as St. Paul says "without ceasing;" for prayer is but aspiration and desire, emerging into shape. When a man has reached such a height that he has ceased to wish to be something better than he is, then and then only may he cease to pray.

One kind of prayer at all events I have felt able to retain which seems to me of far more value than the prayer for fair weather—I mean prayer for the dead. I do not deny that, when coupled with superstitious views about heaven and hell, the custom of praying for the dead may result in superstition, and even in the encouragement of immorality; and the hired and conventional prayers for the dead prevalent in the sixteenth century appear to me to have constituted an abuse against which our English Reformers did well to protest. But these abuses and corruptions seem to me accidental, and quite insufficient