Prayer is addressed to the personal God, not because he is personal indeed, I know for certain that he is not personal, because personality is limitation, while God is unlimited.
During the youthful period of mankind's spiritual evolution human fantasy created gods in man's own image, who, by the operations of their will were supposed to determine, or at any rate to influence, the phenomenal world. Man sought to alter the disposition of these gods in his own favour by means of magic and prayer.
I dislike the frequent use of the word virtue, instead of righteousness, in the pulpit; in prayer or preaching before a Christian community, it sounds too much like pagan philosophy.
The people in Louisiana must know that all across our country there's a lot of prayer - prayer for those whose lives have been turned upside down. And I'm one of them.
For this, to be sure, from the child's primer down to the last newspaper, every theater and every movie house, every advertising pillar and every billboard, must be pressed into the service of this one great mission, until the timorous prayer of our present parlor patriots: 'Lord, make us free!' is transformed in the brain of the smallest boy into the burning plea: 'Almighty God, bless our arms when the time comes; be just as thou hast always been; judge now whether we be deserving of freedom; Lord, bless our battle!"
There are prayers that help us last through the day, or endure the night. There are prayers of friends and strangers, that give us strength for the journey. And there are prayers that yield our will to a will greater than our own.