From How Can God Answer Prayer?

…but that if a man had any sort of assurance that such approach of the soul to God as communion involves was being made to a Supreme Being whose ear was deaf and whose heart indifferent to our cries of distress and our petitions for help or hearing could not help us because of the inevitable course of things over which He has no control, the probability is that that man would soon begin to incline toward a state of dumb resignation to the inevitable, which in turn would rapidly tend toward the neglect of prayer altogether. We pray too little as it is. If with Frederick W. Robertson we see in prayer only such contemplation of the character of God as ends with the resignation of ourselves to His will, most men, we fear, would not put themselves even to such effort to obtain it. They would be more likely to accept the inevitable and devote the time otherwise required for such contemplation to making the best out of a condition of affairs for which there is no help, at least from above.

Biederwolf, William Edward (2013-07-22). How Can God Answer Prayer? Being an exhaustive treatise on the Nature, Conditions, and Difficulties of Prayer (Kindle Locations 298-305). . Kindle Edition.