Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics Part 9

If not of Him whose quickening breath endued All things with life,--and, when he looked upon What He had made, beheld that all was good: All good,--but chiefly man, in whom alone Some likeness of Himself--some clouded light, From His own countenance reflected, shone.

Doth not the sun outs.h.i.+ne the satellite?

And shall not He who in the murkiest hour Of sin's defilement, streaks thy dreary night With beams that bid thee, lower yet and lower Descending, hope, perchance, to rise again,-- Say--shall not He in holiness as power Transcend the creature whom His gifts sustain!

And here, if sneering casuist blaspheme, And to divided nature's sovereign, Ascribe, in nature's opposite extreme Like eminence, and nature's G.o.d aver In evil, even as in good, supreme,-- Heed not, or ask if man's Artificer With His own work, in virtue matched, can prove At once more holy and unholier?

'Yet since all good is fruit of love, and love Worketh no ill, how still doth ill abound?

Is't haply that with love a rival strove?

Mark well this parable. In chosen ground Only good seed a husbandman had sown, Yet when the blade sprang up, therewith he found Tares that amid the stifled wheat had grown.

Then knew he well, how, entering unawares, This, while men slept, an enemy had done.

And 'tis an enemy who, scattering tares Amid the corn sown in Creation's field, With deadly coil the growing plant ensnares.

And no mean enemy, nor one unsteeled For bold defiance, nor reduced to cower Ever in covert ambuscade concealed, But at whose hest the ravening h.e.l.l-hounds scour A wasted world, while himself prowls to seek, Like roaring lion, whom he may devour, And upon whom his rancorous wrath to wreak, Sniffing the tainted steam of slaughter's breath, And lulled by agony's despairing shriek.

For it is he who hath the power of death, Even the devil, by whom entereth sin Into the world, and death engendereth: Yea! by whom entereth whatsoe'er within Warreth against the spirit,--sordid greed, Pride, carnal l.u.s.t, envy to l.u.s.t akin, And malice, and deceit, whose treacheries breed Strife between brethren, and the faith o'erthrow Of many, and the duped deserters lead, Beneath the banner of their deadliest foe, In rebel arms a Parent to defy, Whom, by His gifts alone, His children know.

'Not less that Parent marks with pitying eye The blinded rage that rivets its own chain: Not less to His own glorious liberty Seeks, from corruption's bondage, to regain His erring children,--by device, or lewd, Or threatening, lured, or goaded to their bane: Not less to overcome evil with good Labours, and shall therewith all things subdue Unto Himself--but hath not yet subdued.

And wherefore? wherefore tarrieth He, while through Eden, by daring foray oft defaced, Marauding fiends malignant raid pursue, Winging the turbid whirlwind's frantic haste, Pointing the levin's arrowy effluence, Over the mildewed harvest's hungry waste, Breathing the fetid breath of pestilence, And crying havoc to the dogs of war, Let slip on unresisting innocence?

Why suffereth He that thus a rival mar His cherished work--through devastated fields Borne on triumphant in ensanguined car?-- Him, who with power to rescue, tamely yields His helpless charge to persecuting hate, Nor His own offspring from the torturer s.h.i.+elds, But sits aloof, callously obdurate, While but the will is lacking to redeem,-- Him, how shall fitting stigma designate?

'But 'tis not thus thy calmer doubts esteem The loving-kindness that with open hand Dispenses bounty in perennial stream.

Oft hast thou proved, while in a foreign land A sojourner, as all thy fathers were, Thou pacest painfully the barren sand, How o'er thy path watches a Comforter, And scatters manna daily for thy food, And bids the smitten rocks that barrier The arid track, well out with gurgling flood, And oft to shade of green oasis leads, And, from pursuer thirsting for thy blood, Such scanty shelter as is thine provides: And though full oft that shelter fails, and though Its torn defence demoniac glee derides, Yet not for this the cheerful faith forego, That memory of uncounted benefits And conscious instinct's still, small tones bestow.

