Bible Review V15: October 1916 - March 1918 - Iapsop.com

338 BIBLE REVIEW June-July
sire of the heart.
The heart is used as a symbol of the
seat of love, emotion, desire-not desires that spring
from mental conclusions, but the desires that arise in
the life currents. A child is not hungry because it
reasons out the fact that, having been some time without
food it must consequently need it, but because there is a
feeling within that makes it know that it needs food.
Prayer is the desire of the heart, and without a consciousness
of need there can be no prayer. In order to pray,
one must have
within himself a feeling of need, and
with this consciousness must be associated the
source of
supply. Accompanied by these two prerequisites, prayer
becomes spontaneous; it it involuntary, that is, it springs
forth without effort, at the same time the mind, in unison
with the inner desires, being Iixt upon the thing desired
and the source from which the individual expects to re~
ceive it.
We therefore readily see that prayer is not a
multitude of words, but simply a centralized desire, carrying
the mental action with it.
With this conception of the nature of prayer we may
perceive the significance of the Lord's injunction to "pray
always," that is, that the mind should be always fixt on
God. But such a centralization implies another condition,
which is this: a realization of a spiritual need carries with
it a consciousness that the individual is not what he
wishes to be; consequently, the constant desire is connected
with the the thought, the ideal, of what he wants
to be; namely. to be like God in holiness of life, in ability
to know, to understand the divine laws, to possess
the same spirit of wisdom that guided the divine hand
when worlds were made, that he may have the power to
fulfil the purpose of his creation, which was exprest in
the words, "Let us make man in our image, after our
likeness: and let them have dominion." We all realize
that we lack this dominion; that we lack knowledge,