'After much thought and examination,' the coadjutor aforesaid--a bashful Teucer, over whom Professor Tyndall has, like a second Ajax Telamon, extended, with chivalrous haste, the shelter of his shield--does 'not hesitate to propose that one single ward or hospital under the care of first-rate physicians or surgeons, containing a number of patients afflicted with those diseases which have been best studied, and of which the mortality rates are best known, should be, during a period of not less than three to five years, made the object of special prayer by the whole body of the faithful, and that, at the end of that time, the mortality rates should be compared with the past rates, and also with those of other leading hospitals similarly well managed during the same period.'[53] In suggesting this experiment, termed by himself 'exhaustive and complete,' its propounder imagines himself to be offering to the faithful 'an occasion of demonstrating to the faithless an imperishable record of the real power of prayer.' If, however, he were himself petitioning for the reprieve of a condemned criminal, he would scarcely expect to succeed, even with so tender-hearted a minister as Mr. Bruce, if he were to let out in the course of his supplications, that he did not care whether he succeeded or not, and was asking for the reprieve solely for the purpose of ascertaining whether the head of the Home Office is really invested with the prerogative of mercy. Yet no suspicion crosses his mind that the Searcher of Hearts may possibly be displeased with prayers addressed to Him by the lips of those who were, all the while, saying in their hearts that they did not want their prayers to be granted, but only wanted to satisfy their curiosity to know whether they would be granted or not. Equally remarkable is the trustfulness of Mr. Galton, in opining that 'it would be perfectly practicable to select out of the patients at different hospitals under treatment for fractures, or amputations, or other common maladies, whose course is so well understood as to admit of accurate tables being constructed for their duration and result, two considerable groups, the one consisting of markedly religious and piously befriended individuals, the other of those who were remarkably cold-hearted and neglected; and that, then, an honest comparison of their respective periods of treatment, and the result, would manifest a distinct proof of the efficacy of prayer, if it existed to even a minute fraction of the amount that religious teachers exhort us to believe.' Evidently, he imagines that it would be sufficient for the hospital authorities to advertise--not of course, in the 'Times,' but in the 'Record'--and that, thereupon, whoever, having entered into his closet and shut the door, had, on behalf of any of the patients experimented upon, prayed to the Father who seeth in secret, would at once come forth and proclaim openly how he had been engaged. Not by 'arguments' of no greater