Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1911-12-10
>AYERS THAT HAVE MOVED MEMS HEARTS

Prayer is the souls sincere desire;
Uttered or uneXpreSSed
The motion of hidden fire
That trembleS in the breast.
60 sang earnest Christians long before the
~ New Thought movement informed us
that wishes really were prayers, sure to
bear fruit sometime; and taught us to
strengthen our failing faith by vigorous
"affirmations prayer brings comfort
said wise NJ. Joubert.
From Socrates high plea, 20 Athens, give
me inward beauty of soul, and let the inward
and the outward man be at one!" and the
pure human request of that other ancient
philosopher who besought his deity to "1et
my f1ocks and everything about me be fat
except my wits" down through the wonder
full prayers of the Middle Ages, in which
religion was as natural to mankind as science
is now, to the moving suppications of
Stevenson, Whittier, Van Dyke, and other
of our "latterday saints the fervent request
of the pleader.
High hearted Robert Louis Stevenson has
bequeathed to his fellows some marvellous
prayers, notably the morning aspiration in
which he begS, "Give us to play the man."
and the evening devotion beginning, Lord,
support us all day long of this troublous
1ife!' but he wrote nothing finer than the
brave, sweet verse in which the sinking
sufferer testified to his abiding acknowledge
ment of the beauty duty-of joy:
If have moved among my race,
And shown no glorious morning face.
If beams from happy human eyes
Have moved me not, if morning skies.
Books, and my food, and summer rain,
Beat on nv Sullen heart in vain
Lord. thy most pointed pleasure take,
And stab my spirit broad awake
A wonderful prayer, truly, though per-
haps not all of us would dare to pray it.
Whittier has prayer poem which breathes
the same spirit of tender brotherly love:
Make my mortal dreams come true,
With the good fain would do;
If there be a weaker one,
Give strength to help him on;
If binder soul there be,
Help me draw him nearer Thee;
Clothe with life the weak intent;
Let me be the thing meant!
1t needed a great soul and a loving to
express so perfectly the deep seated, depre-
eating longing so MANY of us have word
lessly felt. DR.. Henry Van Dyke is another
spiritually minded humanitarian whose pure
thoughts have blossomed forth into inn
pressive prayers. His God of the Open
Air. once read, will seldom be forgotten.
"A Writer'S Request of His Master" less
widely known, should touch the heart of
all who claim remotest kinship with the
writing craft:
"Let me never tag a moral to a story, nor
tell a story without meaning. Make me
respect my material so much that dare not
slight my work. Help me to deal very
honestly with words and with people, because
they are both alive. Show me that, as in
river, so in writing, clearness is the best
quality, and little that is pure is worth
much that is mixed. Teach me to see the
local color without being blind to the inner
light. Give me an ideal that will stand the
strain of weaving into human stuff on the
loom of the real. Keep me from caring more
for books than for folks, for art than for
life. Steady me to do my full stint of work
as we'll as can. And when this is done, stop
me, pay me what wages Thou wilt, and help
me to say, from a quiet heart, a grateful
Amen"
Small wonder, is it, that the gentle sage
of Princeton" writes so effectively, inspired
by such noble aims9 The modern glorifca-
ton of the personal task not long since drew
forth a riming prayer that has met with