“I say, therefore, with great confidence that none can hope to attain excellence in the grace and gift of prayer in the public assembly, unless they abound in closet devotion, and in holy communion with God in secret. It is true that, without this, there may be much formal accuracy; much copiousness and variety, both as to topics and language; much rhetorical beauty; much that is unexceptionable both in matter and manner. But, without this, there will not, there cannot be that feeling sense of divine things; that spirit of humble, filial importunity; that holy familiarity with the throne of grace, and with the covenant God who sits upon it, which bespeak one at home in prayer, and whose whole heart is in the exercise. To expect the latter without the former, would be to look for an effect without its necessary cause; would be to expect to see our deficiencies supplied by a constant course of miracles.” — Samuel Miller, Thoughts on Public Prayer (1849), pp. 260-261