“Enq: But did not Christ himself pray and recommend prayer?
Theo: It is so recorded, but those “prayers” are precisely of that kind of communion just mentioned with one’s “Father in secret.” Otherwise, and if we identify Jesus with the universal deity, there would be something too absurdly illogical in the inevitable conclusion that he, the “very God himself” prayed to himself, and separated the will of that God from his own!
Enq: One argument more; an argument, moreover, much used by some Christians. They say, “I feel that I am not able to conquer any passions and weaknesses in my own strength. But when I pray to Jesus Christ I feel that he gives me strength and that in His power I am able to conquer.”
Theo: No wonder. If “Christ Jesus” is God, and one independent and separate from him who prays, of course everything is, and must be possible to “a mighty God.”
But, then, where’s the merit, or justice either, of such a conquest? Why should the pseudo-conqueror be rewarded for something done which has cost him only prayers?
Would you, even a simple mortal man, pay your labourer a full day’s wage if you did most of his work for him, he sitting under an apple tree, and praying to you to do so, all the while?
This idea of passing one’s whole life in moral idleness, and having one’s hardest work and duty done by another – whether God or man – is most revolting to us, as it is most degrading to human dignity.
Enq: Perhaps so, yet it is the idea of trusting in a personal Saviour to help and strengthen in the battle of life, which is the fundamental idea of modern Christianity. And there is no doubt that, subjectively, such belief is efficacious; i.e., that those who believe do feel themselves helped and strengthened.
Theo: Nor is there any more doubt, that some patients of “Christian” and “Mental Scientists” – the great “Deniers” (The new sect of healers, who by disavowing the existence of anything but spirit, which spirit can neither suffer nor be ill, claim to cure all and every disease, provided the patient has faith that what he denies can have no existence. A new form of self-hypnotism.) – are also sometimes cured; nor that hypnotism, and suggestion, psychology, and even mediumship, will produce such results, as often, if not oftener.
You take into consideration, and string on the thread of your argument, successes alone. And how about ten times the number of failures? Surely you would not presume to say that failure is unknown even with a sufficiency of blind faith, among fanatical Christians?”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 