1
10
1
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/e0b8e8546950307ccdf7e55aa0289111.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=sOjpw3JigRLIfN%7EBsv-Q0nrAnRh%7EqbktewxuMBWjSHyV2yXTNERjLsAfDdWkCeZms0I1W%7EQ5Tf-R7FN%7EPtA-hpno8mCNX9DPW30D0WhgwuDdsCqh1731nC1MxgIsGTrhGm7otfBOFByoWboqpv2htsOk1c8a0%7Eb1cvEvuV0Bks0mufhHjxarmgJ5-kuYyQWn-BP6HuBU8BGhXxRK2jfqbGGMMeX7UVVBv0t0m5olPFL78n%7EacETLTkggo9i5UeU51G5rD%7ElgqrMvGcyTHswSs2QLJrDd-MBuqyL-JVWxSrJQQkOwgFDrgGTf6LgFS8kA4Msb1y0o67lXsGO17vM9xg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
afc512fe8746dce598ab153820bc60de
PDF Text
Text
Pamphlets for the People
No. 3
WHAT IS
THE USE OF
PRAYER?
CHAPMAN
COHEN
THE PIONEER PRESS
�What is the Use of Prayer?
i.
“Without Prayer there would be no Religion.”
Dr. Ji. W. Inge, late Dean of St. Paul’s.
“Men would not pray unless they expected to get something
by it, and that their prayers would have the effect of
securing it.”—Archdeacon Paley.
Why do men pray? The obvious reason is that given
by Archdeacon Paley: they hope to get something
which they would not get without it. Whether we
pray for a change in the weather, for safety while at
sea, or for recovery from-sickness, the same thing holds.
Mankind has produced quite a number of varieties of
the genus “fool,” but there has never existed that kind
of a fool who would pray while convinced that it would
make no difference to the course of events.
But when man prays he must pray to some one, to
one that is able to listen and respond. No one prays
to a volcano to stop erupting, or to the rain to stop
falling. There is, of course, the childish rhyme.
Rain, rain, go away, come again another day
but no adult now believes the petition has any effect
on the weather. Yet, put the child’s rhyme in the
form of a solemn prayer, say it in proper form, recite
it in a church, and it is believed that some one listens
and stops the rain, although he might not have done
so had the prayer remained unsaid. We should like
someone to try to establish a real difference between the
child’s incantation and the adult’s prayer.
�WHAT IS THE USE OF PRAYER?
3
Prayer is a matter of a transaction between two
persons.
Mian asks and God grants.
If either of
the two terms is wiped out prayer is impossible. Or
if things would happen as they do whether one prays
or not, then prayer becomes a manifest absurdity.
Paley is right. Dr. Inge is also right when he says
that without prayer there would be no religion. The
practice of prayer is based on the belief that gods exist
and that they manipulate events in the interests of those
who pray.
Primitive peoples pray for rain and for success in
life exactly as Christians do to-day, but with more
logic and sincerity.
Roman Catholic papers out of
England—they are carefully trimmed for the British
public—give numerous accounts of recoveries from
sickness, of jobs gained, of good business deals done,
as a result of prayers to God or the Saints. In
continental churches stacks of crutches are exhibited
which are said to belong to those who have been
cured by .prayer. So medicine-men of a savage tribe
pray for their chief, exactly as the Archbishop in this
country prays for the King, and with equal results.
All Churches, Synagogues, Mosques and other places
of worship have their set prayers, and in the long run
they all boil down to the identical petition, “Oh Lord
give us something.’’ It may be that God made man
so that man might worship him, it is equally certain
that the worship would not continue for long unless
it was believed that God did something in return.
Gods are not worshipped for merely existing. They
are believed in and worshipped as in investment, and
the dividends received are duly published. The reason
for prayer is that God does something for those who
pray.
Without this belief prayer would die, and
“without prayer there would be no religion.’’
There is no real doubt why men pray; neither is
there any doubt as to why mankind developed the
practice of and the belief in prayer. Prayer origin
�4
WHAT IS THE USE OF PRAYER?
ates at that stage of human development when man
thinks of the forces around him as akin to himself.
