ON PRAYER AS A FORM OF PHYSICAL ENERGY. 41 



cution of the Church. Men still living can remember 

 the indignation excited by the first revelations of geol- 

 ogy regarding the age of the earth, the association be- 

 tween chronology and religion being for the time in- 

 dissoluble. In our day, however, the best-informed 

 theologians are prepared to admit that our views of the 

 Universe and its Author are not impaired, but im- 

 proved, by the abandonment of the Mosaic account of 

 the Creation. Look, finally, at the excitement caused 

 by the publication of the ' Origin of Species; ' and 

 compare it with the calm attendant on the appearance 

 of the far more outspoken, and, from the old point of 

 view, more impious, ' Descent of Man.' 



Thus religion survives after the removal of what had 

 been long considered essential to it. In our day the 

 Antipodes are accepted; the fixity of the earth is given 

 up; the period of Creation and the reputed age of the 

 world are alike dissipated; Evolution is looked upon 

 without terror; and other changes have occurred in 

 the same direction too numerous to be dwelt upon here. 

 In fact, from the earliest times to the present, religion 

 has been undergoing a process of purification, freeing 

 itself slowly and painfully from the physical errors 

 which the active but uninformed intellect mingled 

 with the aspirations of the soul. Some cf us think 

 that a final act of purification is needed, while others 

 oppose this notion with the confidence and the warmth 

 of ancient times. The bone of contention at present is 

 the physical value of prayer. It is not my wish to ex- 

 cite surprise, much less to draw forth protest, by the 

 employment of this phrase. I would simply ask any 

 intelligent person to look the problem honestly in the 

 face, and then to say whether, in the estimation of the 

 great body of those who sincerely resort to it, prayer 

 does not, at all events upon special occasions, invoke a 



