ON PKAYER AS A FORM OF PHYSICAL ENERGY. 41 



revelations of geology regarding the age of the earth, 

 the association between chronology and religion being 

 for the time indissoluble. In our day, however, the 

 best-informed theologians are prepared to admit that 

 our views of the Universe and its Author are not im- 

 paired, but improved, 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 Anti- 

 podes 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 of 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 excite 

 surprise, much less to draw forth protest, by the 

 employment of this phrase. I would simply ask any 

 intelligent person k) 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 

 Power which checks and augments the descent of rain, 

 which changes the force and direction of winds, which 





