We offer many dead prayers, through mental indolence. This fact is often forgotten, that prayer is one of the most spiritual of the duties of religion, spiritual as distinct from corporeal. It is the communion of a spiritual soul with a spiritual God. God calls himself the Former, only, of our bodies, but the Father of our spirits. So prayer, to be a filial intercourse with Him, must be abstract from sensation. Do we not naturally seek darkness in our devotions? Why is it, that to pray with open eyes seems either heartless or ghastly? So, too, do we seek stillness and solitude. Only a Pharisee can pray at the corner of a street.

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