Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening.

As food is necessary for the body, prayer is necessary for the soul. A man may be able to do without food, for a number of days as MacSwiney did for over seventy days but, believing in God, man cannot, Should not, live a moment without prayer.

Prayer needs to speech. It is in itself independent of any sensuous effort. I have not the slightest doubt that prayer is an unfailing means of cleansing the heart of passion. But it must be combined with the utmost humility.

I am giving you a bit of my experience and that of my companions when I say that he who has experienced the magic of prayer may do without food for days together but not a single moment without prayer. For without prayer there is no inward peace.

Never own defeat in a sacred cause and make up your minds henceforth that you will be pure and that you will find a response from God. But God never answers the prayers of the arrogant, nor the prayers of those who bargains with Him.

I can give my own testimony and say that I heartfelt prayer is undoubtedly the most potent instrument that man possesses for overcoming cowardice and all other bad old habits. Prayer is an impossibility without a living faith in the presence of God within.

The prayer of even the most impure will be answered. I am telling this out of my personal experience, I have gone through the purgatory. Seek first the kingdom of Heaven and everything will be added unto you.

Not until we have reduced ourselves to nothingness can we conquer the evil in us. God demands nothing less than complete self-surrender as the price for the only real freedom that is worth having. And when a man thus loses himself he immediately finds himself in the service of all that lives. It becomes his delight and his recreation. He is a new man, never weary of spending himself in the service of God's creation.

Our prayer is a heart search. It is a reminder to ourselves that we are helpless without His support. No effort is complete without prayer without a definite recognition that the best human Endeavour is of no effect if it has not God's blessing behind. Prayer is a call to humility. It is a call to self-purification, to inward search.

There are limits to the capacity of an individual and the moment he flatters himself that he can undertake all tasks, God is there to humble his pride.

Man is a falling being. He can never be sure of his steps. What he may regard as answer to prayer may be an echo of his pride. For infallible guidance man has to have a perfectly innocent heart incapable of evil.

Let everyone try and find that as a result of daily prayer he adds something new to his life, something with which nothing can be compared.

There are subjects where reason cannot take us far and we have to accept things on faith. Faith then does not contradict reason but transcends it. Faith is a kind of sixth sense which works in cases which are without the purview of reason.

Without faith this world would come to naught in a moment. True faith is appropriation of the reasoned experience of people whom we believe to have lived a life purified by prayer and penance. Belief there fore in prophets or incarnation who have lived in remote ages is not an idle superstition but a satisfaction of an inmost spiritual want.

A man without faith is like a drop thrown out of the ocean bound to perish. Every drop in the ocean shares its majesty and has the honour of giving us the ozone of life.

Faith is a function of the heart. It must be enforced by reason. The two are not antagonistic as some think. The more intense one's faith is, the more it whets one's reason. When faith becomes blind it dies.

It is faith that steers us through stormy seas, faith that moves mountains and faith that jumps across the oceans. That faith is nothing but a living, wide-awake consciousness of god within. He who has achieved that faith wants nothing. Bodily diseased, he is spiritually healthy, physically poor, he rolls in spiritual riches.

I am a man of a faith. My reliance is solely on God. One step is enough for me. The next step he will make clear to me when time for it comes.

That faith is of little value which can flourish only in fair weather. Faith in order to be of any value has to survive the severest trials. Your faith is a whited sepulcher if it cannot stand the calumny of the whole world.

Faith is not a delicate flower which would wither under the slightest stormy weather. Faith is like the Himalaya Mountains which cannot possibly change. No storm can possibly remove the Himalaya Mountains from their foundations. And I want every one of you to cultivate that faith in God and religion.

If we have faith in us, if we have a prayerful heart, we may not tempt God, may not make terms with Him. We must reduce ourselves to a cipher.

There is a divine purpose behind every physical calamity. That perfected science will one day be able to tell us beforehand when earthquakes will occur, as it tells today of eclipse, is quite possible. It will be another triumph of the human mind. But such triumphs even indefinitely multiplied can bring about no purification of self without which nothing is of any value.

This earthly existence of ours is more brittle than the glass bangles that ladies wear. You can keep glass bangles for thousands of years if you treasure them in a chest and let them remain untouched. But this earthly existence is so fickle that it may be wiped out in the twinkling of an eye. Therefore while we get breathing time, let us get rid of the distinctions of high and low, purify our hearts and be ready to face our maker when an earthquake or some natural calamity or death in the ordinary course overtakes us.

Death, which is an eternal verity, is revolution, as birth and after is slow and steady evolution. Death is as necessary for a man's growth as life itself.

Death is no friend, he is the truest of friends. He delivers us from agony. He helps us against ourselves. He ever gives us new chances, new hopes. He is like sleep a sweet restorer.

It is as clear to me as daylight that life and death are but phases of the same thing, the reverse and observe of the same coin. In fact tribulation and death seem to me to present a phase far richer than happiness of life. What is life worth without trials and tribulation which are the salt of life?

My religion teaches me that whenever there is distress which one cannot remove, one must fast and pray.

There is nothing so powerful as fasting and prayer that would give us the requisite discipline, spirit of self-sacrifice, humility and resoluteness of will without which there can be no real progress.

Fasting is a potent weapon in the Satyagraha armory. It cannot be taken by everyone. Mere physical capacity to take it is no qualification for it. It is of no use without a living faith in God. It should never be a mechanical effort nor a mere imitation. It must come from the depth of one's soul.

One fast for health's sake under laws governing health, fasts as penance for a wrong done and felt as such. In these fasts, the fasting one need not believe in ahimsa. There is, however, a fast which every votary of non-violence sometimes feels impelled to undertake by way of protest against some wrong done by society and this he does when he as a votary of ahimsa has no other remedy left.

A complete fast is a complete and literal denial of self. It is the truest prayer. 'Take my life and let it be always, only, all for Thee' is not, should not be, a mere lip or figurative expression. It has to be a reckless and joyous giving without the least reservation. Abstention from food and even water is but the mere beginning the least part of the surrender.