Adventures in the Moon, and Other Worlds

by Earl John Russell Russell

I have heard enough already to learn that the prayers of men must be disappointed.

ANGEL.

If you begin to distrust your project of benefiting the human race by compliance, and do not like your office of hearing prayers so well as you expected, you shall give up the post, and I will then show you the way in which the fate of prayers is decided.

MAHOMET.

I am ready to resign my power, and would rather see how the wishes of men are disposed of by Divine Wisdom.

ANGEL.

I must shut the door, then, and keep the prayers out for a minute. You must know that this is one of the duties which the angels perform, without a visible interposition of God, though all is secretly guided by his power and wisdom. Here is a net, which I fasten over the small door, so that it hangs as a bag, and every prayer that enters the door must fall into it.

MAHOMET.

What! can a prayer be caught in a net, like a fish?

ANGEL.