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CT zoo
THE
EFFICACY OF PRAYER.
A LETTER TO THOMAS SCOTT.
A
FOREIGN
PUBLISHED
BY
CHAPLAIN.
THOMAS
SCOTT,
No. 11 The Terrace, Farquhar Road, Upper Norwood,
London, S.E.
1873.
Price Threepence.
��THE EFFICACY OF PRAYER.
DEAR FRIEND,
COMPLY with your request, by attempting
a letter on
“ Efficacy
Prayer,” without
Ihowever beingtheconscious ofofmuch originality or
even “heterodoxy,” to recommend what I may
find to say on so transcendent a topic.
As to
the heterodoxy, I am pretty well persuaded that
our Biblical and Liturgical doctrines on the subject
will, in their highest and broadest acceptation, admit
a very close approach to the conclusions of nearly
every earnest, sober, and unbiassed thinker, aspiring,
irrespective of time and circumstance, to worship God
in Understanding and in Spirit.
You remember of old that our divergence of
religious views generally arose from my demanding
ampler recognition of the aspirational or emotional
claims of our complex nature, than you, from your
more realistic entrenchments, were inclined to con
cede. It was in fact the time-honoured well-worn
controversy between Realism and Idealism, or, as
some would say, Prose and Poetry, in which I main
tained, as I still do, that within the realm of Religion,
the aspirations of our Spirit, with their vague yearn
ings, prophetic forecastings, silent ponderings, and
instinctive impulses, possess a deeper power of insight
into transcendental truths than can, in this murky
.earthly medium, be assigned to any mere scientific,
dexterity of demonstration.
No doubt the two
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The Efficacy of Prayer.
moieties of our mental constitution are destined to
control and regulate each other, avoiding the perilous
extreme of effervescent enthusiasm on the one side,
or that of hard material positivism on the other. We
may be sure that creating Providence would not have
equipped us with two such orders of endowment, had
not the development of both been essential to our
equilibrium. A man listening exclusively to his
ideal ponderings and imaginative promptings, will
soon, like the engine without its regulator, get out of
gear by undue violence of moving power ; but what
the engine is with lack of steam, that, I apprehend,
is our semi-divine nature withont some latent-heat of
mysticism within it. If our nature be not semi
divine,—be not, that is, animated and illumined by
smouldering light and fire of Godhead,—then, of
course, Religion, with its ancillary “Prayer,” is
mere morbid delusion : we are but a higher develop
ment of animal, as animal of vegetable, and vegetable
of mineral, mere circulating dust and curious chemical
digesters, liable to be disturbed in our real business
of “ assimilation” by morbid fancies of futurity and
divinity, which practical sense of duty should stu
diously suppress. This, however, was never your
position. We both acknowledged Religion as the
birth-right of Man, not to be sold or bartered for
cold and feckless philosophic pottage ; but you looked
for it more in the head, I in the “ heart, maintaining
with King David, that there is its true temple or
tabernacle. I believed then, as I do still, that the
ablest among us, taking counsel of his brain only, is
likely enough, to land in Atheism, finding infinite
Creation as easy to conceive as an infinite Creator.
But let him look into his “ heart,” and he is a “ fool
to refuse its evidence and say, “ there is no God !
The drift, then, of all that I have to say will be
towards conciliating the “ Realism ” that would, in
its extreme logical result, shut us out from every hope
�The Efficacy of Prayer.
y
of help but that of putting our own shoulder to the
wheel, whose only Litany is “ Orare Laborare ; ” and
the Idealism which, when fairly indignant at the
ignoring of what it holds to be the more sacred half of
our nature, may, by force of re-action, be led to over
look the co-ordinate and no less imperative demands
of reasonable sense and soberness. A recent visit to
England has shown me that this and kindred ques
tions are now mooted with a boldness and publicity
which by no means so characterised public opinion
when we used to compare theologic notes, as with bated
breath, years ago, under your genial roof on the
Foreland coast. Large print and leading articles are
now at the free and full service of speculations which,
a quarter of a century since, were under a Social, no
less than Ecclesiastical, Ban ; then even the most
reverential enquirer found his head against a stream
too strong for individual stemming. Now, if he be
timid as well as reverential, he may chance to be
frightened at the ebb-tide of National Orthodoxy
sweeping away more landmarks than he likes to lose,
and alarming his nervous senses as with a roar of
Niagara in the distance. Without figure of speech,
I was startled at the general exoteric currency of
controversies that used to seek esoteric conclave;
and this remark absolves me from any further scruple
as to the expression of opinions, no longer as
formerly, of a kind to shock stereotype conclusions
resting content on traditional authority, rather than
seeking to give an answer for the hope that
is in them. You, I know, have made yourself
the centre of a circle of active and fearless investi
gators with whom my conclusions are more likely to
sin by their halfness than their boldness ; but if
you can value them as standing wear and tear, and
being consistent, without having aimed at consist
ency, you are free to give them any “ imprimatur ’’
you think proper.
