one thing
which experience has taught me, it is this--that if you make a signal to
God, it is answered. I don't say that troubles roll away, or that you are
made instantly happy. But you will find that you can struggle on. People
simply don't try that experiment. The reason why they do not is, I honestly
believe, because of our services, where prayer is made so ceremoniously and
elaborately that people get a false sense of dignity and reverence. It is a
very natural instinct which made the disciples say, 'Teach us to pray,' and
I do not think that ecclesiastical systems do teach people to pray--at
least the examples they give are too intellectual, too much concerned with
good taste. A prayer need not be a verbal thing--the best prayers are not.
It is the mute glance of an eye, the holding out of a hand. And if you ask
me what can make people different, I say it is not will, but prayer."

LXVIII

OF PRAYER

I was walking about the garden on a wintry Sunday with Father Payne. He had
a particular mood on Sundays, I used to think, which made itself subtly
felt--a mood serious, restrained, and yet contented. I do not remember how
the subject came up, but he said something about prayer, and I replied:

"I wish you would tell me exactly what you feel about prayer, Father. I
never quite understand. You always speak as if it played a great part in
your life, and yet I never am sure what exactly it means to you."

"You might as well say," he said, smiling, "that you never felt quite sure
what breakfast meant to me."

He stopped and looked at me for a moment. "Do we know what anything
_means_? We know what prayer _is_, at any rate--one of the
commonest and most natural of instincts. What is your difficulty?"

"Oh, the usual one," I said, "that if the God to whom we pray is the Power
which puts into our minds good desires, and knows not only what is passing
in our thoughts, but the very direction which our thoughts are going to
take--reads us, in fact, like a book, as they say--what, then, is the
object or purpose of setting ourselves to pray to a Power that knows our
precise range of thoughts, and can disentangle them all far better than we
can ourselves?"

"Why," said Father Payne, "that is pure fatalism. If you carry that on a
little further it means all absence of effort. You might as well say, 'I
will take no steps to provide myself with food--if God is All-Powerful, and
sends me a good appetite, it is His busin