This view takes us back once more into a world of caprice. It introduces a world in which almost anything may happen. We can no longer calculate upon anything with assurance. Even our _speed_, as we walk, is regulated by the capricious wish of our friends. But that is not all, it is a low, crude view of God--a Being off above the world who makes “laws” like a modern legislator and again changes them to meet a new situation, who is after all only a bigger man in the sky busily moving and shifting the scenes of the time-drama as requests reach him. None of these positions is tenable. The first is not, for prayer is a necessity to full life, and the other two are not, because they do not fairly face the facts which are forced upon those who accept scientific methods of search and of thought. This physical universe is a stubborn affair. It is not loose and adjustable, and worked, for our private convenience, by wires or strings at a central station. It is a world of order, a realm of discipline. It is our business to discover a possible line of march in the world _as it is_, to find how to triumph over obstacles and difficulty, if we meet them--not to resort to “shun pikes” or cries for “exception in our particular case.” The real difficulty is that our generation has been conceiving of prayer on too low a plane. Faith is not endangered by the advance of science. It is endangered by the stagnation of religious conceptions. If religion halts at some primitive level and science marches on to new conquests of course there will be difficulty. But let us not fetter science, let us rather _promote_ religion. We need to rise to a truer view of God and to a loftier idea of prayer. It is another case of “leveling up.” On the higher religious plane no collision between prayer and science will be found. There will be no sealing of the lips in the presence of the discovery that all is law. The prayer which science _has_ affected is the spurious kind of prayer, which can be reduced to a utilitarian, “bread and butter,” basis. Most enlightened persons now are shocked to hear “patriotic” ministers asking God to direct the bullets of their country’s army so as to kill their enemies in battle, and we all hesitate to use prayer for the attainment of low, selfish ends, but we need to cleanse our sight still farther and rise above the conception of prayer as an easy means to a desired end.