6o THE REIGN OF LAW. 



ourselves. It is a useful and helpful exercise for 

 our own spirits, but it is nothing more. But 

 how can they pray who have come to this ? Can it 

 ever be useful or helpful to believe a lie ? That 

 which has been threatened as the worst of all 

 spiritual evils, would then become the conscious 

 attitude of our "religion," the habitual condition 

 of our worship. This must be as bad science, as 

 it is bad religion. It is in violation of a Law 

 the highest known to Man — the Law which in- 

 separably connects earnest conviction of the truth 

 in what we do or say, with the very fountains of 

 all intellectual and moral strength. No accession 

 of force can come to us from doing anything in 

 which we disbelieve. Such a doctrine will be 

 indeed 



" The little rift within the lute 

 That by and by will make the music mute, 

 And ever widening slowly silence all." * 



If there is any helpfulness in Prayer even to the 

 Mind itself, that helpfulness can only be preserved 

 by showing that the belief on which this virtue 

 depends is a rational belief. The very essence of 



* Idylls of the King— Vivien. — Tennyson. 



