No matter what a man may pray for he is praying for a miracle.--Every
prayer amounts to the following: "Great God, cause that two and two may
not make four."
Only such a prayer is a genuine prayer from a person to a person. To
pray to the Universal Spirit, to the Supreme Being of Kant, of Hegel--to
a purified, amorphous God, is impossible and unthinkable.
But can even a personal, living God with a form cause that two and two
shall not make four?
Every believer is bound to reply, "He can," and is bound to convince
himself of this.
But what if his reason revolts against such an absurdity?
In that case Shakspeare will come to his assistance: "There are many
things in the world, friend Horatio...." and so forth.
And if people retort in the name of truth,--all he has to do is to
repeat the famous question: "What is truth?"
And therefore, let us drink and be merry--and pray.
July, 1881.