WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT IS NOT. 61 
pray * for rain?” And the candidates for the ministry 
could not tell, for they began to see that even simple 
changes of weather may have the strength of the whole 
universe behind them. It has never yet rained when by 
any possibility it could do otherwise. It has never failed 
to rain when rain was possible. 
We hear good men say sometimes that the crying 
need of this sceptical age is that it may see some law 
of Nature definitely broken, that it may rain when rain 
is impossible, or that some burning bush may, uncon- 
suming, proclaim that the force which is behind all law 
is also above it and can break or repeal all its own laws 
at will. 
Emerson somewhere speaks of the purpose in life-—— 
“to be sound and solvent.” As his life was in all ways 
“sound and solvent,” perhaps such 
rule of conduct was his own. But one 
may say, This is only a human resolu- 
tion. The man himself should be above 
all rules and requirements of his own making. Let Mr. 
Emerson show that his life is above his principles. Let 
him break these rules to show his power. Let him be 
“unsound and insolvent” for a time. Then only will 
his real greatness appear. But the soundness and sol- 
vency were the expression of Emerson’s life. Without 
these he would not be Emerson. 
The laws of Nature are the expression of the infinite 
soundness and solvency of the universe. They will not 
be broken, nor through their unsoundness and insol- 
Soundness and 
solvency of 
Nature. 
* “ The essence of prayer is to bring two things into unison— 
the will of God and the will of man. Superstition imagined, no 
doubt, that prayer would change the will of God, but the more 
spiritually minded have always understood that the will which 
must be modified in prayer was the will of man.”—Bernard 
Bosanquet. 
