e must
learn to think of the needs, the struggles, the sorrows, the hopes that
are common to us all, to put ourselves in other people's places when we
pray, to feel that our religion is a bond that binds us to our kind.

There is a kind of prayer which we could only use in the
closet,--intimate, personal, dealing with matters of which no one else
has any right to know. But there is another kind of prayer for which
there is no other place than the great congregation; a prayer in which
many pleading hearts unite; in which the sympathies and hopes and
aspirations of a thousand worshipers are blended. Such a prayer, if some
one can give it voice, is something far higher and diviner than ever
ascended from any secret shrine.

It is true that the prayer of the great assembly does not always find a
fitting voice. It is sometimes arid and formal; it is sometimes palpably
insincere and perfunctory, alas for our human disabilities and
infirmities! The power of the leader to forget himself, to gather up
into his heart the common needs of those who are listening, and pour
them out before God, is sometimes wanting. Not seldom we may find
ourselves wishing for those forms of prayer, sanctified by centuries of
use, in which the Christian church, in all the lands of earth, has made
known its requests to God. These are always dignified and reverent;
every truly devout heart may find utterance for some of its deepest
needs in the petitions of the Book of Common Prayer. But most of us have
heard prayers in the sanctuary which lifted and kindled us as no written
prayers could ever do. If the leader of the devotions could be "in the
Spirit on the Lord's day;" if he could forget himself; if the simplicity
which is in Christ could take possession of his thought, if he could
look over the company round about him before he closed his eyes, and
with a swift glance could glean out of that field of human experience
some inkling of the trials, the perplexities, the griefs, the struggles,
the tragedies of the lives there before him, and with a great, fervent,
energizing[16] prayer could carry them all up to God, there would be
something in that which would convince all who were listening that the
highest form of prayer is not secret prayer, but social prayer. Nor is
it an uncommon thing to hear, even in humble pulpits, prayer which
effectually meets this great demand.

It goes without saying that, for the highest forms of praise, we must
have the