So far as he thinks about what is going on <n the
world outside himself, he reasons as a child would,
if it faced the world without the stored-up knowledge
and experience which is the heritage of all in a civil
ized society. Man feels that somehow or other he
must get on terms with these powers that are angry
with him in the storm, and pleased with him in the
smile of the sunshine. If the rain does not fall or if
the crops wither, or if a disease breaks out, it is be
cause the gods are angry with man. In these circum
stances f\e reacts to the different aspects of nature as
he does to those men who are stronger than himself,
or who exert authority. He praises, he flatters, he
worships. In other words he gives the gods service,
and he expects something solid in return.
But unlike the modern religionist, primitive man,
or even semi-civilized man, is not above “talking
back’’ to his gods. If the gods fail him he may turn
to others.
In a more advanced stage even the
temple of a defaulting god may be closed. He very
easily, as missionaries among primitive peoples, find,
swaps one god for another, if greater benefits are
promised.
Many amusing instances of this are given in that
great encyclopeadia of primitive customs, The Golden
Bough, by Sir James Frazer.
Here is one of them
concerning an incident that occurred in Sicily as recently
as 1893.
There had been- a very long drought. The earth
was parched, processions of priests and people had
marched through the streets of Palermo, and conse
crated candles had been burned in the churches in
honour of certain selected saints. At last the peasants
lost patience.
Many of the saints were banished
altogether. At Palermo they threw St. Joseph into a
garden, so that he might see for himself how bad things
�WHAT IS THE USE OF PRAYER?
6
were, and threatened to leave him there till the rain
fell. The golden wings of St. Michael were taken from
his. shoulders and replaced with pasteboard.
His
purple mantle was taken from him, and he was given
a mere clout for a covering. At Liacto, the patron saint
was reviled, put in irons and threatened with drowning
or hanging if he did not soon send rain. “Rain or the
rope,’’ was the cry of the people.
But it is not often that the modern believers thus
stand up to their gods. The worse they are treated the
lower they grovel. The more the gods punish them,
the louder they declare their unworthiness, and the
more vehemently they proclaim the greatness and the
justice of the god who is afflicting them.
In all this we have the persistence of the original
mentality which is enshrined in all our creeds and
catechisms, which is expressed in our spring festivals
when the god is asked to give us a good crop. In
the harvest thanksgiving when he is thanked for what
he has given, in the blessing of Ashing boats and nets,
in the official prayers for fain, for the health of the
King, and, in a more vulgar form, in the lavish use
of mascots, in the belief in lucky days, and in the
common conviction that when disaster occurs to a people,,
it is because they have offended or “forgotten’’ God,
there is the persistence of primitive beliefs.
But if we are certain of anything it is that when
there is a ,bad harvest it is due to bad soil, or bad
weather, or bad husbandry, or, other assignable causes.
If an Atheist and a Christian start farming, the
Christian is no better off than the Atheist.
Whether
a man reads his Bible daily or his Freethinker weekly,
makes not the least difference, other things equal. A
doctor who sent his consumptive patients for residence
to a Church in preference to a sanatorium would soon
find himself out of practice. And* those people in this
country who trust to the “Prayer of faith to save the
sick,’’ may, if their child dies, find themselves brought
�€
WHAT IS THE USE OF PRAYER?
before a Christian judge and sent to a Christian prison
for the offence of trusting to the power of prayer. British
law and British common sense say that you may believe
in prayer, but it is criminal to rely upon it.
When prayers are offered up in churches for rain,
or for good crops, or for the health of the King, or
for our Members of Parliament to be dowered with
wisdom, who is it that is deceived? It cannot be the
Christian God, because we have it authoritatively
stated that he cannot be deceived.
It is not the
clergy, they are the operators. Who is’it that is fooled?
It must be the people.
II.
Dr. R.. W. Inge is one of the ablest of modern theo
logians. Until recently he was Dean of St. Paul’s
Cathedral, London.