B
�8
The Efficacy of Prayer.
Among other signs of the times that struck in®
was an agitation as to the “ practical ” results of
prayer, embodied in printed proposals, from no mean
quarter, to the effect that such efficacy should be put
to positive test within the walls of a hospital, one
ward of which should be solemnly commended to
faithful and righteous prayer in addition to the usual
curative ways and means within reach of them all.
This, it was argued on the Realistic side, would be a
fair and searching trial of the true value of spiritual
supplication. Nothing, it was urged, being holier in
its purpose than prayer for recovery of the sick—
should no propitious reply be vouchsafed to such
petitions, as evinced by increased per-centage of
recovery, then should we have little or no right to
expect it for any other orisons we might offer. This
strange project, betraying views, as it seemed to me,
of a crude and coarse kind, I had opportunities of
hearing referred to, even in pulpits of the Estab
lished Church, where, as may be supposed, it would
meet with no great favour or respect. Yet I could
not help thinking that such a subject, once publicly
propounded, was worthy of more precision in the way
of dealing with it than it happened to be my lot to
listen to. There is at least a superficial look of fair
play and common sense about such an abrupt chal
lenge that naturally attracts the wistful attention of
“ practical ” people, whose minds might easily be
unsettled by uncertain sounds in the trumpet replying
to it. That such sounds, as far as I heard them, were
uncertain, or at least wanting in the force and fullness
to be wished, was, and still is, my impression; and
having risked an opinion that may smack of presump
tion, I will now make it my purpose herewith to
subject my own kindred lucubrations to the proba
bility of similar criticism. Such an exordium will
no doubt prepare you for something more like a
sermon than a letter, but having proposed such a
�The Efficacy of Prayer.
9
solemn theme, you must of course tolerate a solemn
tone. I promise you, however, as little of a homily,
or at any rate as plain a one, as I can put together,
knowing of old that the “ drum ecclesiastic ” is not
the music you best love to listen to.
What I have to substantiate is the assertion that
the TwyAesi interpretation of our Biblical and Liturgical
didactics would place the efficacy of prayer, not in its
influence on external circumstance, but in its inward
and reflexive working on the soul of the petitioner.
I will try to show that neither the Bible nor the
Book of Common Prayer, in the loftiest spirit of their
teaching, ever encourage us to suppose that our sup
plications can affect the ordinary course of outward
events, as regulated by that Will and Way of God,
which manifest themselves in what we call “ Laws of
Nature.” Many on religious grounds have, I know,
an objection to this term, 11 Laws of Nature,” and one
is only too happy in these times to bow low to any
scruple of a reverential kind. Yet is it an imperative
religious duty to refer the laws of Nature to Nature’s
God, and we have no higher revelation of the divine
characteristics than their immutability—11 Without
variableness or shadow of turning.” We none of us
could contemplate as possible any change in the
moral laws, as of Truth and Justice, for example. We
all know and feel that in moral as in physical laws,
“A false balance is, and must be, 1 an abomination to
the Lord.’ ” Truth is a reality, or entity, and is part
of the all-pervading Being that alone is, and compre
hends every extant modification of subordinate Being.
