pacity of man's natural powers, or which
cannot be heard without a selfish indifference to the equal rights and
claims of others. And, therefore, no petitionary prayers find a place
in the service of the ethical Church. The God whom we recognise is the
"Mind who meditates in beauty and speaks only in law"; the "beneficent
Unity," the "beautiful Necessity"; the law which is not intelligent,
but Intelligence. It were as impious to pray for an infraction of the
natural laws of Divine ordaining as it were foolish to wish that the
law of gravitation were suspended to gratify a passing need or whim.
In the Talmud there is a prophetic intimation of the religion which
asks no favours, but prays by living the moral life. It foretells the
day when prayer shall cease in the Jewish Church, and thanksgiving only
be henceforth heard. This exactly expresses what we feel should be the
attitude of the reverent man in the silence of the Great Presence--his
life an attestation of his recognition of what he owes to the Being
whose nature he shares.

But, it will doubtless be urged, prayers are answered even when offered
for purely temporary blessings, or at any rate, numberless men and
women contend that they have been so answered in their own experience.
Members of the more emotional forms of Nonconformity are especially
emphatic in their testimony to the efficacy of prayer, though I doubt
not that their more educated ministers would hesitate to commit
themselves to the belief in its more extreme forms. Mr. Armstrong
certainly disavows it for the Unitarian body, a Church always to be
held in reverence as having done more to rationalise religion in this
country and America than any other agency we could indicate. But what
are we to say to such testimonies? This, that the prayers have been
answered by the supplicants themselves, when even, indeed, we have not
to deal with a matter of mere coincidence. But, I would expressly
guard against the inference being drawn, that I question the Divine
Personality. I lay down no dogmatic statements as to the efficacy of
vocal prayers. What I do say is, that all I know of God as revealed in
nature and law forbids me to entertain the notion that the order he has
seen fit to establish is to be capriciously altered at the request of
any of his creatures. It is not irreverence, but a sense of reverence
which prohibits me from believing that the Being whose presence and
power are revealed in the