At the modern Churchman’s
Conference held at Oxford, in August, 1936, Dr. Inge
gave an address on “What to Believe About Prayer.’’
He began by assuring his audience that there was no
subject “on which Christ spoke with more downright
explicitness than of the efficacy of prayer.’’ By example
and precept Jesus taught that prayer could accomplish
miracles. The dead were raised, the blind coukj be
made to see and the lame to walk. The Christian
Church, officially, teaches that all things may be
accomplished by prayer. There is not a critical occasion
in the life of the country when the Churches do not
announce a united service of prayer, as though by a kind
of mass volleying, high heaven will do what the people
want.
But Dr. Inge deliberately scoffs at the idea that our
prayers can have any influence on the weather. He
says: —
�WHAT IS THE USE OF PRAYER?
7
The more we know about the causes of clmatlc phenomena
the less likely we are even to dream of changing them
in order to save our hay crop, or to secure a fine day for
our garden party.
Which is exactly what Freethinkers have been trying
to drive into the heads of believing Christians.
Prayers for the sick come off quite as badly. Thus:—
But can we consistently give up praying for rain with
the expectation of altering the weather for dur benefit and
continue to pray fdr the recovery of a relation pr a friend
in sickness. Knowledge has been enlarged in this field
also during our lifetime. We know something about microbes;
how can they be affected by our prayers?
/
For generations Freethinkers have been insisting that
faith in prayer was only another name for igiiorance.
Here is one of the most prominent clerics of the Eng
lish Church saying the same thing without disguise.
We have said thousands of times what Dr. Inge is
now permitted to say to a congregation of his fellow
Christians.
Of course, it is said without acknow
ledgment of the work of Freethinkers, and when a
Freethinking trpth is admitted it is duly acknow
ledged—as a product of Christianity. We do make
headway, even among the leaders of the Christian
Church.
But if prayers for rain and for the sick are of no
value to-day, then they were of no value at any time.
Microbes did not begin to exist the other day.
Meteorological processes did not commence yesterday.
Prayers were as useless in the time of Christ as they
are in the time of Edward the Eighth. The teachings
of the New Testament that the prayer of faith shall
save the sick, were as false when the advice was
given as they are now. The teachings of the Churches
were completely wrong, the money taken by the
churches was money obtained by fraud, and the
buildings, the churches erected for the purpose of
�8
WHAT IS THE USE OF PRAYER?
prayer, were so many monuments to fraud or folly,
or both.
This is not all. The Church of England has set
prayers for rain, for better harvests, for the sick, and
so forth. The Church of England prayer-book says
definitely that whatsoever one’s disease may be, it “is
certainly God’s visitation.’’ There is a kind of lunatic
logic in asking God to take away a disease he has
definitely inflicted, but lunatic logic is not unusual in
religious reasoning. When the late King George was
ill, prayers for his recovery were ordered by the
Churches*, and when he recovered, God was thanked
for what he had done.
The Church said it was
God’s visitation. Ex-dean Inge says it was a matter
of microbes, and the prayers were all so much rubbish.
Why thank God for the King’s recovery if the doctors
cured him? Why thank the doctors for the recovery
if God cured him? Was it to humour God that prayers
were offered, or was it to fool the doctors that they
were thanked for effecting a cure?
If prayer is of any value, why wait till a man is
dying, or the crops are perishing, or the land is
parched before prayers are said? Prevention is better
than cure, so why not set aside, saj*, a week at the
commencement of each year, apd offer an omnibus
prayer for all the things we want for the rest of the
twelve months? Is it only with God that we are to wait
for a preventable accident to happen before a move is
made to protect the public from danger? A local council
that behaved in this stupid manner would find itself held
up to public condemnation.
Still further. Dr. Inge was for many years Dean
of St. Paul’s. On official occasions he had to take
part in prayers for the health of the Royal Family,
for the victory of the nation in war, and for rain
when it was needed. How long has Dr. Inge held
these ideas about prayer? Was he always praying with
his tongue in his cheek, or had he to wait until he
retired from office before he reached a conclusion that
�WHAT IS THE USE OF
PRAYER?
