It is easy for us to see the harm done by the official spirit, and the hypocrisy which is so often its shadow; still we must not forget that noble army of men who have looked with far other eyes upon their office, feeling themselves the representatives for the sake of order of the Church as a whole, and realizing more or less consciously that their duty is not to be the delegates and deputies of the layman in discharging his priestly functions for him, but to be a means to help him to realize them more fully, aiding him to think more, to do more and to pray more for himself. Especially true is this of prayer, which the true priest must ever aid in others as well as in himself, whether the prayer find utterance in words, or remain unformed even into the mental words of thought. For is not prayer, in this widest sense, the life breath of the Church and of the individual alike? Prayer is indeed too often spoken of as though it implied words: whereas it may exist even without conscious thought, going on whenever the soul's hand stretches out after God, whenever man seeks after goodness, in every act of will by which he is brought into touch with that Spirit from whom all right thoughts, "all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works do proceed." The aim of conscious prayer, in its highest form, must be communion, and a communion of will which may continue when the conscious prayer itself ceases, underlying the work and thought of everyday life. To this communion the true priest [p.105] will ever direct his fellows, knowing that as he and they come to share in it more fully they will be the better able to help those about them towards their goal. He knows too, by experience, that there is a law of spiritual magnetism, by which just as in the physical world a weak magnet is strengthened by contact with a strong one, so in the spiritual world the will to do the good and to live aright may be strengthened by coming into the presence of a stronger will, and most of all by contact with the Divine will.