express; this form that nothing will contain; this ideal of a better
world which one feels, but which, it seems, nature has not made
actual."[321]

[321] Op. cit., Letter XXX.

We heard in previous lectures of the vivified face of the world as it
may appear to converts after their awakening.[322] As a rule, religious
persons generally assume that whatever natural facts connect themselves
in any way with their destiny are significant of the divine purposes
with them. Through prayer the purpose, often far from obvious, comes
home to them, and if it be "trial," strength to endure the trial is
given. Thus at all stages of the prayerful life we find the persuasion
that in the process of communion energy from on high flows in to meet
demand, and becomes operative within the phenomenal world. So long as
this operativeness is admitted to be real, it makes no essential
difference whether its immediate effects be subjective or objective.
The fundamental religious point is that in prayer, spiritual energy,
which otherwise would slumber, does become active, and spiritual work
of some kind is effected really.

[322] Above, p. 243 ff. Compare the withdrawal of expression from the
world, in Melancholiacs, p. 148.

So much for Prayer, taken in the wide sense of any kind of communion.
As the core of religion, we must return to it in the next lecture.

The last aspect of the religious life which remains for me to touch
upon is the fact that its manifestations so frequently connect
themselves with the subconscious part of our existence. You may
remember what I said in my opening lecture[323] about the prevalence of
the psychopathic temperament in religious biography. You will in point
of fact hardly find a religious leader of any kind in whose life there
is no record of automatisms. I speak not merely of savage priests and
prophets, whose followers regard automatic utterance and action as by
itself tantamount to inspiration, I speak of leaders of thought and
subjects of intellectualized experience. Saint Paul had his visions,
his ecstasies, his gift of tongues, small as was the importance he
attached to the latter. The whole array of Christian saints and
heresiarchs, including the greatest, the Barnards, the Loyolas, the
Luthers, the Foxes, the Wesleys, had their visions, voices, rapt
conditions, guiding impressions, and "openings." They had these
things, because they had exalted sensibility, and to such things
pe