The Prayer-wheel

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 2, 1904

The Prayer-wheel.—In Tibet a quite common instrument of devotion is a wheel worked by water-power, in which prayers are placed, and the constant turning of the wheel is supposed to be continual offering of prayer. This is extreme ritualism, or formality in worship. Commenting on this and other forms of ritualism not so crude, the Examiner (Baptist) says:—

But the lesson from the prayer-wheel comes home to all of us, and we can not wholly turn the application upon our neighbor. Who has not attended social religious services, in any of our churches, where the prayers, the hymns, the exhortations were empty of meaning, perfunctory, tedious, not at all calculated to commend spiritual and personal religion to the hearers? . . . Beware of setting up a prayer-wheel in your prayer-meeting, and thus putting yourself to shame before the heathen devotees of Tibet.