In saying this—in insisting that the reason has a well-marked and necessary place in the mechanism of the soul’s approach to God—I am not advocating a religious intellectualism. It is true that our perception of all things, even the most divine, is conditioned by the previous content of our minds: the “apperceiving mass.” Hence, the more worthy our thoughts about God, the more worthy our apprehensions of Him are likely to be. Yet I know that there is in the most apparently foolish prayer of feeling something warmly human, and therefore effective; something which in its value for life far transcends the consecrated sawdust offered up by devout intellectualism. “By love,” said the old mystic, “He may be gotten and holden; by thought never.” A whole world of experience separates the simple little church mouse saying her rosary, perhaps without much intelligence, yet with a humble and a loving faith, from the bishop who preferred “Oh, Great First Cause” to “Our Father,” because he thought that it was more in accordance with scientific truth; and few of us will feel much doubt as to the side on which the advantage lies. The advantage must always lie with those “full true sisters,” humility and love; for these are the essential elements of all successful prayer. But surely it is a mistake to suppose that these qualities cannot exist side by side with an active and disciplined intelligence? Prayer, then, begins by an intellectual adjustment. By thinking of God, or of Spiritual Reality, earnestly and humbly, and to the exclusion of other objects of thought; by deliberately surrendering the mind to spiritual things; by preparing the consciousness for the impact of a new order, the inflow of new life. But, having thought of God, the self, if it stop there, is no more in touch with Him than it was before. It may think as long as it likes, but nothing happens; thought unhelped by feeling ever remains exterior to its object. We are brought up short against the fact that the intellect is an essentially static thing: we cannot think our way along the royal road which leads to heaven. Yet it is a commonplace of spiritual knowledge that, if the state of prayer be established, something does happen; consciousness does somehow travel along that road, the field of perception is shifted, new contacts are made. How is this done? A distinguished religious psychologist has answered, that it is done “by the synthesis of love and will”—that is to say, by the craving in action which conditions all our essential deeds—and I know no better answer to suggest.