Sir Henry has become known to the public in connection with several important social and religious questions. One which excited much controversy was his letter to Professor Tyndall in regard to prayer for the sick, which appeared in the _Contemporary Review_ in 1872. After classifying the various objects of prayer, and considering the possibility of testing the actual results of prayer, he says: “There appears to be one source from a study of which the absolute calculable value of prayer (I speak with the utmost reverence) can almost certainly be ascertained. I mean its influence in affecting the course of a malady, or in averting the fatal termination. For it must be admitted that such an important influence manifestly either does, or does not exist. If it does, a careful investigation of diseased persons by good pathologists, working with this end seriously in view, must determine the fact. The fact determined, it is simply a matter of further careful clinical observation to estimate the extent or degree in which prayer is effective. And the next step would be to consider how far it is practicable to extend this benefit among the sick and dying. And I can conceive few inquiries which are more pregnant with good to humanity when this stage has been arrived at.” The practical method proposed for testing the question was that a single ward or hospital, under the care of first-rate doctors, containing patients suffering from diseases best understood, should be made a subject of special prayer by the whole body of the faithful for three or five years, and that at the end of that time the mortality should be compared with the past rates, and also with that of other leading hospitals during the same period. But the experiment was never tried, owing to the storm of obloquy and controversy with which the proposal was greeted, in which scant regard was paid to the evident good faith of the proposer. Sir Henry Thompson soon came before the public in a new light. Having failed to get people to pray systematically for the sick, he next attempted to induce them to burn their dead, a proceeding which, as it appeared, was little less shocking to many than the former proposition had proved. The first paragraph of his first article in the _Contemporary Review_ (January 1874), since reprinted, with a second on the same subject, struck a sensational key. “After death! The last faint breath had been noted, and another watched for so long, but in vain. The body lies there, pale and motionless, except only that the jaw sinks slowly but perceptibly. The pallor visibly increases, becomes more leaden in hue, and the profound tranquil sleep of death reigns where just now were life and movement. Here then begins the eternal rest.