How to thought-read / A manual of instruction in the strange and mystic in daily life, psychic phenomena, including hypnotic, mesmeric, and psychic states, mind and muscle reading, thought transference, psychometry, clairvoyance, and phenomenal spiritualism

by F.A.S. Ph.D. James Coates

THOUGHT TRANSMISSION IN PRAYER.

Since writing the above, the following came under my notice. In the J.S.P.R., May, 1885, Dr. Joseph Smith, Warrington, England, says:—

“I was sitting one evening reading, when a voice came to me, saying: ‘Send a loaf to James Grady’s.’ I continued reading, and the voice continued with greater emphasis, and this time it was accompanied with an irresistible impulse to get up. I obeyed, and went into the village and bought a loaf of bread, and, seeing a lad at the shop door, I asked him if he knew James Grady. He said he did, so I bade him carry it and say a gentleman sent it. Mrs. Grady was a member of my class, and I went next morning to see what came of it, when she told me a strange thing happened to her last night. She said she wished to put the children to bed, they began to cry for want of food, and she had nothing to give them. She then went to prayer, to ask God to give them something. Soon after which the lad came to the door with the loaf. I calculated, on inquiry, that the prayer and the voice I heard exactly coincided in point of time.”

“More things are wrought by prayer

Than this world dreams of.”

Those who know anything of Methodism, will know this. The Methodists have a profound faith in prayer, and also there is a very close relationship between a class-leader and his members. Dr. Smith was, therefore, all the more likely to be the percipient of the woman’s earnest and intense prayer to God to feed her hungry children. The Infinite must have an infinite variety of ways of fulfilling His own purposes. Is it unreasonable to suppose that prayer to Him may not be answered indirectly “through means”? and that thought-transference, as in this instance, may be one of the means? If not, why not?

Charitable institutions are maintained; orphans saved, reared, and educated; missions of mercy organised, and the necessary means found by the agency of prayer. Beside “the angels,” in That Sphere just beyond the ken of the physical, may not our waves of thought, projected by prayer, be impinged upon, and directly affect susceptible minds in this world, by directing their attention to those works of faith and goodness? Prayer is the language of love, and the outcome of true helplessness and need. A praying man is an earnest man. In prayer thoughts are things—bread upon the waters.