REFLECTIONS ON PRAYER AND NATURAL LAW. 3 



iis prayer different in kind from a request to open a 

 new river-cut, or to cause the water to flow up-hill. 



In a similar manner the same Protestant gentleman 

 would doubtless smile at the honest Tyrolese priest, who, 

 when he feared the bursting of a glacier dam, offered the 

 sacrifice of the Mass upon the ice as a means of averting 

 the calamity. That poor man did not expect to con- 

 vert the ice into adamant, or to strengthen its texture, 

 so as to enable it to withstand the pressure of the 

 water ; nor did he expect that his sacrifice would cause 

 the stream to roll back upon its source and relieve him, 

 by a miracle, of its presence. But beyond the bound- 

 aries of his knowledge lay a region where rain was gene- 

 rated, he knew not how. He was not so presumptuous 

 as to expect a miracle, but he firmly believed that in 

 yonder cloud-land matters could be so arranged, with- 

 out trespass on the miraculous, that the stream which 

 threatened him and his people should be caused to shrink 

 within its proper bounds. 



Both these priests fashioned that which they did 

 not understand to their respective wants and wishes. 

 In their case imagination came into play, uncontrolled 

 by a knowledge of law. A similar state of mind was 

 long prevalent among mechanicians. Many of these, 

 among whom were to be reckoned men of consummate 

 skill, were occupied a century ago with the question 

 of perpetual motion. They aimed at constructing a 

 machine which should execute work without the ex- 

 penditure of power ; and some of them went mad in 

 the pursuit of this object. The faith in such a con- 

 summation, involving, as it did, immense personal pro- 

 fit to the inventor, was extremely exciting, and every 

 attempt to destroy this faith was met by bitter resent- 

 ment on the part of those who held it. Gradually, how- 

 ever, as men became more and more acquainted with the 



