It is consoling at times to reflect that whereas men have prayed to God from their earliest origins, it is only comparatively recently that they have probed and analysed the structure and development of prayer. Consoling, because of the vast and ever growing literature on the subject which, if anything, becomes more remote and obscure.

In the recently published Paternoster Series (Burns Oates and Washbourne, 1s. 6d. each), four of the six booklets are directly concerned with prayer—all are reprints—and are written by well-known writers. The Path of Prayer, by Fr Vincent McNabb, O.P., might be called 'prayer meditated',