The search for the law underlying all phenomena is a preeminent characteristic of modern thought. The spirit of inquiry has found no resting place in matter or material energy; so it pushes its quest into the realm of the divine. What are the laws of Life? How may spiritual law be utilized by the human being? The nature of prayer as a means of approaching Spirit has remained to many an unsolved mystery. Reason has found it impossible to reconcile the belief that prayer can change a man's destiny with the other belief that man lives under general laws that are unalterable. The instinct of prayer has, therefore, commonly expended itself in emotion, instead of intelligently utilizing spiritual law. Yet the law which underlies true prayer and determines its office in the spiritual economy of being, has its exposition in the teaching of the Bible for those who will understand.
Every man prays, whether he is willing to admit it or not. Every one, that is to say, is impelled by desire in the direction of that which he conceives to be ultimate power. Each human heart deifies within "the chambers of his imagery" what seems to it the essence of satisfaction; and as surely "as in water face answereth to face," so the individual reflects what he worships.
The materialist declares that there is nothing but matter and its inherent forces. His unbelief in Spirit leads him with logical sensuous abandon to say, "Let us eat and drink; for to morrow we die." The idealist assumes that all is mind and that matter is therefore unreal, and he fashions his moral code to this basis. The religionist conceives of God as an omnipotent Being, who knows or permits a secondary evil power unlike Himself. He believes that both Spirit and matter are real, and he forthwith entangles himself in the absurdity of making an infinitely good God responsible for the unspeakable evils of the material world; or else he is compelled to admit that evil is a power in and of itself and coequal with God. His prayers are for the greater part unavailing because his faith is so encumbered with the belief that God's laws may be set aside in response to man's desire or according to the caprice of an interposing Providence.
