taking of a wood there were five hundred yards of "No
Man's Land" to be crossed. Our troops could not get across.
Then Capt.----, who practices this method of prayer, treated
them for an hour before they started, and not a man was
knocked out. He was the only officer left out of eighty in
his brigade. He simply held onto the fact that man is
spiritual and perfect and could not be touched. A bullet
fired from a revolver only five yards away hit him over the
chest, tore his shirt and went out at the shoulder. But it
never penetrated his chest. He was frequently in a hail of
shells and bullets which did not touch him.

#The Graft of Grace#

All this is grotesque; but it is what happens to religions in a world
of commercial competition. It happens not merely to Christian Science
and New Thought religions, Mazdaznan and Zionist, Holy Roller and
Mormon religions, but to Catholic and Episcopalian, Presbyterian and
Methodist and Baptist religions. For you see, when you are with the
wolves you must howl with them; when you are competing with fakirs you
must fake. The ordinary Christian will read the claims of the New
Thought fakers with contempt; but have I not shown the Catholic Church
publishing long lists of money-miracles? Have I not shown the Church
of Good Society, our exclusive and aristocratic Protestant Episcopal
communion, pretending to call rain and to banish pestilence, to
protect crops and win wars and heal those who are "sick in
estate"--that is, who are in business trouble?

The reader will say that I am a cynic, despising my fellows; but that
is not so. I am an economic scientist, analyzing the forces which
operate in human societies. I blame the prophets and priests and
healers for their fall from idealism; but I blame still more the
competitive wage-system, which presents them with the alternative to
swindle or to starve.

For, you see, the prophet has to have food. He has frequently got
along with almost none, and with only a rag for clothing; in Palestine
and India, where the climate is warm, a sincere faith has been
possible for short periods. But the modern prophet who expects to
influence the minds of men has to have books and newspapers; he will
find a telephone and a typewriter and postage-stamps hardly to be
dispensed with, also in Europe and America some sort of a roof over
his meeting place. So the prophet is caught, like all the rest of us,
in t