Ralph Waldo Emerson - prayer as glad conspiring reception

Not thanks, not prayer seem quite the highest or truest name for our communications with the Infinite, - but glad conspiring reception, reception that becomes giving in its turn, as the receiver is only the All-Giver in part and in infancy. I cannot, nor can any man, speak precisely of things so sublime, but it seems to me the wit of man (his strength, his grace, his art) is the grace and presence of God. It is beyond explanation. When all is said and done, the rapt saint is found the only logician. Not exhortation, not argument becomes our lips, but paeans of joy and praise...It is God in us which checks the language of petition by a grander thought. In the bottom of the heart it is said: "I am, by me, O Child! this fair body and world of thine stands and grows. I am; all things are mine; and all mine are thine.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, from this Journal, The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Modern Library Classics)