th one hand
is to be taken away with the other, because the formality of
supplication is not employed when anything of moment is to be put into
execution. The notion that intelligence was put in man only to be
shattered, a will given him only to be forthwith distorted by passion
or blinded by ignorance, and that "there is no health in us" unless we
abase ourselves to the dust and proclaim our utter worthlessness, is to
men and women of this time wholly inconceivable. That nothing
ethically valuable can be accomplished except after instant prayer, or
after copious outpourings of Divine grace, that the curse of absolute
sterility is upon all our attempts to conform to the dictates of the
moral law, unless God be with us in prayer, is henceforth an impossible
theology.

Tell us that the man and the world are dependent at every instant of
time on the sustaining and prolonged creative act of the Infinite
Being, and we are one with you, nay, we probably go beyond you. "He is
not very far from any one of us" means more to the scientific
philosopher than to the mediaeval theologian. But spare us the
repetition of those stale legends that man was made and unmade in the
space of a few moments, and that ever since the manducation of the
forbidden fruit his powers have withered, and that there is no remedy
available for their recovery but incessant prayer and sacramental
ordinances. Our reading of history is exactly the reverse. With the
progress of time we discern the advance of man, and with the diminution
of sacerdotalism and a mechanical religion we think we note an
accelerated progress; that in those countries in which men are nobly
self-reliant, and look _within_ instead of _without_ for the source of
their inspiration and power, the course of moral life takes a higher
turn; that in proportion as men are true to themselves and the powers
of their own being, they ascend in the scale of moral perfection. We
think that to teach a man to look without him for assistance is to
cripple half his powers, to make him unlearn the grand gospel of
self-reliance, to loosen the fibres of his moral being, and thereby to
check his individual progress.[1]

It must have been some such conviction as this which led the late
Master of Balliol to say that the longer he lived the less he prayed,
but the more he thought. Precisely; it is not irreverence but a
deepening reverence for the Divine powers within us, which shames us
into trustin