of life, not the whole of it. You have got to use the strength
given you. It is given you to do business with. It seems to me as if a man
argued that because eating gave him strength, it must be a good thing to
eat; and that he would therefore eat all day long. It isn't the gaining of
strength that is desirable, but the using of strength. You mustn't sponge
upon God, so to speak. And I don't honestly believe in any life which takes
you right away from life. Life is the duty of all of us; and prayer seems
to me just one of the things that help one to live."

"But intercession," I said, "is there nothing in the idea that you can pray
for those who cannot or will not pray for themselves?"

"I don't know," said Father Payne. "If you love people and wish them well,
and hate the thought of the evils which befall the innocent, and the
overflowings of ungodliness, you can't keep that out of your prayers, of
course. But I doubt very much whether one can do things vicariously. It
seems to land you in difficulties; if you say, for instance, 'I will
inflict sufferings upon myself, that others may be spared suffering,'
logically you might go on to say, 'I will enjoy myself that my enjoyment
may help those who cannot enjoy.' One doesn't really know how much one's
own experience does help other people. Living with others certainly does
affect them, but I don't feel sure that isolating oneself from others does.
I think, on the whole, that everyone must take his place in a circle. We
are limited by time and space and matter, you know. You can know and love a
dozen people; you can't know and love a hundred thousand to much purpose. I
remember when I was a boy that there was a run on a Bank where we lived.
Two of the partners went there, and did what they could. The third, a pious
fellow, shut himself up in his bedroom and prayed. The Bank was saved, and
he came down the next day and explained his absence by saying he had been
giving them the most effectual help in his power. He thought, I believe,
that he had saved the Bank; I don't think the other two men thought so, and
I am inclined to side with them. Mind, I am not deriding the idea of a
vocation for intercessory prayer. I don't know enough about the forces of
the world to do that. It's a harmless life, a beautiful life, and a hard
life too, and I won't say it is useless. But I am not convinced of its
usefulness. It seems to me on a par with the artistic life, a devotion to a
beautifu