ON PRAYER AS A FORM OF PHYSICAL ENERGY. 43 



at the same time both wise and tender, listens to the 

 requests of his children, and, if they do not ask amiss, 

 takes pleasure in granting their requests. We know 

 also that this compliance extends to the alteration, 

 within certain limits, of the current of events on earth. 

 With this suggestion offered by experience, it is no de- 

 parture from scientific method to place behind natural 

 phenomena a Universal Father, who, in answer to the 

 prayers of His children, alters the currents of those 

 phenomena. Thus far Theology and Science go hand 

 in hand. The conception of an a?ther, for example, 

 trembling with the waves of light, is suggested by the 

 ordinary phenomena of wave-motion in water and in 

 air; and in like manner the conception of personal 

 volition in nature is suggested by the ordinary action 

 of man upon earth. I therefore urge no impossibili- 

 ties, though I am constantly charged with doing so. I 

 do not even urge inconsistency, but, on the contrary, 

 frankly admit that the theologian has as good a right 

 to place his conception at the root of phenomena as I 

 have to place mine. 



But without verification a theoretic conception is 

 a mere figment of the intellect, and I am sorry to find 

 us parting company at this point. The region of 

 theory, both in science and theology, lies behind the 

 world of the senses, but the verification of theory oc- 

 curs in the sensible world. To check the theory we 

 have simply to compare the deductions from it with the 

 facts of observation. If the deductions be in accord- 

 ance with the facts, we accept the theory: if in opposi- 

 tion, the theory is given up. A single experiment is 

 frequently devised, by which the theory must stand or 

 fall. Of this character was the determination of the 

 velocity of light in liquids, as a crucial test of the Emis- 

 sion Theory. According to it, light travelled faster in 