9
was a commonplace with millions of people outside the
Church?
And how many other preachers inside the
Church hold the same belief as Dr. Inge without saying
anything about it?
Dr. Inge asks whether the consequences of prayer
can be tested by statistical methods. He implies they
cannot. But if prayer has any observable effect it must
be a calculable one.
Dr. Inge asks whether the
husband of a “prayerful wife’’ has a . better life value
to an insurance office than has a husband whose wife
does not pray? The answer is that insurances com
panies decline to recognize any such influence. They
require, other things equal, the same premiums, whether
people are Christians or Atheists. Insurance companies
enquire into a man’s family history, what were the ages
of father and mother when they died, are there certain
diseases in the family, and some ask whether a man is
a teetotaller or not.
But none of them asks whether
the applicant prays regularly. Even those companies
that cater specially for the clergy make no allowance
for very prayerful characters. If there is any building
in the world that is guarded by prayer it is a church;
but insurance companies will ask a bigger premium for
a church without a-lightning conductor than they would
for an Atheist lecture-haH with one.
The Royal Family are prayed for more th^n any
other family.
Have they a longer life or a better
life than other people have?
Everyone knows they
have not, and in several of the royal families of the
world, mental and other diseases are marked. Being
the defender of The faith did not give George the Fifth
robust health; it did not endow George the Second with
wisdom; nor did it save George the Third from insanity.
Thare is a special prayer in the Litany, “That it
may please Thee to endue the Lords of the Council
and the Nobility with grace, wisdom and understanding.’’
Has anyone been able to trace any marked result of
that prayer said regularly and with professional
competency ?
�10
WHAT'IS THE USE OF PRAYER?
Every Church Congress since the Christian Church
was established has been opened with prayer. Never
have these assemblies been cited, even by Christians, as
examples of wisdom, good feeling and a sense of justice.
There is no direction in which one can look for answer
to prayer.
There is also a special petition in the prayer book
for safety at sea—altered a few years back to one
for “seamen of the British Navy.” This may have
been done because it was thought that asking God to
look after all was too big a job, or because it was
considered that if God would look after the British Navy,
other navies could take their chance. But will anyone
say that the number of those lost at sea differs in
proportion to the prayers said? The Board of Trade
has a number of regulations for sea-going ships; it
makes no provision whatever in the matter of prayer.
It does say that ships carrying more than a certain
number of passengers must carry a qualified doctor, it
says nothing about parsons. It considers the famous
Plimsoll line of greater consequence than the prayers
of the united British churches.
There is no test to which the believer will submit to
prove that prayers are answered. Belief in praver is
nowadays a huge “bluff.” The Freethinker calls the
bluff—and the Christian runs away.
Dr. Inge says:—
The very definite promises made by Jesus Christ seem
to be contradicted by experience. Most of us would say
they have been contradicted by common experience. Hence
the problem troubles us all the time.
4‘Seem,” to be contradicted by experience!
The
belief in prayer is contradicted by all experience*. Dr.
Inge knows this as well as we do, but it is hard for
any cleric—active or retired—to be intellectually straight
forward where religion is concerned. Even a horse
gets attached to ^linkers in time, and a dog learns to
love its collar.
�WHAT IS THE USE OF PRAYER?
11
III.
But Dr. Inge still professes allegiance to something
which he may call religion, even though the very core of
religion is absent from it. He says:—
If prayer has no efficacy we must give up not only our
trust in the plain words of Christ, but all practice of
religion, for if prayer has no result, no one could care to
pray, and without prayer there can be no religion. Prayer
is * the very breath of religion; its most essential and
characteristic activity.
So Dr. Inge must find some use for prayer, and save
something that can be called religion; and as
the notion that the world is governed by natural laws
which may be modified or suspended at any time by divine
intervention is felt to be the least satisfactory of philosophies,
some place for prayer must be found, where its conse
quences cannot be tested, or even observed.
