phy and their unavowed congeners, we take our stand upon the firm
belief in the otherness of God, the case alters altogether. Prayer at
once becomes rational instead of being a contradiction in terms; it is
the accomplishment of something which is not already accomplished; it
springs from the consciousness of a spiritual need, it is born of the
instinct of spiritual self-preservation. It sets up a connection between
two centres--man and God--which can only be connected because of a
fundamental likeness subsisting between them; but the _likeness_ is not
_oneness_--indeed, the latter would exclude {205} the former, for only
separates can be like each other. On this theory prayer is no mere
meditation, but an intense and strenuous endeavour to make actual
something that is only potential; to use the simile we previously
employed, it is a digging of channels along which the sea may pour of its
fulness into an inland reservoir. That this is what really takes place
in prayer--that there is such a real response from Him to whom it is
directed--we have no hesitation whatever in affirming; and this
notwithstanding the fact that such an experience cannot be proved to one
who has not shared it, any more than we can convey a sense of the
grandeur of Mont Blanc to one whose eye has never beheld its majestic
proportions. Evidently, in this as in every corresponding case the
testimony of those who say that they have had a certain experience must
be preferred to that of others who can only say that they have not had
it; and the witness to spiritual renewal, reinforcement, replenishing
received in prayer--to the entering in of a Presence when the doors were
thrown open; to a peace and blessedness which were not of the world's
giving--this witness is so strong and so uniform that we have no choice
but to pronounce it decisive. In every such case something had been
"genuinely transacted"; not only had man spoken, but God had
answered--the worshipper had not merely invoked, but in a very real sense
he had evoked, the Divine Presence.

{206}

But can we go any further than this? Can we, that is to say, maintain
that God answers prayer, not only by flooding the adoring soul with fresh
strength, gladness, confidence, but by bringing to pass events which
otherwise would not have come about? This "objective efficacy" of
prayer, in the narrower sense, is frequently doubted to-day; but, as we
shall attempt to show, upon grounds which, wh