If this be, indeed, the right direction in which to look for answers to prayer, then the whole subject is withdrawn from the region in which positive proof or disproof are possible. Our interpretation of such individual experiences is that upon which the whole controversy turns, and this must of necessity result from the nature of our previous belief respecting much more general truths. It will always be open to those who disbelieve in God to call His signs “mere coincidences.” It is surely not therefore the less reasonable for those who do believe in Him to be on the watch for every possible faintest indication of His pleasure. There must be in this, as in all other matters, a preparation of heart and mind before any sign, however eloquent, can take effect upon us. In point of fact, we know that the sense of receiving a personal communication from above is not always excited by the granting of a petition. After we have asked and received, no less than when we have asked and not received, we are sometimes inclined to say, “After all, does my prayer make any difference? would not things have happened just in the same way if I had not prayed?” This is a question to which, in truth, I believe that we must be content (so far, at least, as regards any particular instance) to remain without an answer. We can never really know what would have happened if we had not prayed. To say this is, of course, by no means to deny that our prayer has made a real though unknown difference. It is, on the contrary, almost positively to assert the action of unmeasured and unfathomable influences. We cannot measure the whole results of any action, however insignificant; but the whole tendency of modern “scientific” thought, and of belief in “necessity,” at any rate, goes to show that all things are so interdependent that an action without results is almost inconceivable. Necessitarians, of all people, are bound to admit this. The action of prayer cannot, however, be traced by human eyes, and the longing to know precisely _what_ difference our prayer makes to the course of events is, I believe, a longing which can never be gratified in this world.