62 THE REIGN OF LAW. 



for as we ought/' Prayer does not require us to 

 believe that anything can be done without the use 

 of means ; neither does it require us to believe 

 that anything will be done in violation of the Uni- 

 versal Order. " If it be possible," was the quali- 

 fication used in the most solemn Prayer ever 

 uttered upon Earth. What are and what are not 

 legitimate objects of supplication, is a question 

 which may well be open. But the question now 

 raised is a wider one than this — even the ques- 

 tion whether the very idea of Prayer be not in 

 itself absurd — whether the Reign of Law does 

 not preclude the possibility of Will affecting the 

 successive phenomena either of Matter or of 

 Mind. This is a question lying at the root of our 

 whole conceptions of the Universe, and of all our 

 own powers, both of thinking and of acting. The 

 freedom which is denied to God is not likely 

 to be left to Man. We shall see, accordingly, 

 that precisely the same denials are applied to 

 both. 



The conception of Natural Laws — of their place, 

 of their nature, and of their office — which involves 

 us in such questions, and which points to such 