Charge not thy G.o.d with aught that unbefits Tenderest compa.s.sion, nor believe that He With hardened apathetic scorn commits A favoured people throughout life to be Subject to bondage. Doubt not of His will To rescue from that galling tyranny.

Yet, if in His despite creation still In thraldom groan and travail--what remains?

What but that strength is wanting to fulfil His scheme of mercy? What but that He reigns, Not as sole wielder of omnipotence, But, o'er a world unconquered yet, maintains Encounter with opposing influence, Which He shall surely quell, but which can stay, Awhile unquelled, His mightier providence.

'And doth this sadden only, or dismay?

Grieves it that He, whose follower thou art, Rules not supreme with unresisted sway?

Or that, the progress of His grace to thwart, Satanic might the host of h.e.l.l arrays?

And doth it not a thrill of joy impart That not alone need barren prayer and praise Thine homage be,--thy choicest offering The formal dues prescribed obedience pays?

Henceforth with firmer step approach thy King.

Some puny succour, thou, in thy degree, Some feeble aid, thou, even thou, mayst bring!

In the fell conflict raging ceaselessly Around, thou, too, mayst join--thou, too, engage In that dread feud, twin with eternity, Which faithful angels and archangels wage Against the powers of darkness, to extend, O'er realms retained in demon va.s.salage, Their sovereign's pure dominion,--and to blend All worlds beneath one righteous governance, Into one kingdom which shall have no end.

'Wouldst thou, if haply so thou mayst, advance That blessed consummation? Wouldst thou speed The lingering hour of Earth's deliverance?

Arise--the naked clothe, the hungry feed, The sick and wounded tend,--soothe the distressed.

If thy weak arm cannot protect, yet plead With bold rebuke the cause of the oppressed, Kindling hot shame in Mammon's votaries, Abashed, at least, in lucre's grovelling quest; And, in the toil-worn serf, a glad surprise Awakening--when, from brute despondency, Taught to look up to heaven with dazzled eyes.-- Thus mayst thou do G.o.d service,--thus apply Thyself, within thy limit, to abate What wickedness thou seest, or misery: Thus, in a Sacred Band, a.s.sociate New levies, from the adverse ranks of Sin Converted,--against Sin confederate.

Or--if by outward act to serve, or win Joint followers to the standard of thy Lord, Thy lot forbid,--turn, then, thy thought within: Be each recess of thine own breast explored: There, o'er thy pa.s.sions be thy victories won: There, be the altar of thy faith restored, And thou, a living sacrifice, thereon Present thyself.--This ever mayst thou do, Nor, doing this, wilt aught have left undone.'

Here ceased the Voice, commissioned to renew Truth, which, of old, when Bactrian sage began Nature's dim maze to thread with slenderest clue, Its doubtful scope and dark design to scan, With inward whisper, hopeful witness bare, And justified the ways of G.o.d to man.

And suddenly its warning ceased, but ere It ceased, the scales had fallen from my eyes, And I beheld, and shall I not declare What my uncurtained vision testifies?

Shall coward lips the word of life suppress?

The oracle vouchsafed from Heaven disguise?

Nay, as one crying in the wilderness, Where none else hearken, to the vacant air And stolid mountains utters his distress, E'en so will I too cry aloud, 'Prepare Before Him the Lord's way. Make His path straight,'

Nor heed though none regard me, nor forbear Though all revile, but patiently await Till, like light breath that panting meads exhale, And scornful zephyrs lightly dissipate, But which, full surely, down the echoing vale, Shall roll with sounding current, swift and loud, My slighted message likewise shall prevail, Entering the heart of many a mourner, bowed Beneath despair, and with inspiring voice Calling to hope to cleave her midnight cloud, And bidding grief, in hope's new dawn, rejoice.

