that all creatures should give him honor and praise, and that prayer
should be the universal incense of nature,--it is most certain that
man, when he thinks on God, feels within him two instincts, mystery and
adoration. Reason's province," I pursued, "is to enlighten and disperse
mystery, more and more every day, but never to dispel it entirely.
Prayer is the natural desire of the heart to pour forth unceasingly its
supplications, efficacious or not, heard or unheard, as a precious
perfume on the feet of God. What matters it if the perfume fall to the
ground, or whether it anoint the feet of God? It is always a tribute of
weakness, humility, and adoration.

"But who can say that it is ever lost?" I added in the tone of one
whose hopes triumph over his doubts; "who can say that prayer, the
mysterious communication with invisible Omnipotence, is not in reality
the greatest of all the natural or supernatural powers of man? Who can
say that the supreme and immortal Will has not ordained from all
eternity that prayer should be continually inspired and heard, and that
man should thus, by his invocations, participate in the ordering of his
own destiny? Who knows whether God, in his love, and perpetual blessing
on the beings which emanate from him, has not established this bond
with them, as the invisible chain which links the thoughts of all
worlds to his? Who knows but that, in his majestic solitude which he
peoples alone, he has willed that this living murmur, this continual
communing with nature, should ascend and descend continually in all
space from him to all the beings that he vivifies and loves, and from
those beings to him? At all events, prayer is the highest privilege of
man, since it allows him to speak to God. If God were deaf to our
prayers, we should still pray; for if in his majesty he would not hear
us, still prayer would dignify man."