Yet earnest prayer, within fixed limitations, may be and has been answered, as is proven by innumerable witnesses. Not by a personal God to whom the appeal is made, but by harmonizing the prayer-giver with subtile spiritual forces, which work in ways not comprehended by a gross view of the world. When we consider human and spiritual beings as laved by an ocean of attenuated substance, elastic and receptive beyond comprehension, and that each being is a vortex of vibrations, we understand how from an intensely wrought mind vibrant thoughts go forth, and although they strike an infinite number of individuals who are not sensitive to them, they find others in mortal bodies or spiritual, as harps like attuned set each other in vibration, and move those thus receptive to answer their appeals. The power and strength given by prayer arise from this harmonizing of their being by spiritual aspiration, which lift the mind into the realm of superior spiritual forces. It is then that the appeal to God goes forth in vibrations, to be recognized by spirit friends, and by them conveyed to mortals who have the ability to respond, or directly reach some responsive mind in the mortal body. The following narrative of Dr. Joseph Smith, of Warrington, England, which is accredited by the journal of the Society for Psychological Research, May, 1885, is a fine illustration of what is popularly known as God’s answer to prayer: “I was sitting one evening reading when a voice came to me, saying: “‘Send a loaf to James Grady’s.’ I continued reading, and the voice continued with greater emphasis, and this time it was accompanied with an irresistible impulse to get up. I obeyed, and went into the village and bought a loaf of bread, and seeing a lad at the shop door, I asked him if he knew James Grady. He said he did, so I had him carry it, and say that a gentleman sent it. Mrs. Grady was a member of my class, and I went down next morning to see what came of it, when she told me that a strange thing had happened to her last night. She said she wished to put the children to bed, but they began to cry for want of food, and she had nothing to give them. She then went to prayer, to ask God to give them something, soon after which the lad came to the door with the loaf. I calculated on inquiry that the prayer and the voice I heard exactly coincided in point of time.” As a member of his class, a close connection existed between Dr. Smith and Mrs. Grady, and he was thereby receptive to the eager appeal she made, incited by her children’s cry for bread. The case of Henry Young Stilling has become a text in most orthodox books on the subject of prayer. He was a physician at the court of the Grand Duke of Baden, the intimate friend of Gœthe, who, impressed with his remarkable experiences, urged him to write an account of his life.