This is a creed which long since came to me after earnest inward communings, and which, though subsequent reflection has in some few particulars modified it, I still in substance hold, clinging to it with a grateful consciousness of ever-multiplying obligations. For in it the soul has free scope for its loftiest aspirations and its widest and deepest sympathies, strongest incentives to zeal, surest guidance for activity, solace in every distress, support under every difficulty, added cause for exultation in every success, renewed resolution in every defeat. Still, it is here offered, not as ascertained truth, but merely as a sample of those guesses at truth by which alone ordinary mortals need hope to promote the common cause of humanity in any of its higher bearings. Such guesses, however, when harmonising with all the conditions of their subject-matter, may fairly claim to be provisionally regarded as truths--nay, to be adopted as working hypotheses until superseded by new hypotheses capable of doing the same work better; in which supercession none ought to rejoice, nor, if sincere truth-seekers, will rejoice, more cordially than the propounders of the discredited doctrines. It is in this spirit and with these reservations that the articles of faith above recited are submitted for consideration. How much soever they may fall short of the truth, they are, I feel, in the absence of any nearer approach to the truth, capable of rendering excellent service. However faintly and hazily the outlines of Deity be shown in them, the Deity whom they so imperfectly delineate is yet one to whom may justly be ascribed glory in the highest, one worthy of all trust, love, and adoration--of an adoration, too, inclusive not more of praise than prayer.

If the divine claim to the last-named tribute be disputed, it had better be by arguments other than those on which certain writers, with Mr.

Galton for their leader and Professor Tyndall for their backer, have been recently expending much misapplied ingenuity. If the efficacy of prayer be, as the foremost of these declares it to be, 'a perfectly appropriate and legitimate subject of scientific enquiry,' the enquiry ought at least to be conducted according to scientific rules. On this point Mr. Galton himself lays much stress, intimating that whereas an unscientific reasoner may be expected to be 'guided by a confused recollection of crude experience, a scientific reasoner will scrutinise each separate experience before he admits it as evidence, and will compare all the cases he has selected on a methodical system.'

Nevertheless, a brief examination of the experiences on which he and his princ.i.p.al a.s.sociate rely, may suggest some doubt as to which of the two specified cla.s.ses of reasoners it is that they themselves belong.

The facts or fancies cited by Mr. Galton in proof that praying is of no use are the following: 1. 'Sick people who pray or are prayed for do not on the average recover more rapidly than others.' 2. Although 'the public prayer for the sovereign of every state, Protestant or Catholic, is and has been in the spirit of our own--"Grant her in health long to live"--sovereigns are literally the shortest-lived of all persons who have the advantage of affluence.' 3. The 'clergy are a far more prayerful cla.s.s' than either lawyers or medical men, it being 'their profession to pray,' and 'their practice that of offering morning and evening family prayers in addition to their private devotions,' yet 'we do not find that the clergy are in any way more long-lived in consequence;' rather, there is room for believing their cla.s.s to be the 'shortest-lived of the three.' Nay, even missionaries, eminently prayerful as they are themselves, and prayed for as they are with especial earnestness by others, 'are not supernaturally endowed with health,' and 'do not live longer than other people.' 4. 'The proportion of deaths at the time of birth is identical among the children of the praying and the non-praying cla.s.ses.' 5. Though 'we pray in our Liturgy that "the n.o.bility may be endowed with grace, wisdom, and understanding,"' our 'n.o.bility are peculiarly subject to insanity;' as are likewise, indeed, 'very religious people of all denominations,'

'religious madness being very common indeed.' 6. So far from 'religious influences' appearing to have 'cl.u.s.tered in any remarkable degree round the youth of those who, whether by their talents or their social position, have left a mark upon English history,' 'remarkable devotional tendencies' have been conspicuous chiefly by their absence from 'the lives either of our Lord Chancellors or of the leaders of our great political parties;' while, out of our twenty-three extant dukes, four at least, if not five, are descended from mistresses of Charles II., not a single one of them, on the other hand, being known to Mr. Galton to be of 'eminently prayerful qualities.' 7. In respect of those 'inst.i.tutions, societies, commercial adventures, political meetings and combinations of all sorts' with which England so much abounds, and of which 'some are exclusively clerical, some lay, and others mixed,' Mr.

