
A History of the Lyre
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)
Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)
A History of the Lyre
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)
Quotes from secondary sources, Smooth Stones Taken From Ancient Brooks, 1860
Hymn, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
This has similarly been attributed to Buchan, but is actually a misrendering of a sentence from the first paragraph of John Bunyan, Discourse on Prayer. Bunyan's original sentence reads: "It is the opener of the heart of God, and a means by which the soul, though empty, is filled."
Misattributed
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
Context: Your childish fears would seek a Sire, by the non-human God defined,
What your five wits may wot ye weet; what is you please to dub "designíd;"
You bring down Heavíen to vulgar Earth; your maker like yourselves you make,
You quake to own a reign of Law, you pray the Law its laws to break;
You pray, but hath your thought e'er weighed how empty vain the prayer must be,
That begs a boon already giv'en, or craves a change of law to see?
Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 96
as quoted in Early Islamic Mysticism (New York: Paulist Press: 1996), p. 165
The New Testament for English Readers (1865), Romans 8:26, p. 73, footnote.