[128-1] Aurelii Augustini, De Dono Perseverantiæ, cap. xx. Comte remarks “Depuis St. Augustin toutes les âmes pures ont de plus en plus senti, à travers l’égoisme Chrétien, que prier peut n’être pas demander.” Système de Politique Positive, I., p. 260. Popular Protestantism has retrograded in this respect.
[129-1] Plath, Die Religion und Cultus der alten Chineser, s. 836. This author observes that the Chinese prayers are confined to temporal benefits only, and are all either prayers of petition or gratitude. Prayers of contrition are unknown.
[130-1] Numerous examples can be found in medical text books, for instance in Dr. Tuke’s, The Influence of the Mind on the Body. London, 1873.
[131-1] The commission appointed by the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium on Louise Lateau reported in March, 1875, and most of the medical periodicals of that year contain abstracts of its paper.
[131-2] They may be found in the life of Pascal, written by his sister, and in many other works of the time.
[131-3] It is worthy of note, as an exponent of the condition of religious thought in 1875, that in May of that year the Governor of the State of Missouri appointed by official proclamation a day of prayer to check the advance of the grasshoppers. He should also have requested the clergy to pronounce the ban of the Church against them, as the Bishop of Rheims did in the ninth century.
[132-1] Tyndall, On Prayer and Natural Law, 1872.
[134-1] S. M. Hodgson, An Inquiry into the Theory of Practice, pp. 329, 330.
[135-1] The Rev. Dr. Thomas K. Conrad, Thoughts on Prayer, p. 54: New York, 1875.
[135-2] I. John, v. 15. “There are millions of prayers,” says Richard Baxter, “that will all be found answered at death and judgment, which we know not to be answered any way but by believing it.” A Christian Directory, Part II. chap. xxiii.