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4
OF THE
BY
J. M. DIXON,
Minister
of
Bowlalley Lane Chapel, Hull.
HULL :
Fisher, walker, and brown, 7, scale lane.
1 8 7 2.
�The prayer of faith shall save the sick.
ST. JAMES,
The doctrine of the Old Testament is the religion of England. The first
leaf of the New Testament it does not open. It believes in a Providence which
does not treat with levity a pound sterling. They are neither transcendentalists
nor Christians. They put up no Socratic prayer, much less any saintly prayer
for the queen’s mind ; ask neither for light or right, but say bluntly “grant her
in health and wealth long to live.”
EMERSON.
Thrice blest whbse lives are faithful prayers,
Whose loves in higher love endure ;
What souls possess themselves so pure,
Or is there blessedness like theirs ?
TENNYSON.
�/
/
/
Did Prayer Save the Life
OF THE
Prince of Wales?
HE child feeling the smart of physical pain, and knowing nothing
of the imperiousness of natural law, runs to his parent for relief.
The little one imagines that his father has control of the powers
of nature, and can grant all his childish desires. He petitions his father for
the gratification of his wishes, and cries, kicks and rebels, when his prayers
of ignorance are not answered according to their folly. It is much the same
in the mental childishness of man. The savage thinks that he can manage
the capricious temper of his god by the offering of human blood. The
semi-barbarous Hebrew imagines that he can change the frown of Jehovah
into a smile by the sacrifice of animals, or his own child ; and, St. James,
in sublime ignorance of the Divine order, says, prayer can change the weather,
and restore the dying human body to health.
Such conceptions were the creation of the mental child, when the great
unknown power of the universe was conceived as a capricious man, to be
changed in temper and action by the sins and prayers of his creatures.
Now, we know that the Eternal blesses in reward and penalty by law, fixed
and unchangeable.
Every revelation of science confirms the lesson of
experience, that prayer cannot influence the Author of Life to produce a
physical effect by a spiritual cause. Were God to act out of the order of
his law in the domain of matter, in answer to man's prayer, the whole world
of physical law would be uncertain. Fire might refuse to burn or warm,
boiling water might bite us like frost, and ice burn us like fire, the solid
earth might become water, and water be changed at any moment into dry
land. The law which served us yesterday might utterly fail us to-day—the
material world be the sport of prayer. The fixed order of the world, the
�4
DID PRAYER SAVE THE LIFE OF
universal prevalence of law, is our protection against fanaticism, and our
assurance that no breath of man’s can pluck the order of nature out of the
Father’s hand, or induce Him to suspend, in any case, the action of cause
and effect.
We had thought, that as a nation, we had outgrown the childish theory
of St. James on the subject of prayer, and risen to the higher view which
sees the order of law in all things, in the smallest as well as the greatest, in
the modest lily, the hair of the head, and in the falling sparrow. But we
have been recently told, uot merely by fever-heated revivalists, and dull-eyed
fanatics, but also by men of culture, in high places, that the prayers of this
nation have saved a human life. The God of England, we are assured, has
been persuaded by the clergy and their people to step out of the order of the
physical world to save the life of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.
This young man has recently been at “death’s door.” The demon of bad
drainage seized him and pulled him down to the lowest point of life. A good
constitution, the best medical skill, with every facility for recovery, success
fully resisted the demon of disease. The battle between life and death was
for a considerable time doubtful. And in this state of suspense the sympathy
of the nation went strongly and tenderly to the sufferer. He has never been
a light of the land, or bread of life to the nation, never distinguished for
wisdom. But he is probably wiser and better than he has generally been
represented. He will, however, be our future King, if he live, and his death
at this time might have caused some trouble in our land. Besides, he is a
young man, and it is always peculiarly saddening to see death in the morning
of life, or biting winter rush into the full spring time. We all rejoice in the
Prince s recovery, for his good mother’s sake, for his sweet wife’s sake, and.
for his own sake.
But, while we thus rejoice, we are saddened by the general manifestation
of dark, heathenish superstition, which ascribes the cure of the Prince to the
prayers of the nation. The Rock (December 22, 1871), the organ of the
largest party in the Established Church, says :■—“ A tidal wave of prayer
rolled through the country on Sunday week, which, we may hope and believe,
will have saved the Heir Apparent for the kingdom, and perhaps a kingdom
for the Heir Apparent. ‘It was a great salvation,’ and so signal an answer
to prayer that the secular journals of all classes have acknowledged the plain
connection between cause and effect in the standing miracle of covenant
prayer.
