relations with him, and the spiritual life in us grows,
unfolds, becomes beautiful and sweet, not because we have changed God,
but because we have got into a new set of relations with him.

If I thought that I could change God by a prayer, that I could
interfere in the slightest degree with the working of any of the
natural forces, I would never dare to open my lips in prayer again so
long as I live. We do not need to change God: we need simply to change
our attitude towards him, change our relations to him. Is not this true
in every department of human life? How is it that you produce results
anywhere? You wish a mountain stream to work for you. Do you change the
laws of motion? You adapt your machinery to those laws of motion, and
all the power of God becomes yours. You do not change him, you change
yourself, your attitude towards him. And so in every one of the
discoveries, in every one of the revolutions, that have come to the
world, simply by discovering God's methods, and humbly adapting our
ways to those methods Thus the forces of God, which are changeless and
eternal, produce for us results which they would not have produced but
for adapting our lives to the working of their ways.

A great many people do not think they ever pray. I have never seen a
man yet who did not pray. You cannot live, and not pray: you cannot
escape it if you try. Take Montgomery's famous old definition, "Prayer
is the soul's sincere desire, Uttered or unexpressed, The motion of a
hidden fir That trembles in the breast."

Soul's sincere desire. Yes, the body's desire, the mind's desire, the
heart's desire, any desire, any outreach of life, is a prayer, an
appeal for something that only the universe, that only God, can bestow.
So, no matter whether you think you are religious or not, you are a
praying man so long as you are a living man; and you cannot escape the
fact if you try. It is merely a question whether you are a loving praying
man or some other kind.

There is another aspect of prayer to which I wish to call your
attention. Prayer is the refuge of a soul in trouble. It does not mean
here, again, that you change God any. Can you not understand what it
means to go to God, as it were, and fling yourself, like a child,
against his breast and feel yourself folded in the everlasting arms?
Your sorrow may not be removed, the burden may not be taken away, the
life of your friend may not be saved, the sickness may not be healed;
but th