4 OCTOBER 1946, Page 14

PRAYERS AND THE WEATHER

Sm,—Miss Winckworth and your other correspondents may be interested to know that Saint Agobard, writing in the ninth century, in his Absurd Opinion of the Vulgar Touching Hail and Thunder denounces those who " claim the power not only of controlling the weather, and securing fields from harm, but also of bringing about hail and thunderstorms." He calls them " Tempestarii." Our relation to God, he adds in another treatise, must be " direct and without the intervention of physical objects." (De Grand. vll, p. 272). This was written in the alleged " age of superstition," not in the twentieth century.—Yours faithfully,