Here we are told that a miracle was wrought to save the life of
the Prince, in answer to prayer. If the crisis in the sufferer had passed
immediately after the prayers of the churches, minds unperverted by theology
�THE PRINCE OF WALES ?
5
would have said a happy and remarkable coincidence. But this case is not
even a coincidence, for the crisis had passed some hours before the telegram
prayer of the Archbishop was read in the churches. Thus the clergy ascribe
to their prayers what is due to the skilful medical men and the good
constitution of the Prince. We have known cases that seemed to have far
more of miracle on the face of them than the recovery of the Prince of Wales.
Take one as a sample. We once heard an old man say in a Methodist
meeting, that God had sent him bread in answer to his prayer. The poor man
was hungry and knew not how to get a crust honestly. He went down on
his knees, and in old Methodist fashion prayed to God to send him something
to eat, and when he rose from his prayer the cart of the provision dealer was
at his door, with the needful for him. A happy coincidence. But the simple,
good, old man gave all the credit to his prayers. It did not occur to him,
what we knew to be a fact, that the provisions had been put in the cart long
before he began to pray for them. Still, this is a more plausible case of
miracle in answer to prayer than the recovery of the Prince. It is also an
easy and a cheap way of getting bread, and an excellent plan for keeping
down the poor rates. But, unfortunately, or fortunately, God does not give
the daily bread in this way. Neither does he work a miracle or breathe through
natural law to save the life of Prince or beggar.
Do the clergy and their followers really believe that their prayers saved
the life of the Prince of Wales ? If they do, why do they not exercise that
mighty power more for the good of the world ? This Royal life is not more
precious than many others. This young man has nothing to recommend him
to the special sympathy of the nation, but his high station. There are lives
far more valuable to the country than his. And if prayer can save life, why
is not that magic power exerted to keep the Kings and Princes of intellect
and heart in this world their full natural time ? Does the God of England
care more for social status, sounding titles, and gilded mediocrity, than for
genius of mind and wealth of heart ? If prayer can save human life why all
this suffering, and all this death before the night of life ? Priests and people !
if you have this power, go at once and comfort every weeping Rachel. At
this moment, yea, every moment, there are poor, lonely, broken - hearted
women sitting at the bed sides of their dying sons. How these mothers pour
out the prayers of their hearts that their sons may be spared a few years
more. But the sons die, and, with their death the light of life goes from the
hearts of the mothers. What a dark, dismal night in the hearts of the poor,
weeping Rachels, without a ray of light in the valley of time. If ever God
saves life in answer to prayer, surely he would save in such cases as these.
�6
DID PRAYER SAVE THE LIFE OF
Men of the pulpit, and people of the pews ! if your prayers could be effectual
in such instances why do you not offer them? Or, is the God of England a
respector of persons ? Does he save the son of the Royal widow in answer to
prayer, and refuse to spare the life of the poor widow’s son when she cries
her prayer of agony ? Are the lives of the common people and the Royal of
intellect and heart of less importance in the eyes of God than the life of this
young man ? Surely no professed follower of the lovely Nazarene will answer
in the affirmative.
If men have this miracle power of prayer, away with medical skill,
science, and sanitary reform. Let us go back to “ the good old days ” of
ignorance and dirt. Break up our Boards of Health. Why waste our money
for these when we can have health by the short and easy method of prayer ?
When we are sick we will pray, and be made whole. When the drainage is
bad, and the ah’ laden with poison, we will pray, and be saved. And if God
will do miracles for the body, why not also for the mind ? Let us live in
wilful ignorance, and pray to be wise. Yea, let us have the miracles which
will make us all men and women of genius. And surely if prayer can save
the bodies of men it can also save their souls. How is it then that we have
so many heathens in our land ? There are thousands upon thousands of
human beings in the hells of time in all our large towns. Men sunk in crime,
women who have sold their purity, children lost in moral and physical
corruption. Day by day, countless numbers of earnest men and women pray
that these poor home heathens may be delivered from the devil of vice ; and
still the vicious are unsaved. If prayer could make men wise and good, earth
would be a Paradise, for there are no lack of prayers for Heaven's will to
“ be done on earth.”