There are two pleas put in, both worthy of the
greenest of green young curates. The first is:—
If we ask why men pray, the simple answer is; because
they cannot help it.
This is very crude. There are many millions who
never pray, and the number of those who do pray is
steadily diminishing. Of course there is a sense in
which whatever one does, cannot be helped. It is as
true of a man crawling round a room on his knees as
it is of a man kneeling to pray. That kind of thing
ought not to pass muster in a Sunday school.
The second reason looks better: but involves mental
crookedness.
In so far as prayer is loving intercourse or reverent
homage, or thanksgiving, or meditation on the revered
�12
WHAT IS THE USE OF
PRAYER?
attributes of God, or contrition for sin, it is meaningless
to ask whether it is efficacious. No one doubts that as
an exercise it deepens character, strengthens the will, purifies
the affections, and brings peace, rest and blessedness.
This passage is priceless as an example of the sheer
verbiage a man of ability may put forth when he is
trying to rationalize an absurdity. Loving intercourse
with whom? For what? If God does nothing, if he
does not interfere with things, if things will happen
as they do happen, whether we pray or not, what have
we to thank God for? The only thing left is to thank
God for doing nothing. Does all this spiritual ’ “kow
towing” really mean no more than an Alice in Wonderland
performance?
Of course prayer brings comfort to most of those who
believe in it.
No one has ever disputed this. The
war-dance of the savage encourages him to fight. The
wearing of a mascot strengthens the confidence of those
who are idiotic enough to wear them. An hysteric may
be cured by faith in Jesus Christ, or in a doctor, or
in a bread pill, a gambler may feel strengthened by
carrying a rabbit’s foot, or warned not to gamble by
a black cat crossing his path. The question is not
whether people believe certain things benefit them—all
the quacks and humbugs in the worjd, political, religious,
social and literary—live on this belief.
The real
question is whether this kind of belief rests on more than
pure self-suggestion?
Dr. Inge must know that the science upon which he
relies says very definitely that “divine interference” is
not merely untrue of what takes place in the physical
world, but of the mental world also. And among the
things that science is rapidly bringing to an under
standing is the mechanism of this phenomenon of self
suggestion which plays so large a part in all cases of
hysteria, and its attendant ailments.
It is this grain of truth in tfie practice of prayer which
is used—often criminally used—by quacks of all kinds,
�WHAT IS THE USE OF PRAYER?
13
and, which forms the stock-in-trade of the travelling
evangelist, while it also forms the basis of the
megalomaniacal ravings of Mrs. Eddy and her benighted
followers. If Dr. Inge cares to call this kind of thing
“spiritual influence,’’ he may do so; but no one has
ever disputed the /ability of a man to deceive himself,
whether it be for goodness or badness. And if a man
will deceive. himself, he can have no better machinery,
than that provided by religion.
But is this process of self-deception what the world
really understands by prayer? Is it what Dr. Inge had
in mind when for many years he read the official prayers,
and when he stood in the pulpit and said to his
congregation, “Let us pray’’?
Did he really mean
to say:—
There is no answer to the prayer which I am asking
you to offer in the shape of any visible alteration in the
course of events. You must not expect rain to fall in
answer to your prayer, nor that disease will be cured. Microbes
are not influenced by prayer, nor are meteorological conditions
changed. Prayers will save neither the sailor at sea nor the
soldier on land. But if you can persuade yourself that there
is someone somewhere who will listen to your prayer and
will answer it as you desire, then you will find that prayer
will bring you peace and blessedness.
I think that if Dr. Inge had addressed his congrega
tion in these plain words he would soon have been
without a congregation to address. But he was only
following the example of large numbers of the more
intelligent of the clergy in thus using the old phrase
ology, while inwardly giving his words a new inter
pretation.
Preachers thus believe one thing and say
another. I admit that this1 kind of double-dealing is
not cofifinetf to the Church, but it is in the Church
that it finds its strongest and most popular expression.
Ministers of religion often indulge in this practice
�14
WHAT IS THE USE OF PRAYER?
