Praying for Money

Transcriber's Note
By RUSSELL H. CONWELL
VOLUME 9
NATIONAL EXTENSION UNIVERSITY 597 Fifth Avenue, New York
Effective Prayer —— Copyright, 1921, by Harper & Brothers Printed in the United States of America

IT would be no more surprising for the discovery of a means of direct spirit communication with the spiritual life than it was to be convinced that Marconi had discovered a sure method of telegraphing and telephoning without wires. The discovery of the laws which made electricity a servant of mankind was an astonishing revelation which was as unbelievable as is the law of spiritual telepathy. Human telepathy, which is a mysterious means of communication between persons without the use of known material agency, is in the initial and experimental stage. But the possibility of such thought transference is generally admitted. The psychical researchers into that science should be encouraged in every way. On the eve of every such advance in human achievement there always appear a host of superstitious dreamers and wild prophets, even in the study of science, who hinder the sane searcher and often becloud the mind of the student who is on the direct road to the needed discovery.
Spiritualism, which is here used as a comprehensive term, frequently confuses the deliberations of honest truth-seekers with the advertised works of deceivers, but it includes much in its curriculum that is worth careful study. Among the host of disordered or weak minds who claim so much that is foolish in connection with spiritual revelations there are a respectable number of thoughtful, conservative searchers who cannot be easily deceived. In all the successful isms in a Christian civilization, and in all the popular religious sects, there is ever some basic truth. Some one idea is so true and so strongly emphasized that it often carries along a back-breaking load of absurd theories. The thoughtless throng hears of several well-authenticated cases of fraud, or of absurd teaching, in connection with spiritual meetings, or messages, and leaps to the conviction that all claims of so-called spiritualists are not worthy of consideration. So many thousands have tried so sincerely to recall their dead without the least sign of an answer that they refuse to examine the testimony of great men, like Sir Oliver Lodge, whose belief differs from their belief. They will not read what great minds have expressed on the subject. But the great discoveries recently made in materialistic sciences have led thoughtful men to hope for great discoveries in the relation of this existence to another life. This expectation, or strong hope, made the study of the spiritual revelations and conditions at the Temple a most thrilling occupation.