ssence of
successful prayer," says Canon Liddon in a recent sermon. In the New
Testament it is likened to a constant knocking at a door; and by a
curious parity of thought the Chinese character for prayer is composed
of the signs for a spirit and an axe or hammer.[129-1] We must "keep
hammering" as a colloquial phrase has it. Strong belief is also
required. To pray with faith we must expect with confidence.

Now that such a condition of expectant attention, prolonged and earnest,
will have a very powerful subjective effect, no one acquainted with the
functions of the human economy can doubt. "Any state of the body,"
observes the physiologist Mueller, "expected with certain confidence is
very prone to ensue." A pill of bread-crumbs, which the patient supposes
to contain a powerful cathartic, will often produce copious evacuations.
No one who studies the history of medicine can question that scrofulous
swellings and ulcerations were cured by the royal touch, that paralytics
have regained the use of their limbs by touching the relics of the
saints, and that in many countries beside Judea the laying on of hands
and the words of a holy man have made issues to heal and the lame to
walk.[130-1]

Such effects are not disputed by physicians as probable results of
prayer or faith considered as expectant attention. The stigmata of St.
Francis d'Assisi are more than paralleled by those of Louise Lateau, now
living at Bois d'Haine in Belgium, whose hands, feet and side bleed
every Friday like those of Christ on the cross. A commission of medical
men after the most careful precautions against deception attributed
these hemorrhages to the effect of expectation (prayer) vastly
increased in force by repetition.[131-1] If human testimony is worth
anything, the cures of Porte Royale are not open to dispute.[131-2]

The mental consequences of a prayerful condition of mind are to inspire
patience under afflictions, hope in adversity, courage in the presence
of danger and a calm confidence in the face of death itself. How
mightily such influences have worked in history is shown in every
religious war, and in the lives of the martyrs of all faiths. It matters
not what they believed, so only that they believed it thoroughly, and
the gates of Hades could not prevail against them.

No one will question that these various and momentous results are the
legitimate effects or answers to prayers. But whether prayer can
influence the working of th