Prayer - Mahatma Gandhi

Prayer
Rationalists are admirable beings. Rationalism is a hideous monster when it
claims for itself omnipotence. Attribution of omnipotence to reason is as bad a
piece of idolatry as is worship of stock and stone, believing it to be God.
Who has reasoned out the use of prayer Its use is felt after practice. Such is
the world's testimony. Cardinal Newman never surrendered his reason, but he
yielded a better place to prayer when he humbly sang: 'One step enough for
me'. Shankara was a prince among reasoners. There is hardly anything in the
world's literature to surpass Shankara's rationalism. But he yielded the first
place to prayer and faith.
The correspondent has made a hasty generalization from the fleeting and
disturbing events that are happening before us. But everything on this earth
lends itself to abuse. It seems to be a law governing everything pertaining to
man. No doubt, religion has to answer for some of the most terrible crimes in
history. But that is the fault not of religion, but of the ungovernable brute in
man. He has not yet shed the effects of his brute ancestry.
I do not know a single rationalist who has never done anything in simple faith,
and has based every one of his acts on reason. But we all know millions of
human beings, living their more or less orderly lives because of their childlike
faith in the Maker of us all. That very faith is a prayer. The 'boy', on whose
letter I based my article, belongs to that vast mass of humanity, and the article
was written to steady him and his fellow-searchers, not to disturb the
happiness of rationalists like the correspondent.
But he quarrels even with the bent that is given to the youth of the world by
their elders and teachers. But that, it seems, is an inseparable handicap (if it
be one) of impressionable age. Purely secular education is also an attempt to
mould the young mind after a fashion. The correspondent is good enough to
grant that the body and the mind may be trained and directed. Of the soul,
which makes the body and the mind possible, he has no care or perhaps he is in
doubt as to its existence. But this belief cannot avail him. He cannot escape
the consequence of his reasoning. For, why may not a believer argue, on the
correspondent's own ground, and say he must influence the soul of boys and
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