Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1918-07-19

an agony of supplication praying for
their loved ones. They cannot help
it. We have in these days of scien-
tific enlightenment a great deal of
discussion about the efficacy of pray
err wrote William James. and many
reasons have been given us why we
should not pray, while others are
given why we should. But in all
this very little is said of the reasons
why we do pray The rea-
son why we pray is simply that we
cannot help praying
I'VE have. in very truth, come to
the day when we cannot help pray
ing. In the moment of extremity the
appeal to God, conscious or uncon-
scious. springs from the heart. They
are at their wits end, then they cry
to Jehovah, is the testimony of the
Psalmist. And even the unk-prayer
is heard, for he adds: And He
bringeth them out of their distress
es.' What the cloudless day cannot
do, the hurricane effects. I have
been driven many times to my knees
by the overwhelming conviction that
I had nowhere else to 60, wrote
Abraham Lincoln. My own wisdom
and that of all around me seemed
insufficient for the day. And so it
is now. The statesman in his cabi-
net and the soldier in the trench are
at one in the day when all earthly
refuge fails and God alone remains
I had not prayed for years but
prayed then is the testimony of
many a man.
The Great Reason For Prayer
There is in the world something
greater than law, and that is person.
L.. l.. -.
human personality can mold and
shape unchangeable law and make
ii do his will. If gravitation DEGREES
that water shall run downward. men
can decree that it flow upward to the
level of its source. If electricity can
rend the heavens and spread disaster
and death in the destroying light
ming. man can take its laws and so
combine them that it drives his ma
chinery, makes his cities bright al
most as dav, and send his messages
round the earth. If law imprisons
the stone and iron and marble in The
everlasting hills. men by the same
law can rear St.Pauls and hang
the iron bridges high in air over the
chasms. Instead of Interchangeable law
making progress impossible, it is the
fact of law making being unchange-
able, and thus to be depended on,
that makes all progress possible. BY
il the aeroplane mounts to heaven,
and the shell screams over head. And
If man can thus mold law to his
will. who can dare say that He Who
is the course of all law is helpless
and imprisoned? What is law but
the ordered will of personality? Law
is unthinkahle without law
giver
The only expression of the source
of all things is a Personality shaping
the universe to His VIII. The rela-
ton of men to God is thus a personal
relationship-the relationship of the
finite. to the infinite Personality.
We know but little of the
secret of Gods working. but We can
understand how problems which to
us are insoluble are not even prob
lens to Him. To the savage a moter
is an insoluble enigma; to the me-
chanic that controls il there is no
mystery whatever within its compass.
And we are far less fitted to Judge
the universe than the primitive man
TO Judge a motorcar,
Above the Law
Gods personality is the one real
ity: and when the sailor on the deep
or the soldier on the battlefield cry
10 Him. the cry does not beat against
the prison walls of law, like waves
fretting at the base of the cliff, hut
mounts to the hearts of Him, the
OUTGOING of whose will is the susten-
ance and the glory of the material
world. and Who is infinitely greater