Living Prayer

Only living prayer,
Keeps the life of man
Clement and humane.
It is the great producer
Of liberty and sympathy:
Trusting in the Father of Lights;
Moving, and acting in Him,
We come openly into tune
With the nature and plight,
Of our neighbor;
For our prayer,
Is common, living prayer;
It is a willful act;
Indeed, THE willful act,
Of the common fellowship.
We cannot even truly pray,
Without passing through ourselves,
Into the individual experience,
Beyond and athwart of us.
Our egoism, and our fear,
Retire before the coming of God;
And into this clearance,
There comes;
Along with our Father;
Our brother.