ied by
doubts as regards any objective effects flowing from supplications
addressed to God; it is with such doubts as these that we are concerned.

[7] _Studies in Christian Doctrine_, p. 197.

[8] Precisely such an instance was brought under the notice of the
present writer by a correspondent, whose prayers that an absent one in
distant lands might be able to resist the power of strong temptation was
"heard" past all doubting--and that without the object of these petitions
being aware of the cause, as let a remark of his own attest: "I don't
know why, but sometimes I feel myself in some way held back from doing
certain things--how, I cannot explain; I only know that I should do as
others do, were it not for this compelling feeling."

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CHAPTER XII

IMMORTALITY

Throughout the preceding pages we have been principally engaged in
tracing the effects of the idea of Divine immanence upon the main
contents of religious thought. While trying to show that this idea,
rightly understood and set in its proper place, embodies an important
and at one time unduly neglected truth, we have also seen that its
misinterpretation and over-emphasis--the tendency to view it as not
only true but as constituting the whole truth--is attended by dangers
of a particularly grave character. Under whatever name, idealistic
Monism or any other, the doctrine which recognises only one ultimate
Existence expressing itself in all things and working its will in all
events, is fatal to any religion worthy the name; indeed, since the
term "religion" indicates a _link_, and a link is possible only between
things or beings requiring to be held together, the fundamental tenet
of Monism excludes religion in the only vital sense it has ever been
known to bear, and more especially the Christian religion. Quite {219}
inevitably it abandons the personality and Fatherhood of God, the
selfhood and freedom of man, the reality of sin and evil, which it
describes as "not-being," and the value and rationality of prayer--for
how or to whom can we pray if we are already "on the eternal throne"?
Quite inevitably, therefore, we may add, the votaries of this
philosophy, in attempting to accommodate it to the facts of life, the
intuitions of the moral self and the aspirations of the soul, are faced
everywhere by irreconcilable antinomies and "find no end, in wandering
mazes lost."

Are the assumptions of the monist any more in harmony with the doctrine