Prayer Poem by Ivan Turgenev

Whatever a man pray for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces
to this: 'Great God, grant that twice two be not four.'

Only such a prayer is a real prayer from person to person. To pray
to the Cosmic Spirit, to the Higher Being, to the Kantian, Hegelian,
quintessential, formless God is impossible and unthinkable.

But can even a personal, living, imaged God make twice two not be four?

Every believer is bound to answer,
he can
, and is bound to persuade
himself of it.

But if reason sets him revolting against this senselessness?

Then Shakespeare comes to his aid: 'There are more things in heaven and
earth, Horatio,' etc.

And if they set about confuting him in the name of truth, he has but to
repeat the famous question, 'What is truth?' And so, let us drink and be
merry, and say our prayers.