Galton 'for his own part never heard a favourable opinion of the value of the preponderating clerical element in their business committees.'

'The procedure of Convocation which, like all exclusively clerical meetings, is opened with prayer, has not inspired the outer world with much respect.' Nay, 'it is a common week-day opinion of the world that praying people are not practical.' 8. In those numerous instances in which an enterprise is executed by the agency of the profane on behalf not of the profane themselves but of pious clients, 'the enterprises are not observed to prosper beyond the average.' Underwriters recognise no difference in the risks run by missionary s.h.i.+ps and by ordinary traders, nor do life insurance companies, before they accept a life, introduce into their 'confidential enquiries into the antecedents of the applicant' any 'such question as "Does he habitually use family prayers and private devotions?"' Neither are the funds of devout shareholders and depositors at all safer than those of the profane when entrusted to the custody of untrustworthy directors, not even though the day's work of the undertaking commence, as that of the disastrous Royal British Bank used to do, with solemn prayer.[52]

Two or three minutes' attention to the grounds for, and the circ.u.mstances connected with, these statements, may a.s.sist us in appreciating Mr. Galton's notion of the difference between confusedly recollected experiences and experiences properly scrutinised and methodically selected.

For the statement first on the list, some negative evidence is considered to be afforded by the absence of any 'single instance in which papers read before Statistical Societies have recognised the agency of prayer either in disease or in anything else.' The chief authority for it, however, is the eloquent silence of medical men 'who, had prayers for the sick any notable effect, would be sure to have observed it,' seeing that they are 'always on the watch for such things.' But are they really, in every case of recovery from illness that comes under their notice, so particular and so successful in their enquiries whether any, and, if so, how much, prayer has been offered on behalf of the patient, as to be qualified to judge whether prayer has had anything to do with the cure? If not, although they may be showing their discretion by not speaking on the point, the 'eloquence of their silence' must not be too hastily interpreted. For doctors, of all men, should be the last to deny, as an abstract proposition, the efficacy of prayer in disease, knowing, as they do, how great is the curative influence of prayer when addressed to themselves. How, they may naturally ask, is it to be expected that sickness should be cured unless properly treated? and how can it be properly treated without a doctor?

and how can a doctor be expected to attend unless he be asked? Upon which very natural queries others naturally follow. What would be the good of the doctor's coming unless he prescribed judiciously? and will he not more certainly prescribe judiciously if his judgment be guided by special interposition of divine grace? and if prayer to himself has plainly been one condition of his coming, why may not prayer to G.o.d have been one condition of his judgment having been rightly guided? Will it be pretended that G.o.d's proceedings are abjectly submissive to inexorable laws from which those of the doctor are exempt, and that though the latter would certainly not have attended unless he had been asked, the grace of G.o.d, if given at all, must have been given equally whether asked for or not?

Statements 2 and 3 are founded on a memoir by Dr. Guy, purporting to show the 'Mean Age attained by males of various cla.s.ses who had survived their 30th year from 1758 to 1843,' and whose deaths were not caused by violence or accident. According to this table, the average age of 97 members of royal houses was only 6404, while that of 1,179 members of the English aristocracy was 6731, and that of 1,632 gentlemen commoners 7022; the proportion between the total number of royal, and that of n.o.ble and gentle, personages who died within the period specified, being apparently supposed to be as 97 to 2811, or as 1 to about 29. Except upon this supposition, Mr. Galton could not with any consistency have appealed to these figures, for he had previously announced his intention to be 'guided solely by broad averages and not to deal with isolated instances.' He seems, however, to forget this judicious rule when he comes to treat of the clergy, of whom 945 are compared in the table with 294 lawyers and 244 medical men. Here, he says, 'the clergy as a whole show a life value of 6949 against 6814 for lawyers, and 6731 for medical men;' but then, he adds 'this difference is reversed' when the comparison is made between members of the three cla.s.ses sufficiently distinguished to have had their lives recorded in Chalmers'

