helping to destroy it, therefore it would destroy them. Anciently, in Japan, they conveyed a praying-machine through the streets, stopping at the doors to earn a penny grinding out a prayer. But in the belief of higher civilization, we pay for prayers in lofty edifices. Experience teaches that we receive not the good we ask for in audible prayer. Petitioning a personal Deity is a misapprehension of the source and means of all good and blessedness; therefore it cannot be beneficial, and we receive not, because, as the scripture saith, “We ask amiss, to consume it on our lusts.”
Suffering for sin is all that destroys it; every supposed pleasure of personal sense, will furnish more than its balance in pain, until the belief of Life and Intelligence in matter is ultimately destroyed. We are not rid of mortal experiences, of sin, sickness, or death, at the change called death; we cannot reach heaven, the harmony of Life, except we understand the Principle of harmonious being, that alone destroys personal sense and error. Seeking is not sufficient to destroy error; striving to enter into the straight and narrow way of science, is all that will enable us to do it. Spiritual attainments are the preparation for heaven, and that which opens the door to a higher understanding, even the Life that is God. The petitions to a personal Deity bring to man only the results of his belief; they cannot obtain Truth, Life, or Love. We know that a desire for holiness is requisite to gaining it, but if we really desire this above all else, we shall lay down all for it; first learn your willingness to do this, and then you may calculate safely on the only practical wav of reaching holiness. Prayer cannot change the
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