Papers from the Dial by Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Not with fond shekels of the tested gold, / Nor gems whose rates are either rich or poor / As fancy values them: but with true prayers, / That shall be up at heaven and enter there / Ere sunrise; prayers from preserved souls, / From fasting maids, whose minds are dedicate / To nothing temporal. " / SHAKSPEARE.

Pythagoras said that the time when men are honestest is when they present themselves before the gods. If we can overhear the prayer we shall know the man. But prayers are not made to be overheard, or to be printed, so that we seldom have the prayer otherwise than it can be inferred from the man and his fortunes, which are the answer to the prayer, and always accord with it. Yet there are scattered about in the earth a few records of these devout hours, which it would edify us to read, could they be collected in a more catholic spirit than the wretched and repulsive volumes which usurp that name. Let us not have the prayers of one sect, nor of the Christian Church, but of men in all ages and religions who have prayed well. The prayer of Jesus is (as it deserves) become a form for the human race. Many men have contributed a single expression, a single word to the language of devotion, which is immediately caught and stereotyped in the prayers of their church and nation. Among the remains of Euripides we have this prayer: "Thou God of all! infuse light into the souls of men, whereby they may be enabled to know what is the root from whence all their evils spring, and by what means they may avoid them. "[7]