Biographical Dictionary or the Annual Register, the value of life among clergy, lawyers, and medical men then appearing as 6642, 6651 and 6734 respectively. Whether, of the distinguished professional men concerned in this second comparison, the parsons were distinguished for their prayerfulness and the lawyers and doctors for their prayerlessness, Mr. Galton omits to state; and still more serious omissions on his part are those of not mentioning in what part of our Liturgy we are accustomed to pray that it may be granted to the Queen, not simply long to live, but also to live longer than other people; likewise in which of 'the numerous published collections of family prayers' that have undergone his scrutiny, is to be found a pet.i.tion that parsons may live longer than lawyers or doctors; and, yet again, since an _average_, falling short of threescore years and ten by little more than three and a half, is so contemptuously rejected by him, what is the precise number of years that would be accepted by him as a liberal compliance with prayer for long life?

While deducing his argument from clergymen, Mr. Galton makes repeated and particular reference to the clerical _sub-genus_, missionaries, treating it as the more remarkable that these should not enjoy comparative immunity from disease, because, as he suggests, it would have been so easy for G.o.d to have made them a favoured cla.s.s in respect of health: to wit, by the notable expedient of dissuading them from exposing themselves to any of the risks peculiarly attendant on missionary enterprise. 'Tropical fever, for example, is due to many subtle causes which are partly under man's control. A single hour's exposure to sun, or wet, or fatigue, or mental agitation will determine an attack.' What more simple than for G.o.d so to 'act on the minds of the missionaries as to disincline them to take those courses which might result in mischance, such as the forced march, the wetting, the abstinence from food, or the night exposure?' What more simple, either, it may be added, than for G.o.d to save prayerful soldiers from ever being killed in battle by merely putting it into their minds to desert whenever they are ordered upon active service?

That 'the distribution of still-births is wholly unaffected by piety'

Mr. Galton has satisfied himself by finding, 'on examination of a particular period, that the proportion of such births published in the 'Record' newspaper and in the 'Times' bore an identical relation to the total number of deaths.' He had previously, we must suppose, satisfied himself that advertisers in the 'Times' never say their prayers.

For the a.s.serted commonness of religious madness Mr. Galton cites no evidence whatever, and, to judge from the sympathies and antipathies of which one of his avowed opinions may be supposed to be the subject and the object, speaks probably on this point solely from hearsay. Very possibly, however, his a.s.surance of the extraordinary prevalence of insanity among British n.o.blemen may be based on personal observation, as, of course, is that regarding the prayerlessness of his own ducal acquaintances. Birds of a feather, proverbially, flock together, and the same touch of irreligion may quite possibly suffice to make certain dukes and certain commoners kin.

Against the inefficiency, however notorious, of the clerical element in business committees, ought in fairness to be set the equally notorious efficiency of Jesuits in whatever they undertake, the signal statecraft displayed by the Wolseys, the Richelieus, and the Ximenes's of the days in which cardinals and archbishops were permitted to take a leading part in executive politics, and the very respectable figure still presented by the lords spiritual, beside the lords temporal of the British House of Peers. As for 'the common week-day opinion that praying people are not practical,' those by whom it is entertained, of course, mentally except praying Quakers.

