I do not object to a week of prayer. But why only a week? If prayer is “answered” Christians ought to pray all the time. That prayer is “answered” the Scripture affirms as positively and unequivocally as anything can be affirmed in words: “All things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, that ye shall receive.” Why, then, when for weeks all the clergy of this country prayed publicly for the recovery of President Garfield did the man die? Why is it that although two pious chaplains ask almost daily that goodness and wisdom may descend upon Congress, Congress remains wicked and unwise? Why is it that although in all the churches and many dwellings of the land God is continually asked for good government good government remains what it always and everywhere has been, a dream? From Earth to Heaven in unceasing ascension flows a stream of prayer for every blessing that man desires, yet man remains unblest, the victim of his own folly and passions, the sport of fire, flood, tempest and earthquake, afflicted with famine and disease, war, poverty and crime, his world an incredible welter of evil, his life a curse and his hope a lie. Is it possible that all this praying is futilized and invalidated by lack of faith?—that the “asking” is not credentialed by the “believing?” When the anointed minister of Heaven spreads his palms and uprolls his eyes to beseech a general blessing or some special advantage is he the celebrant of a hollow, meaningless rite, or the dupe of a false promise? One does not know, but if one is not a fool one does know that his every resultless petition proves him by the inexorable laws of logic to be the one or the other. VII Christ’s Christianity is beautiful exceedingly, and he who admires not is eyed batly and minded as the mole. “Sell all that thou hast,” said Christ, “and give to the poor.” All—no less—in order “to be saved.” The poor were Christ’s peculiar care. Ever for them and their privations, and not greatly for their spiritual darkness, fell from his lips the compassionate word, the mandate for their relief and cherishing. Of foreign missions, of home missions, of mission schools, of church building, of work among pagans in _partibus infidelium_, of work among sailors, of communion table, of delegates to councils—of any of these things he knew no more than the moon man. They are later inventions, as is the entire florid and flamboyant fabric of ecclesiasticism that has been reared, stone by stone and century after century, upon his simple life and works and words. “Founder,” indeed! He founded nothing, instituted nothing; Paul did all that. Christ simply went about doing, and being, good—admonishing the rich, whom he honestly but foolishly regarded as criminals, comforting the luckless and uttering wisdom with that Oriental indirection wherein our stupid ingenuity finds imaginary warrant for all our pranks and fads. IMMORTALITY