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Is the statue of a mother, to which the infant cries in vain, a 
more perfect being than the living mother who acts on the in- 
stant the wail reaches her ear? Would it be an element of 
perfection in God, to be like the statue and nnlike the living 
mother? If true philosophy could annihilate the facts of ask- 
ing, it might greatly alter the case. But it refuses to ignore 
or alter a single fact. Even a falsehood is a fact to a real phi- 
losophy ; though its object is unreal, it is real itself, and should 
be weighed as carefully as any other fact. Consequently philo- 
sophy is intensely interested in these askings ivhich ive call 
prayers — they are facts. They point us irresistibly upward 
to the All-Perfect One, and compel us to believe either in His 
giving or in His refusing. He either acts as requested or 
He does not act. True science leads us to look to other fields 
of inquiry, and to ask what the facts which lie in them teach us 
as to His responding*, or refusing to respond, to the movements 
of his creatures. If we till and sow, our labour is worthless, 
unless One who has command of sun and rain respond. Does 
He respond ? Hot so uniformly as to sanction the mechanical 
idea of His great universe — yet He does respond sufficiently 
to give perfect confidence to the good husbandman and to call 
forth the gratitude of every intelligent heart. If we ask, does 
He respond ? Not so as to sanction the idea that asking is 
everything that is required in order to our receiving ; 
but yet he has so responded, as to have kept asking 
alive in human beings through all the centuries of their 
stay on earth. Here, however, our work for the present closes. 
We have traced the outline of the relations to which we have 
directed attention in Metaphysical and Physical Science, lead- 
ing along the path of those relations into that field of thought 
in which we find the needy suppliant asking of the Heavenly 
Father, and receiving from Him “ that which is good.” We 
have found that true science is in perfect accord with such 
asking, such giving, and such receiving, as are involved in the 
Christian Doctrine of Prayer. Instead of requiring to lay aside 
tc reason” in behalf of “faith,” we find the severest logic 
leading us on to that fellowship with God, which, as man is 
constituted, is impossible without that interchange of heart 
between the Divine Helper and the needy children of men, 
which takes place in sincere supplication on the one side and 
merciful and gracious giving on the other. 
The President. — Ladies and Gentlemen, it is my duty to move a vote of 
thanks to the author of this paper, and to express to him our deep gratitude 
for the diligence, care, and profound thought exhibited in it. It would be 
presumption for me to say I could follow the paper throughout ; but in the 
