Page:Medicine and the church.djvu/297

 blessing on him, e.g. recovery from a specific ailment. But that is not quite the highest or the best kind of prayer. God loves to act through us; Christ sends out his disciples, that through them He may continue to do His gracious works. We can combine a humble reliance on God with the offer of ourselves as His instruments, if our prayer conforms to that Prayer of Quiet or Silence of which mystical writers tell us. Then, instead of ourselves acting directly on our friend, and instead of asking God to act directly upon him, we shall just concentrate our attention upon God with special intention for our friend. We shall hope that a Divine response from God will, during our sleep perhaps, enter our own subconscious self (which we have, through the concentration of our attention, made receptive of such responses) and through us work upon that of our friend. In such a case the diagram will be as follows:

We may add that this Prayer of Silence not only renders us receptive of Divine influences, which may then through us be transmitted to