NATURE AND PRAYER.1

THE prayer appointed for use in our churches with reference to the cattle plague and the cholera appears to have fallen upon a susceptible state of the public mind like a spark upon tinder. It is evident that many thoughtful persons have been much exercised in mind by questions relating to prayer. Not unwilling to pray, they have shrunk from praying blindly. They have wished to feel assured that they could pray reasonably, and without stultifying convictions upon which a main part of their life is built up. Old difficulties and perplexities about prayer have revived, and have assumed what has appeared for the time a more formidable aspect. And whilst these anxieties have been stirring in the minds of the thoughtful, that portion of the religious world which is not troubled by doubts has been disposed to push the use of prayer with a certain importunity, and in a spirit of latent, if not professed, anta

1 Macmillan's Magazine, January, 1866 (the preceding year having been that of the cattle plague).

gonism. There are always people ready to seize with eagerness what they regard as an opportunity to rebuke the infidel notions of the day.' Most likely a strong and early pressure was brought to bear upon the Archbishop and the Ministry to induce them to appoint a public prayer against the cattle plague. 'What are the clergy and the authorities doing,' I was asked, 'that we have no prayer issued for deliverance from the cattle plague?' I expressed a doubt whether the calamity had reached a magnitude which called for so special an act. 'Oh, but,' the answer was, 'it is so important to take these things in time!' The appointment of a prayer which was to be looked to as a kind of mechanical prophylactic did not seem to me a thing much to be desired; and probably a similar distaste was similarly excited in others. When the prayer came, it certainly was not peculiarly felicitous, but it was not unlike other prayers of the same kind. It was welcome, I fully believe, to a large number of pious persons, who had been very much alarmed by the reports of the disease, and who thought it right that we should publicly deprecate the terrible visitation which had begun to afflict us. But, on the other hand, it excited an almost angry outburst of protest and criticism. Fault

was found with details of the prayer, in a tone which showed plainly that those who found it disliked the whole before they quarrelled with the parts. Then followed reflection and questioning. 'If this prayer is wrong, what kind of prayer is right?' Objections have been gravely and even reverentially raised; attempts have been made to meet those objections. Laymen have come forward to say that, while they felt that some ordinary kinds of prayer could not be defended in the face of science, and must be abandoned, they yet could not consent to give up prayer altogether. Reasons have been given for discriminating between one kind of prayer and another; and it has also been seen, as is common in similar cases, that those who have given up certain beliefs in deference to argument, think they have thereby purchased a right to live unmolested by argument in what they retain.

Everyone is aware of the ground upon which prayer is commonly objected to at the present time. The uniformity of nature, it is said, makes it impossible that any prayers having for their object a variation in the course of nature should be effectual. The laws of nature, ac

cording to all true observation, are constant.

Το

There is no greater or less in the matter. ask that a single drop of rain may fall, is as contradictory to science as to ask that the law of gravitation may be suspended. Prayer, therefore, having reference to anything which comes within the domain of natural laws, is forbidden by modern science.

It would be the rashness of mere ignorance and folly to enter the lists against science, or against that principle of the uniformity of nature which is at once the foundation and the crowning discovery of science. Science has been so victorious of late years, and has been adding so constantly to the strength of its main positions, that it is scarcely safe to doubt anything which is affirmed by cautious scientific men as a fact within their own domain. But when, from the proper and recognised conclusions of science, inferences are drawn which affect the spiritual life, and threaten destruction to what we have been accustomed to regard as most precious, it cannot be complained of if we scrutinise those inferences carefully. If there is a region of genuine mystery, into which the science of phenomena is pushing forward its methods too confidently, it may be forced to retire, not indeed by spiritual intimidation,

but by the opposition of realities to which it is self-compelled to pay respect.

Now the affirmation of the uniformity of nature, when pressed logically against the utility of prayer, seems to me either to prove too much or to prove nothing. We may be permitted to ask this question, Does the constancy of the laws of nature imply that the course of nature is absolutely fixed, or not?

It is surely conceivable that the negative answer might be given to this question. For the experience of every hour, of every minute, seems to show, that the actual course of nature may be altered without the slightest interference with any law of nature. Shall I blow out the candle before me, or not? It seems to me that I may do it, or refrain from doing it, as I please. In either case, no law of nature is violated. In either case, interminable consequences follow my The whole course

choice.

of nature will be different if I

do it from what

The voyage of

it would be if I did not do it. discovery of Christopher Columbus was at one time apparently within the domain of human choice. He might not have sailed; he did sail; and what prodigious results have followed, in the ordinary course of nature, as we say, from