Prayer as a means to effect a private end is theft and meanness. EMERSON 



III 



ON PRAYER AS A FORM OF PHYSICAL ENERGY 



THE Editor of the " Contemporary Review" is liberal 

 enough to grant me space for some remarks upon 

 a subject which, though my relation to it was 

 simply that of a vehicle of transmission, has brought 

 down upon me a considerable amount of animadversion. 

 It may be interesting to some of my readers if I 

 glance at a few cases illustrative of the history of the 

 human mind, in relation to this and kindred questions. 

 In the fourth century the belief in Antipodes was deemed 

 unscriptural and heretical. The pious Lactantius was as 

 angry with the people who held this notion as my censors 

 are now with me, and quite as unsparing in his denunci- 

 ations of their "Monstrosities." Lactantius was irritated 

 because, in his mind, by education and habit, cosmogony 

 and religion were indissoluby associated, and, therefore, 

 simultaneously disturbed. In the early part of the seven- 

 teenth century the notion that the earth was fixed, and 

 that the sun and stars revolved round it daily, was inter- 

 woven with religious feeling, the separation then at- 

 tempted by Galileo rousing the animosity and kindling 

 the persecution of the Church. Men still living can re- 

 (44) 



