Page:War and the Christian Faith.pdf/33

Rh

It will seem a violent paradox; but I do believe that the chief aim of prayer is to raise us to the condition and state of the beasts; to raise us, not to reduce us, to their state. I think that the most profound utterance that I ever heard in a life that is beginning to be long was this: "You must remember that it is we, not the beasts, who were driven out of paradise. They were not driven out; they are still in paradise."

This is a saying that I have pondered for the last seven years, and I do not think that I have yet penetrated to its depths. It is a shock, at first, to think of what we call animals, or "the beasts," as occupying a higher place than