of a curtain the vision of a whole nation--nay, of races
girdling the whole earth--to whom the same high experience has come.
Everywhere the sanctuaries filled, the eyes turned upward, for instinct
is mightier than reason. The smoke of battle has revealed the face of
God.

***

With us in the parish churches of Scotland the great thing is the
sermon. But to-day it is different; the great thing now is prayer.
And the minister preached about prayer. He set forth in clear and
ordered language, with a felicitous phrase now and then lighting up his
sentences, that prayer was not a mere relic of fanatical superstition
but a mighty power. He discussed with a wealth of learning whether God
had shut Himself in behind a prison-house of cosmic laws that made it
impossible for Him to answer prayer. He reasoned the worshippers cold.
But there in that hour reason was bound to give way before intuition.

"If I am free," cried the preacher, "to rush to the help of my child
when he crieth in terror; and if, when the creatures of His hand cry to
God He is bound and cannot help or soothe, then He is poorer than I, so
great a thing is freedom." Prayer was not mere spiritual gymnastics.
A God immured in cold laws, barred for ever from the play of love or
tenderness, would be the one being in the universe most to be pitied.
The Creator did not sit deaf and dumb on the Throne of indifference
answering nothing, doing nothing. History was the proof that
Righteousness was throned at the core of the universe, for at the last
right ever prevailed.

Then the measured tones went on to speak of the difficulty of believing
in the efficacy of prayer when Christians faced Christians in mortal
conflict, and they both cried for victory--both the children of the One
Father crying for victory over each other. But the difficulty was of
appearance only. For the only prevailing prayer was prayer in the name
of Christ. "Whatsoever ye shall ask _in My name_ that will I do." To
ask in His name was to ask in His spirit--the spirit of humility,
self-sacrifice, and love--the spirit of self-surrender to the _will_
supreme. The question was which of the prayers for victory was prayer
in the name of Christ....

This was clear, convincing, but cold. Only at rare intervals does the
minister of our parish give way to passion. Suddenly there came a wave
of emotion. He flung his head back, and his eyes glowed. His voice
vibrated through the church. "W