edge, we may be compelled to
discard them. The desperate straits to which the Churches and their
professional apologists are reduced in their endeavours to reconcile
antiquarian statements in Scriptures and theologies with the
authenticated facts of mental and physical science, are not such as to
encourage us to attempt a definition of the Indefinable, or the
comprehension of the Infinite within the exiguous limits of human
thought and speech. We are too young by some centuries to so much as
think about the formulation of a doctrinal code.

The moral sense, it is abundantly obvious, is growing from day to day.
The community herein is the counterpart of the individual. And hence,
the moral and religious observances of to-day may become obsolete
to-morrow. "The altar-cloths of one generation become the door-mats of
the next." Hence, I am full of confidence that though everything may
be against us now, one thing is on our side--that is, the future. We
saw an illustration of this truth in the history of the relations
between the priest and the prophet; we shall witness a further instance
of its workings in the history of prayer.

What is the attitude of a human and ethical religion towards that
characteristic manifestation of piety which we call prayer? Doubtless
its views will be found to diverge notably from those which were
prevalent in other days when scientific knowledge was imperfect, and
conceptions of man and the Infinite even more inadequate than they
admittedly are at present. The origin of prayer is, like the origin of
all things terrestrial, extremely humble. When primitive man found
himself face to face with the more terrible of the natural
phenomena--terrors and portents which he was wholly unable to
explain--his only resource was to ascribe their appearance to the
agency of beings like himself, though, of course, immeasurably more
powerful. These phenomena being often attended by the destruction of
the results of laborious industry, and even of human life itself, it
became a matter of urgency to devise means whereby the anger of the
preternatural powers might be appeased, and a cessation of the
successive scourges effected. It was then that man began to offer up
entreaty, supplication, petition and prayer to the dread divinities in
whose power it was to behave so malevolently towards man and his
possessions.

That this account of the matter is not fanciful, the reports of
travellers and mission