tion
involves an "interference" with natural law; and if we have to admit our
ignorance as to {210} _how_ such a force would operate and bring results
to pass, let us remind ourselves that the ultimate "how?"--the bridge
between antecedent and consequent, and why the former should be followed
by the latter--always and inevitably escapes us. Why in the thousand and
more observed forms of snow-crystals the filaments of ice should always
be arranged at angles of 60 degrees or 120 degrees; why sulphate of
potash and sulphate of alumina should crystallise in octahedrons or in
cubes, but in no other forms; what is the real connection between
molecular changes in the brain-substance and states of consciousness--all
these, and a myriad more, are unsolved mysteries: we can only say that we
are dealing with facts of experience. And as in these and countless
other cases, so here also, in this matter of answers to prayer, the final
and only test is that of experience. That a vessel in distress should be
able to send a message to another vessel a hundred miles out of sight,
and summon it to its aid, would have struck an earlier generation as a
piece of wild romancing--but we know it is actually done; that a soul's
earnest prayer may avail to enlist mighty energies in its help and so to
bring about results which otherwise would not have come to pass, ought
hardly to strike the present age as an inherently incredible proposition.

But we shall be told that our parallel does not hold good: if the Marconi
apparatus failed seven times out of ten, we should hardly {211} think it
worth while to provide our ships with so unreliable an instrument; yet
who would say that even three out of ten prayers for stated objects met
with fulfilment? The objection, however, is not unanswerable; indeed,
the very comparison employed in stating it may enable us to supply at
least a partial answer. For we understand that the success of wireless
messages being transmitted and received depends upon absolutely perfect
"tuning"; the electric waves set up, _i.e._, will only act upon a
receiver most delicately attuned to a particular rate of oscillations,
and when the difference between the rate of oscillation of the waves and
the receiver exceeds one per cent., resonance ceases altogether, so that
the message may be sent, but will not be received. It strikes us as
hardly a fanciful supposition that many prayers fail to obtain an answer
for a precisely analo