to read, undertook, in one of these
papers, to explain how, at the time, he viewed the place of prayer in
his own life. He was a man capable, upon the one hand, of deep emotion
and of rich inner life, but on the other hand highly self-critical and
disposed to doubt. After a somewhat plentiful early interest in
religion, the result of home training and of personal experience, he
had come, as he studied more, and looked about his world more
critically, to part company almost altogether with positive faiths
about religious matters. His childhood beliefs had dropped away.
Doubts and disbeliefs had taken their place. In opinion, when he wrote
his papers for me, he was mainly disposed to a pure naturalism. The
gods of the past had vanished from his life almost altogether.

"But," said he, in his account (I follow not his exact words but their
general sense), "one old religious exercise I have never quite given
up. That was and is prayer. A good while ago I dropped all
conventional forms of prayer. I did not say my prayers in the old way.
And when I prayed I no longer fancied that the course of nature or of
my luck was going to be altered for my sake, or that my prayers would
help me to avoid any consequences of my folly or my ignorance. I did
not pray to get anybody to mix in my affairs, so as to get me things
{133} that I wanted. But this was, and is, my feeling about prayer:
When things are too much for me, and I am down on my luck, and
everything is dark, I go alone by myself, and I bury my head in my
hands, and I think hard that God must know it all and will see how
matters really are, and understands me, and in just that way alone, by
understanding me, will help me. And so I try to get myself together.
And that, for me, is prayer."

I cannot repeat my student's precise form of expression. I think that
I express to you the spirit of what he wrote. In any case, this form
of prayer is not peculiar to that man. You see in what way the thought
of the divine wisdom became a practical thought for him--a thought at
once rational and, as far as it went, saving. When life shattered his
little human plans--well, he lifted up his eyes unto the hills. He won
a sort of conscious and reasonable union with the all-seeing life. He
did not ask its aid as a giver of good fortunes. He waited patiently
for the light. Now I do not think that to be an expression of the
whole insight of reason; but, so far as it went, that sort of prayer
was