prayer, extend to him?—will there not an influence reach him, though he may be unconscious whence it comes?—will not our sphere of Christian love be felt? and will it not tend to soften his heart, and to assuage his feeling of hardness and unkindness which induced him "despitefully to use and persecute" us. If he be capable of receiving any influence of good from God or man, if he be not hardened and confirmed in evil—there is reason to believe it will have this effect in a greater or less degree; and then, when the two parties again meet, there will perhaps be experienced by each an unexpected inclination to forbear any act or word of unkindness,—a disposition, which the evident look of meekness and forgiveness in the countenance of him who has thus prayed, and which is a direct effect of offering that prayer, will tend to foster and confirm; till at length, and by degrees, full reconciliation may follow, and enmity may be changed into affection. Such may sometimes be the result of praying for our enemies. The Lord himself, on the cross, set us an example of such a prayer: "Father," he said, "forgive them, for they know not what they do."
By an understanding of this important law of the mind, then, that "thought is spiritual presence," and the other law, also, that those whom we are spiritually in society with, are influenced by the sphere of our own spirits—we may perhaps form some conception of the manner in which the act of prayer for others may be effective.
But now, it is to be inquired, will not the same principle be operative in some degree in a general
