William James said approximately the same thing: “Faith is one of the forces by which men live,” he declared, “and the total absence of it means collapse.”
The late Mahatma Gandhi, the greatest Indian leader since Buddha, would have collapsed if he had not been inspired by the sustaining power of prayer. How do I know? Because Gandhi himself said so. “Without prayer,” he wrote, “I should have been a lunatic long ago.”
Thousands of people could give similar testimony. My own father-well, as I have already said, my own father would have drowned himself had it not been for my mother’s prayers and faith. Probably thousands of the tortured souls who are now screaming in our insane asylums could have been saved if they had only turned to a higher power for help instead of trying to fight life’s battles alone.
When we are harassed and reach the limit of our own strength, many of us then turn in desperation to God-“There are no atheists in foxholes.” But why wait till we are desperate? Why not renew our strength every day? Why wait even until Sunday? For years I have had the habit of dropping into empty churches on weekday afternoons. When I feel that I am too rushed and hurried to spare a few minutes to think about spiritual things, I say to myself: “Wait a minute, Dale Carnegie, wait a minute. Why all the feverish hurry and rush, little man? You need to pause and acquire a little perspective.” At such times, I frequently drop into the first church that I find open. Although I am a Protestant, I frequently, on weekday afternoons, drop into St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, and remind myself that I’ll be dead in another thirty years, but that the great spiritual truths that all churches teach are eternal. I close my eyes and pray. I find that doing this calms my nerves, rests my body, clarifies my perspective, and helps me revalue my values. May I recommend this practice to you?
During the past six years that I have been writing this book I have collected hundreds of examples and concrete cases of how men and women conquered fear and worry by prayer. I have in my filing cabinet folders bulging with case histories. Let’s take as a typical example the story of a discouraged and disheartened book salesman, John R. Anthony. Mr. Anthony is now an attorney in Houston, Texas, with offices in the Humble Building. Here is his story as he told it to me.
“Twenty-two years ago I closed my private law office to become state representative of an American law-book company. My specialty was selling a set of law-books to lawyers-a set of books that were almost indispensable.
“I was ably and thoroughly trained for the job. I knew all the direct sales talks, and the convincing answers to all possible objections. Before calling on a prospect, I familiarised myself with his rating as an attorney, the nature of his practice, his politics and hobbies. During my interview, I used that information with ample skill. Yet, something was wrong. I just couldn’t get orders!
“I grew discouraged. As the days and weeks passed, I doubled and redoubled ray efforts, but was still unable to close enough sales to pay my expenses. A sense of fear and dread grew within me. I became afraid to call on people. Before I could enter a prospect’s office, that feeling of dread flared up so strong that I would pace up and down the hallway outside the door-or go out of the building and circle the block. Then, after losing much valuable time and feigning enough courage by sheer will power to crash the office door, I feebly turned the doorknob with trembling hand-half hoping my prospect would not be in!
“My sales manager threatened to stop my advances if I didn’t send in more orders. My wife at home pleaded with me for money to pay the grocery bill for herself and our three children. Worry seized me. Day by day I grew more desperate. I didn’t know what to do. As I have already said, I had closed my private law office at home and given up my clients. Now I was broke. I didn’t have the money to pay even my hotel bill. Neither did I have the money to buy a ticket back home; nor did I have the courage to return home a beaten man, even if I had had the ticket. Finally, at the miserable end of another bad day, I trudged back to my hotel room-for the last time, I thought. So far as I was concerned, I was thoroughly beaten.
Heartbroken, depressed, I didn’t know which way to turn. I hardly cared whether I lived or died. I was sorry I had ever been born. I had nothing but a glass of hot milk that night for dinner. Even that was more than I could afford. I understood that night why desperate men raise a hotel window and jump. I might have done it myself if I had had the courage. I began wondering what was the purpose of life. I didn’t know. I couldn’t figure it out.
