To do nothing but pray is a wrong done to prayer itself, and can only
end in disaster. It is as if one tried to live only with the lungs,
as if one assimilated only air and neglected solid food. The lungs are
a first essential; the air is a first essential; but the body has many
members, given for different purposes, secreting different things, and
each has a method of nutrition as special to itself as its own
activity. While prayer, then, is the characteristic sublimity of the
Christian life, it is by no means the only one. And those who make it
the sole alternative, and apply it to purposes for which it was never
meant, are really doing the greatest harm to prayer itself. To couple
the word "inadequate" with this mighty word is not to dethrone prayer,
but to exalt it.