judgment, the world will be reproved “Of sin, because they believe not.” This teaching is most disastrous; man should be incited to active thought: Christian belief would bind him to the teachings of a stagnant past. Fit companion to blind belief is slave-like prayer. Men pray as though God needed most abject entreaty ere he would grant justice. What does Jesus teach on prayer? “After this manner pray ye—Our Father, which art in heaven.” Do you think that God is the Father of all, when you pray that he will enable you to defeat some others of his children, with whom your nation is at war? And why “which art in Heaven?” Where is your Heaven? You look upward, and if you were at the Antipodes, would look upward still. But that upward would be downward to us. Do you localize Heaven? Why say “which art in Heaven?” Is God infinite, then he is also in earth. “Hallowed be thy name.” “What is God’s name? if you know it not how can you hallow it? how can God’s name be hallowed even if you know it?” “Thy kingdom come.” What is God’s kingdom, and will your praying bring it quicker? Is it the Judgment day, and do you who say “Love one another,” pray for the more speedy arrival of that day, on which God may say to your fellow “depart ye cursed into everlasting fire?” “Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” How is God’s will done in heaven? If the Devil be a fallen angel, there must have been rebellion even there. “Give us this day our daily bread.” Will the prayer get it without work? No. Will work get it without prayer? Yes. Why pray, then, for bread to God, who says, “Blessed be ye that hunger... woe unto you that are full?” “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” (Matthew vi, 12) What debts have you to God? Sins? Coleridge writes, “A sin is an evil which has its ground or origin in the agent, and not in the compulsion of circumstances. Circumstances are compulsory, from the absence of a power to resist or control them: and if the absence likewise be the effect of circumstances... the evil derives from the circumstances... and such evil is not sin.”³⁶ Do you say that you are independent of all circumstances, that you can control them, that you have a free will? Buckle replies that the assertion of a free will “involves two assumptions, of which the first, though possibly true, has never been proved, and the second is unquestionably false. These assumptions are that there is an independent faculty, called consciousness, and that the dictates of that faculty are infallible.”³⁷ “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” (Matthew vi, 13) Do you think God may lead you into temptation? if so, you cannot think him all good; if not all-good he is not God. If God, the prayer is blasphemy. ³⁶ “Aids to Reflection,” 1843, p. 200. ³⁷ “History of Civilisation,” Vol. I, p. 14.