[19] It was but yesterday that a voice reached me from one of the remotest of our Ultima Thules amongst these mountains, affirming, with something like self-gratulation, that he "cared less than nothing for anything Mr. Ruskin might write outside the subject of Art!" Yet one of the best of our Bishops--and we have many good ones--wrote by the same post: "Mr. Ruskin's letters are full of suggestive thoughts, and must do anyone good, if only in getting one out of the ruts." But, alas! against this I must needs set the dictum of another dignitary of the Church, an intensely practical man: "I have a great reverence for Mr. Ruskin's genius, and for what he has written in time past, and on this account I would rather not say a single word in comment upon these letters;" and again--"I really could not discuss them seriously." But let us consider this last letter. Is not every word of it true--severely and austerely true,--but still true? But yet here still the fault remains (though I say it with the utmost deference, remembering that, after all, I have infinitely more to learn than I have to teach), the fault remains that the truth is put too keenly, too incisively, to be classed with practical truths. Yes, the petitions of the Lord's Prayer are for a perfect state in this life. We do pray for a Paradise upon earth, where either temptation shall no longer exist, or where sin shall have lost its power to injure by losing its power to allure. But will the most incessant prayer, individual, combined, or congregational, ever bring us to perfection? Alas! my friend, you would gladly persuade us so; you would lead the way yourself, but that the first half-dozen steps you take would have, or have long ago, proved to you that sin is ever present, even in the best and purest of men. I trust they are very few indeed who are so easily persuaded by the conceited self-sufficiency of the "scientific people" to cease from prayer under the belief that all things move on under the control of inflexible laws, which neither prayer nor the will of God, if God has a will, can change or modify. Magee[20] has a valuable note on the subject of the "Consistency of Prayer with the Divine Immutability," in which he puts this truth in a mathematical form. He says, "The relation of God to man + prayer is different from the relation of God to man - prayer. Yet God remains constant. It is man who is the better or the worse for prayer or no prayer." [20] On the Atonement.