The Saviour had just cast out a devil that had been too much for the disciples, and He told them their inability to do so was due to their want of Faith, and added: “Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer.” The Dean explained to us that some ascetic annotator 400 years afterwards had shoved in at the end of these two additional words--“and fasting.” That, of course, was meant by the Dean as “one in the eye” for those who fast like the Pharisees and for a pretence make long prayers! Then the Dean was just too lovely as to “Prayer!” He said he was so sick of people praying for victory in the great War! And speaking generally he was utterly sick of people praying for what they wanted! (as if _that_ was Prayer!) No! the Dean divinely said, “Prayer was the exaltation of the Spirit of a Man to dwell with God and say in the Saviour’s words, ‘Not my will but Thine be done.’” “Get right thus with God,” said the Dean, “and then go and make Guns and Munitions with the utmost fury. That (said the Dean) was the way to get Victory, and not by silly vain petitions as if you were asking your Mamma for a bit of barley sugar.” (I don’t mean to say the Dean used these exact words!) Then he said an interesting thing that “this event of the disciples ignominiously failing to cast out the devil” happened to these chief of His apostles just after their coming down from the Mount of Transfiguration, where they had been immensely uplifted by the Heavenly Vision of the Saviour talking with Moses and Elijah. The Dean said “that it was really a curious fact of large experience that when you were thus lifted up in a Heavenly Spirit it was a sure precursor of a fierce temptation by the Devil!” These highly-favoured disciples, after such a communion with God, thought that they themselves, by themselves, could do anything! Pride had a fall! They could not cast out that devil! They trusted in themselves and did not give God the praise! And so it was that Moses didn’t go over Jordan, for he struck the rock and said, “How now, ye rebels!” (I’ll show you who I am!) The Dean also observed that it was the Drains that had to be put right when there was an Epidemic of Typhoid Fever! “Prayer” wasn’t the Antidote! The holy man Saint Francis summed up all religion and the Christian life in his famous line: “How we are in the sight of God!--That is the only thing that matters!” [Illustration: PHOTOGRAPH, TAKEN AND SENT TO SIR JOHN FISHER BY THE EMPRESS MARIE OF RUSSIA, OF A GROUP ON BOARD H.M.S. “STANDARD,” 1909. 1. Lord Hamilton of Dalzell. 2. The Chevalier de Martino. 3. Sir Arthur Nicholson. 4. M. Stolypin, Russian Prime Minister. 5. The Czarina. 6. M. Isvolsky, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs. 7. Sir John Fisher. 8. Sir Charles Hardinge. 9. Baron Fredericks. 10. The Grand Duchess Olga. 11. The Czar. 12. The Princess Victoria. 13. The Grand Duke Michael. 14. Count Benckendorff, Russian Ambassador. ] FORGIVENESS