infected by the pride of life or the lust of the eye; or to say, 'Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,' and lightly to harbor schemes of revenge. To pray

thus is to make confession and to seek amendment, and will remain the refuge of sinful humanity long after it has abandoned all belief in the magical power of petition to the Almighty.

Thus prayer means petition, communion, aspiration, and confession. In the public worship of the churches petition has always been put in the first place, and naturally so, for it is historically the most prominent. Nevertheless probably few educated men believe in its efficacy. The laws of lifewhich is the Will of God are not changed in their working by prayer, sacrifice, or fasting.

The most striking example of this fact is the crudest and simplest. In my boyhood, it was still customary to pray for fine weather, or, in the rarer occasions when the English climate demanded it, for rain. The custom is now, I fancy, almost dead. It has not been killed by any atrophy of religion, but by increased knowledge of meteorology. If you teach the public in the newspaper every week-day that the weather is fixed through complicated laws, that if the barometer is rising fair weather is probable, while rain may be expected if it is falling, you cannot expect them to believe on Sunday that the humidity of the atmosphere will be affected by prayer.

Nor is the question very different with regard to prayer in time of sickness, though the issue is often obscured by pious people who cling to the custom, and do not analyze their belief. Opinion on this subject probably ranges itself into three groups. There are those who still think that prayer will cure disease; the belief of innumerable generations supports them, but

not the evidence of medical experts. Secondly, there are those who, frankly admitting that prayer cannot change the course of disease, advocate it as a consolation to the sufferer and to his friends. This is no doubt often true: it is a sound and charitable reason for praying; but it is likely to lose its efficacy when its motive is perceived. Finally, there are those who think that in some mysterious way they can by prayer divert a stream of energy to a sick person, and so make him better. Conceivably this is true, though personally I doubt it. But why should this stream of energy be most effectual when put into the form of petition to God? It seems to me that if there be any truth in this theory it is not so much that prayer diverts a stream of healing energy as that it serves as a 'suggestion,' focusing all the powers of resistance and recuperation which the sick may possess but be unable to 'will' to use. That this may be valuable, should be practised and studied, I do not doubt; but is it prayer? In any case it is not the same thing as the strictly supplicating prayer of our ancestors, which was a petition to God who might be persuaded to do what He might otherwise not have done.

My own attention was once called somewhat painfully to the unconscious change of thought which has affected almost everyone in this matter. I was taking charge of a church for a friend who was going away for a fortnight. 'You will have,' he said, 'nothing much to do. But poor Mr. Smith is very ill, and Dr. Brown has promised to let you know if it becomes hopeless, so that you can put him into the prayers.' I was very young at the time, and it was somewhat of a shock to me to realize that 'praying for' someone in the church, by the customary device of dropping to a lower note the voice which had hitherto monotoned the

service on G, and announcing that 'The prayers of the congregation are desired for M, who is seriously ill,' had become a means of preparing friends for bad news, under the pretense of asking the Almighty for help. The shock to young minds when they discover such changes as this alienates more of them from the churches than any direct attack could ever do. The tragedy is that the churches do not know it, for the young do not say much about it; they merely stop going to church. The death of churches is not likely to be violent or spectacular, for controversy implies life. The deadly sequence of symptoms is when one generation goes to church, supports it financially and prevents all change in the customs of the forefathers; the second generation continues the support, but otherwise leaves it alone; the third generation abandons it altogether.

That the religion of to-morrow will have prayer I do not doubt, unless the churches should be so foolish as to insist that Prayer must include Petition, in which case they will keep the word, and another name will be given to the reality. For I do not believe that the religion of to-morrow will have any more place for petition than it will have for any other form of magic. But how are the churches going to deal with the question? It is a matter which especially affects the non-liturgical churches, strange as it may seem. In a liturgical church the prayers are frequently unintelligible to the congregation. In the Catholic Church they are in Latin, in the English Church and Protestant Episcopal Church of America they are in an archaic idiom which diverts attention from the strangeness of its meaning by the beauty of its sound. Converts and strangers may criticize the doctrine of these prayers, but we, who neglect it because we have been born in the church, perhaps

do more justice to their significance. Members of non-liturgical churches seem rarely to understand that it is the dramatic, not the theological side of the service which makes itself felt, that many members of the congregation are purified and inspired by the service as a whole, without ever stopping to think about its meaning; indeed, if they did they would probably cease to be inspired. In any case, petitions written five hundred or fifteen hundred years ago cease to be regarded as petitions in the same way as those which at least pretend to be the fervent supplication of a minister for the special congregation.

Obviously the non-liturgical Protestant churches are in a very different position. Every Sunday the minister is responsible for the 'long prayer' as it is usually called. is usually called. He is supposed to make it apply to the needs of his congregation; it is at least in forman extempore performance marked by fervor and unction. If it be not sincere the salt has lost its savor. It is traditionally always in the idiom of petition, but it is significant how many Liberal ministers endeavor to quiet their conscience, which dislikes that idiom, by passing- if I may somewhat abuse the grammarian's language

through the optative mood to an oratio obliqua intended to express the aspirations of the congregation. I cannot resist the conviction that this can be but a temporary expedient, and I believe that this question of petition in prayer is the most difficult problem which the non-liturgical churches have to face. It is to them what the question of the creeds is to the liturgical churches.

To see this is not difficult, but merely to abandon the custom of prayer because we no longer believe in the efficacy of petition would be to throw away the grain in an effort to be rid of the chaff.

