him of anything; therefore to ask him to give us the thing we desire is
to make him like ourselves, and charge him with an oversight; or worse,
we attribute weakness and irresolution to him, since the petitioner
thinks my importunity to incline the balance in his favor."

I was about to reply that I had always considered prayer to be an
essential part of religion, and not of my form of religion only, but of
all religions all over the world. Luckily I remembered in time that he
probably knew more about matters "all over the world" than I did, and so
held my tongue.

"Have you any doubts on the subject?" he asked, after a while.

"I must confess that I still have some doubts," I replied. "I believe
that our Creator and Father desires the happiness of all his creatures
and takes no pleasure in seeing us miserable; for it would be impossible
not to believe it, seeing how greatly happiness overbalances misery in
the world. But he does not come to us in visible form to tell us in an
audible voice that to cry out to him in sore pain and distress is
unlawful. How, then, do we know this thing? For a child cries to its
mother, and a fledgling in the nest to its parent bird; and he is
infinitely more to us than parent to child--infinitely stronger to help,
and knows our griefs as no fellow-mortal can know them. May we not,
then, believe, without hurt to our souls, that the cry of one of his
children in affliction may reach him; that in his compassion, and by
means of his sovereign power over nature, he may give ease to the racked
body, and peace and joy to the desolate mind?"

"You ask me, How, then, do we know this thing? and you answer the
question yourself, yet fail to perceive that you answer it, when you say