The fact that insurance offices do not attempt to distinguish between the prayerful and the prayerless, but, treating both cla.s.ses as liable to the same risks, exact from both the same premiums, proves, I submit, nothing against the efficacy of prayer, not even that the managers of insurance offices do not believe in it. The statement that prayerful and prayerless, when placing their money in the same dishonest keeping, or engaging in the same bad speculations, suffer losses, bearing exactly the same proportion to their respective ventures, although most probably quite true, is also one which Mr. Galton has neglected to verify by the application to it of any test, scientific or other. Finally, if the disasters of the Royal British Bank are to be ascribed to its custom of opening business with prayer, not only ought the cackle of Convocation to be attributed to a similar cause, but also all the legislative botchery of the House of Commons, and the abolition of prayer before debate should be treated as the most urgently needed of those further parliamentary reforms with which the fertile brains of certain eminent statesmen are suspected to be teeming.

Thus much by way of intimation that there would be no excessive temerity in encountering Mr. Galton even on the ground of his own choosing, were that ground really worth contending for. But baseless and exorbitant as all Mr. Galton's postulates are, there is not one of them to which he might not be made heartily welcome, for any effect its surrender could have upon the real issue, the true nature whereof both Mr. Galton and his princ.i.p.al coadjutor have, with marvellous sleight of eye, contrived completely to overlook. Such Pharisees in science, such sticklers for rigorously scientific method, might have been expected to begin by authenticating the materials they proposed to operate upon, and, when professing to experiment upon pure metal, at least to see that it was not mere dross they were casting into the crucible. Plainly, however, they despise any such nice distinctions. The most earnest prayer and the emptiest ceremonial prate are both alike to them. What sort of a process they imagine prayer to be may be at once perceived from the sort of trials to which they desire to subject it.

'After much thought and examination,' the coadjutor aforesaid--a bashful Teucer, over whom Professor Tyndall has, like a second Ajax Telamon, extended, with chivalrous haste, the shelter of his s.h.i.+eld--does 'not hesitate to propose that one single ward or hospital under the care of first-rate physicians or surgeons, containing a number of patients afflicted with those diseases which have been best studied, and of which the mortality rates are best known, should be, during a period of not less than three to five years, made the object of special prayer by the whole body of the faithful, and that, at the end of that time, the mortality rates should be compared with the past rates, and also with those of other leading hospitals similarly well managed during the same period.'[53] In suggesting this experiment, termed by himself 'exhaustive and complete,' its propounder imagines himself to be offering to the faithful 'an occasion of demonstrating to the faithless an imperishable record of the real power of prayer.' If, however, he were himself pet.i.tioning for the reprieve of a condemned criminal, he would scarcely expect to succeed, even with so tender-hearted a minister as Mr. Bruce, if he were to let out in the course of his supplications, that he did not care whether he succeeded or not, and was asking for the reprieve solely for the purpose of ascertaining whether the head of the Home Office is really invested with the prerogative of mercy. Yet no suspicion crosses his mind that the Searcher of Hearts may possibly be displeased with prayers addressed to Him by the lips of those who were, all the while, saying in their hearts that they did not want their prayers to be granted, but only wanted to satisfy their curiosity to know whether they would be granted or not. Equally remarkable is the trustfulness of Mr. Galton, in opining that 'it would be perfectly practicable to select out of the patients at different hospitals under treatment for fractures, or amputations, or other common maladies, whose course is so well understood as to admit of accurate tables being constructed for their duration and result, two considerable groups, the one consisting of markedly religious and piously befriended individuals, the other of those who were remarkably cold-hearted and neglected; and that, then, an honest comparison of their respective periods of treatment, and the result, would manifest a distinct proof of the efficacy of prayer, if it existed to even a minute fraction of the amount that religious teachers exhort us to believe.' Evidently, he imagines that it would be sufficient for the hospital authorities to advertise--not of course, in the 'Times,' but in the 'Record'--and that, thereupon, whoever, having entered into his closet and shut the door, had, on behalf of any of the patients experimented upon, prayed to the Father who seeth in secret, would at once come forth and proclaim openly how he had been engaged. Not by 'arguments' of no greater 'cogency' than that of any based upon results thus obtainable, need either of the two experimentalists expect to persuade praying people that prayer is, 'in the natural course of events,' doomed to become 'obsolete, just as the Waters of Jealousy and the Urim and Thummin of the Mosaic Law did in the times of the later Jewish Kings.' Not quite so easily will they cause it to be 'abandoned to the domain of recognised superst.i.tion,' just as belief in witches and in the Sovereign's touch as a cure for scrofula, and 'many other items of ancient faith have already successively been.' Both of them have, it seems, yet to learn that the only prayer which is believed by people of some little enlightenment to be of any avail, is the 'fervent, effectual prayer of a righteous man,'