It clearly is not the will of the Eternal that prayer should save men,
mentally, morally, or bodily. And the very people who say that God saved
the life of the Prince of Wales, in answer to their prayers, do not practically
believe in such efficacy of prayer. They recently denied their own theory
in prosecuting the “ Peculiar Family,” for trusting to prayer and anointing,
to save the lives of their children. That people kept to the Bible lesson—
“ The prayer of faith shall save the sick.” They had a larger faith than the
ministers and members of the popular churches. They would have no
secondary cause to cast suspicion on the cause ; doctors and medicine they
would not have. This lamentable fanaticism is the logical sequence of the
church theory that prayer has saved a human life. And the ministers and
congregations in our land, with few exceptions, have recently encouraged
this superstition, which confronts God’s law, and calls human attention from
the Divine order.
�THE PRINCE OF WALES ?
7
After this we must not be surprised to hear of church prayers for the
death of such troublesome persons as unorthodox thinkers. The notion that
God will save men in answer to prayer, naturally leads to the other ignorant
presumption—that he will remove obnoxious persons from this world for the
petitions of the self-styled faithful. If God saved the life of the Prince for the
prayers of the nation, why not those whose heaven cannot admit a thought
beyond their little theology, pray that those whom they please to call heretics
and unbelievers, may be sent to a speedy death ? The recent fanaticism of our
churches finds genial society in that bigoted zeal which in America, a few
years ago, thus prayed for a great preacher and author of unpopular belief :—
“ O Lord, if this man is a subject of grace, convert him and bring him into
the kingdom of thy dear Son : but if he is beyond the reach of the saving
influence of the Gospel, remove him out of the way, and let his influence
die with him.” “ 0 Lord, send confusion and distraction into his study
this afternoon, and prevent his finishing his preparation for his labours
to-morrow ; or if lie shall attempt to desecrate thy holy day by attempting to
speak to the people, meet him there, O Lord, and confound him so that he
shall not be able to speak ! ” How very kind, thus to pray, for a man whose
sin is that of refusing to bow to the popular theology.
This baneful superstition — this folly of prayer — means that the
government of the world is in the hands of caprice. It would throw the
world back to the dark days, when men cowered before a tyrant and an
uncertain God, the creation of human ignorance. But light is coming before
which superstition wanes. “ The religion which is to guide and fulfil the
present and coming ages, whatever else it be, must be intellectual. The
scientific mind must have a faith which is science. ‘There are two things,’
said Mahomet, ‘which I abhor—the learned in his infidelities, and the fool in
his devotions! ’ Our times are impatient of both, and especially the last.
Let us have nothing now which is not its own evidence. There is surely
enough for the heart and imagination in the religion itself. Let us not be
pestered with assertions and half-truths, with emotions and snuffle.”
The wisely devout man will not take prayer into the region of physics.
He who is wisely impressed with the solemn mystery of life, and the secret
emotions of his spiritual nature, will be reserved in his devout utterances.
The things of his deeper life are often too delicate and sacred to be proclaimed
in the ears of men. In such spiritual moods man prefers the prayer of hidden
desire to that which goes forth in speech. He loves to be with the Lord of
�8
DID PRAYER SAVE THE LIFE OF THE PRINCE OF WALES ?
life, in the lone garden of devout soliloquy, and on the holy mount of
aspiration, where
“ No voice breaks through the stillness of this world,”
where there is deep, deep silence, which to the listening ear is the most
audible speech. Above all, he will have the prayer without ceasing, the life
of devotion, by living in the spirit of truth, and in the constant unfolding of
his powers. Thus, his life will be a perpetual prayer, and an unbroken hymn
of praise, making part of the full choral service in Mother Church—the
Cathedral of Nature. And, yet, he will feel that he is but a stammerer in
the choir of ‘‘ St. Nature” :—
“With stammering lips and insuffi cient sound
I strive and struggle to deliver right
That music of my nature, day and night
With dream and thought and feeling interwound,
And inly answering all the senses round
With octaves of a mystic depth and height
Which step out grandly to the infinite
From the dark edges of the sensual ground.”
Printed by Fisher, Walker, & Brown, 7, Scale Lane, Hull.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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Did prayer save the life of the Prince of Wales?
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Dixon, J. M.
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Place of publication: Hull
Collation: 8 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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Fisher, Walker and Brown
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1872
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CT23
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Conway Tracts
Edward VII
Prayer