attested to be called into doubt; what we have to ask ourselves,
however, is whether those effects are, in the strict sense of the term,
purely "subjective," _i.e._, as we {203} previously expressed it, in the
nature of a noble auto-suggestion. The answer to that query must in the
last resort be determined by our thought concerning God and our relation
to Him. Let it be said once more: if, with the pantheist, we assume that
we are essentially and inalienably one with the All--part of It, as the
bay is of the ocean--prayer, as the theist understands it, is a
self-contradiction; if offered at all, it will be, not the establishment
of a relation which is _ex hypothesi_ always in being, but at most a
clearer realisation by the particle of its fundamental identity with the
Whole. Prayer is founded upon the belief that the Deity is at least
interested in His worshipper--or else, why speak to the Unheeding? But
Spinozism distinctly denies the possibility of God's entertaining any
feelings towards individuals--indeed, Spinoza condemns the individual's
desire for God's personal love; at most he will admit that "'God,
inasmuch as He loves Himself, loves men,' because men are parts and
proportions of God. . . The complacency of the Universe in its
self-awareness, the love of God towards Himself, as Spinoza has it,
includes us in its embrace, and that is enough." [5] We reply that this
"complacency of the Universe in its self-awareness" may be enough for
Spinozists; but it is not enough to move men to prayer--and this is borne
out by Mr. Picton's total silence on this {204} topic in his exposition
of his Master's doctrine. Mr. Chesterton, with his usual felicity of
phrase, hits the nail on the head when he says that upon this principle
"the whole cosmos is only one enormously selfish person;" certainly it
should be clear that on this assumption, as there can be no return of
affection from a God whose love is only self-love, so the effect of
prayer can only be that which is produced upon the soul by its
consciousness--supposed to be elevating--of being an infinitesimal
fraction of an infinite totality. We say that this consciousness is
supposed to be elevating, though why it should be so is not quite
apparent; for whatever this heterogeneous sum-total of existences may be,
it is not, in our sense of the term, _good_, as the God of Christianity
is good.

But if, instead of losing ourselves in the fog-land of Pantheism,
Theoso