prayer that cometh from 'a pure heart fervently,' prayer that is made 'with the spirit and with the understanding also.' Prayer of this sort is not to be discredited by any abundance of statistical testimony to the futility of cold lip-wors.h.i.+p, or by any number of fresh examples of the generally recognised fact that the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light. The recovery from the very jaws of death of King Hezekiah, of Louis XV. of France, while as yet undetected and _bien-aime_, and of the present Prince of Wales, may, none the less probably, have been in part due to the prayers offered up for the first by himself, for the second, according to President Henault and Mr. Carlyle, by all Paris, and, for the third, by the whole British empire, because _lessons_ appointed to be regularly said or _sung_ in churches for the prolongation of the Sovereign's life, and said and sung by the congregations to whom they are set, with equal regularity, whether the Sovereign be well or ill, detested or beloved, are to all appearance disregarded. Modern believers in prayer are well aware that, although they ask, they may not receive if they ask amiss, and would accept this as fully adequate explanation of the disappointment of anyone, who had the face to pray that he might grow as rich as the late Mr. Bra.s.sey, or be created a duke, or appointed Lord Chancellor, or supplant Mr. Gladstone in the premiers.h.i.+p, or Mr. D'Israeli in the leaders.h.i.+p of Her Majesty's Opposition. Moreover, the spirit, duly seasoned with understanding, in which alone true prayer can be made, is one, not of presumptuous dictation to a Heavenly Father, but of sincere and grateful recognition that 'He knoweth better than ourselves what is for our good.' Far from praying for selfish aggrandis.e.m.e.nt, we cannot, if we pray aright, pray that, whether from ourselves or others, the cup of affliction may pa.s.s away, without adding, 'Nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt.' The only gifts that can with propriety be prayed for unconditionally are gifts spiritual--cleansing of the thoughts of the heart, strength to resist temptation, strength to endure trials, strength to perform our appointed work; and whoever may think fit to make these the subjects of statistical inquiry, may depend upon being a.s.sured by everyone experimentally qualified to reply, that they are never asked for faithfully without being obtained effectually; together with large measure, if not of the cheerfulness, at least of the patience, of hope.

FOOTNOTES:

[50] 'Auguste Comte and Positivism,' pp. 25-8.

[51] 'Fortnightly Review' for June 1868, 'Mr. Darwin's Hypotheses.'

[52] 'Statistical Enquiries into the Efficacy of Prayer,' by Francis Galton, in Fornightly Review,' for August 1872.

[53] 'Contemporary Review,' July 1872. 'The Prayer for the Sick. Hints towards a serious attempt to estimate its value.' Communicated by Prof.

Tyndall.

_EPILOGUE._

If with rash step, or with presumptuous word I have transgressed, or with unshrinking eye Have sought to pierce the awful mystery That veils thy G.o.dhead, yet forgive me, Lord!

Thou knowest that I sought not to draw nigh Thy Throne, save that my witness might record More truly of Thine attributes, whereby On Earth, e'en as in Heaven, might be adored The fulness of Thy glory. Not in wrath His trespa.s.s wilt Thou judge, whom, licence, bred Of zeal, though blinded, yet devout, betrays, Nor scorn the unconscious wanderer from Thy path, Nor leave me hopeless, if indeed misled By thirst for truth, more deep in error's maze.