'because they think their congregations will complain if
told what the clergy really think. Congregations go on
pretending to believe what is told them, because they
do not wish to shock their parson. Open and honest
speech on both sides might lead to some startling results.
Belief in the efficacy of prayer belongs, as I have
said, to the childhood of the race.
It bejongs to a
time when mankind believed that nature was a com
plex of living forces that could be swayed in their
action by prayers and worship.
Thence arose the
elaborate ceremonies that belong to the religions of
the world. Prayer meant the establishment of diplomatic
relations between man and the gods.
But these
diplomatic relations were disturbed by the growing
knowledge that the forces of nature were not conscious
of man’s desires and needs, that they were not deviated
from their path by his prayers; and with that knowledge
there set in the decline of the belief in prayer.
To-day science will have nothing to do with prayer.
It cannot admit the slightest probability or possibility
that the course of natural happenings is to be influenced
in this way.
And, willy-nilly, other people follow
the line indicated by science. Their attitude is that
of Falstaff (adapted) “Will prayer mend a broken
arm? No. Will prayer mend a broken leg?
No.
Prayer hath no skill in surgery.
A fig then for
prayer; I’ll none of it.’’ History endorses the dictum
of wise old Montaigne, “We prav only by custom and
habit.’’
But the power of even custom and habit has its
limitations.
And Dr. Inge’s theory, that prayer is
good so long as one can persuade oneself that it is
good, will not work.
People have not prayed for
health, or for rain, or for protection, or for victory,
�WHAT LS THE USE OF PRAYER?
15
because they believed they were indulging in a kind
of mild mental exercise, or because they wished to
fool themselves with phrases.
They prayed because
they believed there were gods that took sides with
those who praised them and punished those who
did not. Let this belief die and religion exists as a
mere shadow of a shade, while the gods join that
lengthy procession of dead deities that wind like a
ghostly caravan across the face of history.
The position of the educated clergy to-day is not
one to be envied. In terms of historic Christian belief
and doctrine they are committed to the belief in, and
teaching of, the power of prayer.
In the light of
scientific knowledge, in view of their own self-respect,
they are bound to recognize the absurdity of belief
in prayer.
Some of those who have begun their
ministerial career have broken away, although family
and social connexions often keep them silent concerning
their opinions. Others decline the priesthood although
their parents had destined them to enter this ancient,
but hardly, to-day, wholly honourable profession. Those
who, despite their knowledge and understanding, enter
the ministry, find themselves on the horns of a dilemma.
On the one hand, if they openly discard prayer, without
which religion has no sense of reality, they will lose
the support of multitudes of simple-minded believers.
On the other hand, if they proclaim the power of prayer,
they know they will lose the respect, even though
they may retain a measure of deference, of more intelligent
and better-educated folk. And beyond all is the deeper
question as to the use of a God who does nothing to
help those who believe in him, and nothing against those
wbo do not. It is good to find a man of Dr. Inge’s
eminence repudiating the historic function or prayer. It
would also be interesting to know for how long he has
�16
WHAT IS THE USE OF PRAYER?
held this belief about prayer. It would be still more
interesting to know how many thousands of the clergy,
in practice, share Dr. Inge’s opinions, and how many
of them awaA till their retiring age, before taking the
general public into their confidence.
The belief in prayer was
the religious world. To-day
and is fast becoming a
churches sre called upon to
prospect is—Bankruptcy.
once the greatest asset of
it is ceasing to be an asset
liability.
And when the
liquidate this liability, the
Published by
G W Foote & Co., Ltd.
702 Holloway Road
London N19 3NL.
Printed by
Aidgate Press
84b Whitechapel High Street
London El.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
What is the use of prayer?
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Cohen, Chapman [1868-1954]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 16 p. ; 19 cm.
Series title: Pamphlets for the People
Series number: No. 3
Notes: Published by G.W. Foote & Co. Ltd. Printed by Aldgate Press. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Pioneer Press
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[c. 1910]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
N169
Subject
The topic of the resource
Prayer
Religious practice
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (What is the use of prayer?), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
NSS
Prayer