Layman: When I first spoke to you about family worship, I had a dim, half-formed notion that you might suggest to me some ingenious compromise with my conscience–some universal prayer in which Jew, Turk, Pagan, and Infidel might join. I confess I had heard many suggestions of the kind from others, had made many attempts myself, and that the results were not satisfactory. The erms could never be quite sufficiently vague. They tended continually to the formula, “O God, if there be a God, save my soul, if I have a soul;” and whatever faith may be embodied in that petition, it is not a faith which seems to demand a very definite expression, or which one cares to propagate in one’s home-circle.
Clergyman: I think there IS faith embodied in that prayer as well as the one which Bp. Atterbury quoted as a rebuke to the layman who spoke of it at some dinner-table, “O God, I am going to be very busy to-day. If I forget Thee, do not Thou forget me.”