Creative Prayer by Emily Herman

by John Duncan Dunn

Excerpt from Creative Prayer Books on Prayer may be roughly divided into those which treat of its scientific aspect, whether it be from the standpoint of philosophy or from that of psychology, and those which are written with a purely devotional purpose. In these pages I have endeavoured to elucidate the meaning and value of prayer as a creative process, whereby the man who prays and his world are made anew. In Chapter I. I have sought to present what I conceive to be the fundamental conditions of prayer as creative energy. "The worshipper," as Professor W. E. Hocking has it, "does not merely sustain, but creates. All beauty, as Plato thought, incites to reproduction. It incites perhaps to something more than reproduction - to origination. Some superabundance there is in the vision of God which sends the seer back not to the old but to the new." This creative vision is a central element in Christian prayer. In Chapters II. and III. I have dealt with two great aids to creative prayer - Silence and Meditation - trying to show that, so far from being the esoteric hobbies of mystical devotees, they are essential to the virile discipline of the spiritual life. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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Reviews

[Paul Dubuc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Published in 1921, I don't think I've read a more profound and relevant book on prayer. This is certainly worthy of being a classic. Emily Herman will make most readers think differently, more expansively, about prayer.