Prayer, it was said above, is not only petition, but also communion and aspiration. What will the religion of to-morrow say about communion and aspiration?

If the religious life of the future contains 'public worship' as an integral part of its manifestation, it will be because many men feel that not in solitude but in the company of others who have a like necessity do they most feel the communion of a higher power, do they cleanse their souls from impurities and littlenesses, and light the flame of aspiration which illumines their path through the darkness of daily life.

Indeed, it is becoming increasingly clear that to stimulate and quicken communion and aspiration-whatever explanation may be adopted of the experience covered by these words - is likely to be the main purpose of the services of the church of to-morrow, though this will be a serious breach with the tradition of the past; for in the Catholic Church the services are means of salvation, and in the Protestant Church have been hitherto largely, if not chiefly, means of instruction. Nevertheless, Protestants of the Liberal wing have to a large extent accepted the change indicated. The services of the church are held to have a 'spiritual' rather than an intellectual value, which seems to mean subjective rather than objective. Catholics while of course asserting the spiritual value of the service would maintain that this value is objective—it is in the service not in the frame of mind of the congregation. Nevertheless, the paradoxical truth is that the Catholic service is more successful than the Protestant in giving the subjective value. The Catholic goes to Mass, believing in the objective supernatural value of the service, and for him it does not depend at all on the presence of a congregation to be 'valid'; for he accepts what to

the historian is a myth connected with the sacrament. He gains spiritual help. Moreover others, not Catholic, often feel the value of the service. The Protestant goes to his service, believing in the subjective value of the service, and that its importance is entirely in the effect which it has on the congregation. He hopes that the sermon of the minister, supported by some slight musical introduction, and a few hymns, will somehow do him good. He is often disappointed, he goes less frequently, and his children are ceasing to go at all. The danger to the Catholic Church is that it will fail to satisfy the intellect, which will reject the Church's interpretation of the Mass; to the Protestant that it will not satisfy the soul, which is not nourished by the service. The religion of to-morrow will doubtless devise a method which will satisfy both intellect and soul. If neither Catholics nor Protestants can mend their ways, both will perish, but Religion will survive.

Just as to stimulate and develop this sense of communion and aspiration is the work of the churches, so to analyze and explain it is the task of the psychologists, and it is not certain as yet what their answer will be. The problem is this: granted that there is a consciousness of communion, which appears to be with some external power, is that appearance correct, or is the communion really with some part of the man's own nature which is ordinarily submerged? Only the professional psychologist is really competent to discuss this question properly, but anyone can see that it is not an idle one, and that any answer gives rise to others.

It is common experience that whereas our words and actions are usually the result of conscious rational thoughts, there are moments when we are it seems both to ourselves and to others in the clutch of a higher

SO

the entire life plan of the completed plant; or whether the commands of Jesus, 'Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you,' were meant to be applied to questions we ask of each other as well as questions we ask of God when we do so in the spirit of Christian humility and love; but this I do know: late in the evening the answer to this question leaped full-fledged into my brain. For two years I had striven in vain to answer a question that no one had ever asked; and then in a twinkling, before a question asked in all sincerity and with honest purpose, the answer came.

The essay which follows contains the answer to that question. I wish to have it clearly understood, however, that I do not wish the method here described to become a formula. I offer it rather as an opening of doors and windows through which man's soul may find liberation from the confinement of the things which bind, and expand a bit to meet the ever-expanding love of God.

I find the 'frame' for my method in the Lord's Prayer and the Twentythird Psalm. I say 'frame' because either one of these can be recited in less than half a minute, and a prayer such as we materialistically minded moderns need is one which will demand at least fifteen minutes of our time.

In this day of the coliseum, the gymnasium, and the 'daily dozen,' I know it may sound impractical and visionary to suggest that the spirit deserves as much care as the body. But is not our spiritual health as important to our well-being as our physical health? Is not the life more than the food, and the body more than the raiment? Is not the kernel within the seed and the sap within the oak — in other words, that which is within, vitalizing, propelling the life processes more important

than that which is without and can be seen and touched?

Let me stand in the market-place with the physical culturists and demand, as they demand, fifteen minutes of your time every day for two months. And while I hesitate to promise, as they promise, that at the end of that time you will find yourself a new man, this I can say: at the end of that time you will find yourself in a new world. You will find yourself in a friendly universe, where religion will no longer be a thing to be believed or disbelieved, a thing to be worn or cast off, but where religion will be a part of life as blood is a part of the body. You will find yourself in a new world where your God no longer dwells in churches and meeting-places and forms and days, but where He governs every minute of every day of every year. You will find yourself in a new world where immortality will no longer be sought as something far away, to be found at some far distant time, for you will know that you are immortal now and that the entire universe with all its good and with all its beauty belongs to you now and forever.

Let us take then as our model the zeal and steadfastness of the physical culturist and utilize it in the field of the spirit. To associate these two fields in our mind will prove very helpful for our present purpose, for a prayer should be for the spirit exactly what calisthenics should be for the body - something to keep one in tune, fit, vital, efficient and constantly ready for the next problem of life.

Now what are the underlying principles in Walter Camp's Daily Dozen? 1. The first principle is that the man shall stretch his muscles, as the caged lion stretches, whenever he can. And, mark you, the muscles that are seen are not so important as the muscles that are unseen - in the language of Walter Camp, 'the muscles under the ribs.' This should be the first principle of prayer also.