We have already seen,[90] if character and love are to be realities to us, if the world is to be a real training-ground for moral character, and not a mere play-world--a nursery continually set to rights from without, that we must all be most closely knit together; that our choices must have effects in the lives of others; that we must be bound up in one bundle of life. And we do affect one another's lives in a thousand ways. In manifold directions we condition the happiness and temptations of one another. The unspoken mood of another, an expression of countenance, a tone, an emphasis, may affect our whole day. Now, if the spiritual world is real at all, it is to be counted upon. Apparently, there is such a thing, for example, as a spiritual atmosphere in an audience--not, it may well be supposed, a magical matter, but really determined by the tone of the minds composing the audience. The actual mood of the hearers and of the speaker makes a difference. Results, great and important, are so changed often quite unconsciously. It may well be that God is the medium in all this. The attitude of the auditors is like unconscious, silent praying to God--the praying of their life, of their spirit. But, whether one cares to look at this special case in such a way or not, we are, in any event, in our spiritual lives in the deepest way members one of another. Our spiritual condition inevitably affects others. We cannot sow to the flesh and reap life anywhere, in ourselves or in others. This is particularly true, of course, of those to whom we are bound in the closest life relations. That this is absolutely true in normal personal relations, when we are in the presence of our friends, all of us fully believe. The question simply is, May this law of mutual influence hold of those bound up with our lives even when they are distant from us or estranged? In giving the privilege of intercessory prayer, it may well be believed, God simply allows us to be, even then, what we are always so fully under other circumstances--an influence upon them, a condition of the good and growth of others. _He simply allows the regular law of the spiritual and moral world to hold without exception._ We are still, though distant or estranged, members one of another. It would be a very human, defective, faulty God, who could not put us thus in touch with our loved ones everywhere. But this is possible through _him_, and therefore in prayer, and under strictly ethical and spiritual conditions, and not as a matter of mere whimsical and wilful will on our part, and it opens no door to magical superstition. Is not the recognition of the place and value of intercessory prayer, then, an only just extension of the prime conviction of the social consciousness? V. MUTUAL INFLUENCE FOR GOOD IN CONFESSIONS OF FAITH