“Since there was no one else to turn to, I turned to God. I began to pray. I implored the Almighty to give me light and understanding and guidance through the dark, dense wilderness of despair that had closed in about me. I asked God to help me get orders for my books and to give me money to feed my wife and children. After that prayer, I opened my eyes and saw a Gideon Bible that lay on the dresser in that lonely hotel room. I opened it and read those beautiful, immortal promises of Jesus that must have inspired countless generations of lonely, worried, and beaten men throughout the ages-a talk that Jesus gave to His disciples about how to keep from worrying:
Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; not yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? … But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
“As I prayed and as I read those words, a miracle happened: my nervous tension fell away. My anxieties, fears, and worries were transformed into heart-warming courage and hope and triumphant faith.
“I was happy, even though I didn’t have enough money to pay my hotel bill. I went to bed and slept soundly-free from care-as I had not done for many years.
“Next morning, I could hardly hold myself back until the offices of my prospects were open. I approached the office door of my first prospect that beautiful, cold, rainy day with a bold and positive stride. I turned the doorknob with a firm and steady grip. As I entered, I made a beeline for my man, energetically, chin up, and with appropriate dignity, all smiles, and saying: ‘Good morning, Mr. Smith! I’m John R. Anthony of the All-American Lawbook Company!’
” ‘Oh, yes, yes,’ he replied, smiling, too, as he rose from his chair with outstretched hand. ‘I’m glad to see you. Have a seat!’
“I made more sales that day than I had made in weeks. That evening I proudly returned to my hotel like a conquering hero! I felt like a new man. And I was a new man, because I had a new and victorious mental attitude. No dinner of hot milk that night. No, sir! I had a steak with all the fixin’s. From that day on, my sales zoomed.
“I was born anew that desperate night twenty-one years ago in a little hotel in Amarillo, Texas. My outward situation the next day was the same as it had been through my weeks of failure, but a tremendous thing had happened inside me. I had suddenly become aware of my relationship with God. A mere man alone can easily be defeated, but a man alive with the power of God within him is invincible. I know. I saw it work in my own life.
” ‘Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.’ ”
When Mrs. L. G. Beaird, of 1421 8th Street, Highland, Illinois, was faced with stark tragedy, she discovered that she could find peace and tranquility by kneeling down and saying: “0 Lord, Thy will, not mine, be done.”
“One evening our telephone rang,” she writes in a letter that I have before me now. “It rang fourteen times before I had the courage to pick up the receiver. I knew it must be the hospital, and I was terrified. I feared that our little boy was dying. He had meningitis. He had already been given penicillin, but it made his temperature fluctuate, and the doctor feared that the disease had travelled to his brain and might cause the development of a brain tumour-and death. The phone call was just what I feared. The hospital was calling; the doctor wanted us to come immediately.
“Maybe you can picture the anguish my husband and I went through, sitting in the waiting-room. Everyone else had his baby, but we sat there with empty arms, wondering if we would ever hold our little fellow again. When we were finally called into the doctor’s private office, the expression on his face filled our heart with terror. His words brought even more terror. He told us that there was only one chance in four that our baby would live. He said that if we knew another doctor, to please call him in on the case.
“On the way home my husband broke down and, doubling up his fist, hit the steering wheel, saying: ‘Berts, I can’t give that little guy up.’ Have you ever seen a man cry? It isn’t a pleasant experience. We stopped the car and, after talking things over, decided to stop in church and pray that if it was God’s will to take our baby, we would resign our will to His. I sank in the pew and said with tears rolling down my cheeks: ‘Not my will but Thine be done.’
“The moment I uttered those words, I felt better. A sense of peace that I hadn’t felt for a long time came over me. All the way home, I kept repeating: ‘O God, Thy will, not mine, be done.’
“I slept soundly that night for the first time in a week. The doctor called a few days later and said that Bobby had passed the crisis. I thank God for the strong and healthy four-year-old boy we have today.”
I know men who regard religion as something for women and children and preachers. They pride themselves on being “he-men” who can fight their battles alone.
