He never entered into
controversies about the efficacy of prayer; but, far from deriding, he
recommended it as "a turning of one's soul to the Highest." In 1869 he
writes:--
I occasionally feel able to wish, with my whole softened
heart--it is my only form of prayer--"Great Father, oh, if
Thou canst, have pity on her and on me and on all such!" In
this at least there is no harm.
And about the same date to Erskine:--
"Our Father;" in my sleepless tossings, these words, that
brief and grand prayer, came strangely into my mind with an
altogether new emphasis; as if written and shining for me
in mild pure splendour on the black bosom of the night there;
when I as it were read them word by word, with a sudden
check to my imperfect wanderings, with a sudden softness of
composure which was much unexpected. Not for perhaps thirty
or forty years had I once formally repeated that prayer: nay,
I never felt before how intensely the voice of man's soul it
is, the inmost inspiration of all that is high and pious in
poor human nature, right worthy to be recommended with an
"After this manner pray ye."
Carlyle holds that if we do our duty--the best work we can--and
faithfully obey His laws, living soberly and justly, God will do the best
for us in this life. As regards the next we have seen that he ended with
Goethe's hope.
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