114 



LECTURES AND ESS A YS 



every conceivable thing. You are right 

 in saying that in opposition to this Power 

 science is of no avail that it is " a 

 weapon of air." The man of science, 

 however, while accepting the figure, 



would probably reverse its application, 

 thinking it is not science which is here 

 the thing of air, but that unsubstantial 

 pageant of the imagination to which the 

 solidity of science is opposed. 



ON PRAYER AS A FORM OF PHYSICAL ENERGY 



[1872] 



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 consider- 

 able amount of animadversion. 



It may be interesting to some of my 

 readers if I glance at a few cases illustra- 

 tive 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 denuncia- 

 tions of their " Monstrosities." Lactan- 

 tius was irritated because, in his mind, 

 by education and habit, cosmogony and 

 religion were indissolubly associated, and, 

 therefore, simultaneously disturbed. In 

 the early part of the seventeenth century 

 the notion that the earth was fixed, and 

 that the sun and stars revolved round 

 it daily, was interwoven with religious 

 feeling, the separation then attempted 

 by Galileo rousing the animosity and 

 kindling the persecution of the Church. 

 Men still living can remember the indig- 

 nation excited by the first 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 impaired, 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 appear- 

 ance 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 essen- 

 tial 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 dissi- 

 pated ; Evolution is looked upon with- 

 out 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 pre- 

 sent, 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 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 