How surprised they might be to learn that some of the most famous “he-men” in the world pray every day. For example, “he-man” Jack Dempsey told me that he never goes to bed without saying his prayers. He told me that he never eats a meal without first thanking God for it. He told me that he prayed every day when he was training for a bout, and that when he was fighting, he always prayed just before the bell sounded for each round. “Praying,” he said, “helped me fight with courage and confidence.”
“He-man” Connie Mack told me that he couldn’t go to sleep without saying his prayers.
“He-man” Eddie Rickenbacker told me that he believed his life had been saved by prayer. He prays every day.
“He-man” Edward R. Stettinius, former high official of General Motors and United States Steel, and former Secretary of State, told me that he prayed for wisdom and guidance every morning and night.
“He-man” J. Pierpont Morgan, the greatest financier of his age, often went alone to Trinity Church, at the head of Wall Street, on Saturday afternoons and knelt in prayer.
When “he-man” Eisenhower flew to England to take supreme command of the British and American forces, he took only one book on the plane with him-the Bible.
“He-man” General Mark Clark told me that he read his Bible every day during the war and knelt down in prayer. So did Chiang Kai-shek, and General Montgomery-“Monty of El Alamein”. So did Lord Nelson at Trafalgar. So did General Washington, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and scores of other great military leaders.
These “he-men” discovered the truth of William James’s statement: “We and God have business with each other; and in opening ourselves to His influence, our deepest destiny is fulfilled.”
A lot of “he-men” are discovering that. Seventy-two million Americans are church members now-an all-time record. As I said before, even the scientists are turning to religion. Take, for example, Dr. Alexis Carrel, who wrote Man, the Unknown and won the greatest honour that can be bestowed upon any scientist, the Nobel prize. Dr. Carrel said in a Reader’s Digest article: “Prayer is the most powerful form of energy one can generate. It is a force as real as terrestrial gravity. As a physician, I have seen men, after all other therapy had failed, lifted out of disease and melancholy by the serene effort of prayer. … Prayer like radium is a source of luminous, self-generating energy. … In prayer, human beings seek to augment their finite energy by addressing themselves to the Infinite source of all energy. When we pray, we link ourselves with the inexhaustible motive power that spins the universe. We pray that a part of this power be apportioned to our needs.
Even in asking, our human deficiencies are filled and we arise strengthened and repaired. … Whenever we address God in fervent prayer, we change both soul and body for the better. It could not happen that any man or woman could pray for a single moment without some good result.”
Admiral Byrd knows what it means to “link ourselves with the inexhaustible motive power that spins the universe”. His ability to do that pulled him through the most trying ordeal of his life. He tells the story in his book Alone. (*) In 1934, he spent five months in a hut buried beneath the icecap of Ross Barrier deep in the Antarctic. He was the only living creature south of latitude seventy-eight. Blizzards roared above his shack; the cold plunged down to eighty-two degrees below zero; he was completely surrounded by unending night. And then he found, to his horror, he was being slowly poisoned by carbon monoxide that escaped from his stove! What could he do? The nearest help was 123 miles away, and could not possibly reach him for several months. He tried to fix his stove and ventilating system, but the fumes still escaped. They often knocked him out cold. He lay on the floor completely unconscious. He couldn’t eat; he couldn’t sleep; he became so feeble that he could hardly leave his bunk. He frequently feared he wouldn’t live until morning. He was convinced he would die in that cabin, and his body would be hidden by perpetual snows.
—-
[*] Putnam & Co. Ltd.
—-
What saved his life? One day, in the depths of his despair, he reached for his diary and tried to set down his philosophy of life. “The human race,” he wrote, “is not alone in the universe.” He thought of the stars overhead, of the orderly swing of the constellations and planets; of how the everlasting sun would, in its time, return to lighten even the wastes of the South Polar regions. And then he wrote in his diary: “I am not alone.”
This realisation that he was not alone-not even in a hole in the ice at the end of the earth-was what saved Richard Byrd. “I know it pulled me through,” he says. And he goes on to add: “Few men in their lifetime come anywhere near exhausting the resources dwelling within them. There are deep wells of strength that are never used.” Richard Byrd learned to tap those wells of strength and use those resources-by turning to God.