Untruth, or a “ false balance,” is negative or non
existent, and therefore Atheistic, and thus no truth
can ever change or become untruth, whether we
distinguish it as physical or moral. The Hebrew tetragrammaton
(an aoristic form of the substantive
verb) expresses this in the most picturesque way, by
giving to the “ Name ” of God the value of the three
�io
"
Ehe Efficacy of Prayer.
tenses, past, present, and future—“ The same yester
day, to-day, and for ever.” Considering in this light
the “ Laws of Nature ” as not external or extrinsic to
the Deity, but absolutely intrinsic, co-ordinate, and im
manent, they lose that hard aspect of materialism which
is apt to alienate feelings and sentiments entitled to
the tenderest and most respectful treatment. It would
certainly seem, then, that we were authorised to
consider physical laws as being no less changeless
than moral, seeing that they both alike are expres
sions of the Will and Way of the same changeless
originating Power. Who in fact can conceive as
possible any physical change in the law, that a straight
line is the shortest between two points, that three angles
of a triangle equal two right angles, or that a circle
cannot touch another in more points than one ? If it be
said that a fact be not a “ law,” it at any rate belongs
to a “ law,” and such a fact as that two contiguous
mountains must have an intervening valley, may
assume the dignity of law with equal right as that
claimed by an angle of incidence equalling its angle
of reflection. The religious demur to the invariability
of Physical Laws seems to arise, first, from assuming
that they are in existence as external incidents or
accidents in the Universe, and that as such it would
be derogating from Divine Omnipotence to deny that
they could be changed or suspended. Are not,
indeed, “ all things possible with God ?” But this
dictum, like most others of a transcendent sort, is an
example of “ extremes meeting,” as it would be
equally true, and equally reverential, to say, that
with God but one thing is possible, viz., the thing
which is. Can Almighty Power be exerted in any
way but the wisest way ? and can there be two ways
of doing the same thing in the wisest, or “most wise ”
way ? Does not, in fact, the same Scriptural Authority
that enounces all things as possible with God, else
where limit such possibility in terms equally express,
�The Efficacy of Prayer.
11
** Si possibile transeat Calix sed non quod ego volo,
sed quod Tu ”—“ If it be possible, let this cup pass.”
We must guard accordingly against narrow and dero
gatory views on this mysterious Chapter of Omni
potence, united with the maximum of Wisdom and
Knowledge, inevitably limiting Almighty Government
(rather pondered in the heart than formalised in the
head)—inevitably limiting Almighty Government by
self-existent statutes totally different from the puerile
notions we may attach to the “bon plaisir ” of an
earthly Monarch or imaginary Magician! Yet it
may be objected that this doctrine of the invariability
of material Laws would involve the negation of all
11 Miracles ” as popularly understood ! To which I
would venture to observe, with the utmost respect
in presence of so momentous a topic, that how
Miracles in general are popularly understood is very
difficult to say, but that it is not very rash or heterodox
to maintain that they are probably misunderstood.
We are now, however, not concerned with the per
plexing and,in these times, distressing subjectof “ Mira
cles ” in general, nor even with the absolute possibility
or impossibility of incidental change in “ Physical
Laws.” The Miracles on which the religious faith of so
many millions has hitherto rested are presented to us as
strictly exceptional, and limited to exceptional Per
sonages, as divine vouchers for missions involving the
welfare of the Human Race. We are not now
inquiring whether these be supposed to involve real
change or suspension of Laws, or only the inter
position of inferior agents, leaving the Laws intact,
or whether, lastly, the Miracles be “subjectively,”
rather than “ objectively,” to be interpreted. These
alternatives are not for the present under con
sideration. Quite enough that we may assume so
much as excessive rareness or improbability in such
miraculous phenomena, to authorise us to impugn
them as awaiting the wish and will of mere ordinary
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The Efficacy of Prayer.
mortals beseeching before the throne of Omnipotence,
that the infinite should adapt itself to the finite, the
omniscience of the Creator to the ignorance of the
creature. Were, indeed, such privilege of miraculous
control or interference within reach of our own
individual fervour, miracles would become too nume
rous and too normal to be “ miraculous” or wonderful
at all, thus perishing of their own plethora.
But to return : it is indisputable that the highest
Biblical doctrine of Prayer is that contained in the
answer of our Lord to the inquiry of his disciples
how to pray. Now in the formula of the “ Pater
Noster ” there is not a single clause but that referring
to “ daily bread,” which in any degree recognises
the control of external circumstance as coming within
the province of Christian supplication. As regards
giving us our daily bread, there can be no doubt that
it implies a thankful recognition on our part of the
law that we reap tenfold or a hundredfold, according
to circumstances, the grain that we sow. It is in fact
a commemorative and eucha/ristic acknowledgment of
our dependence on such Law for our daily main
tenance, and it is on such principle of commemorative
and eucharistic sacrifice that alone are founded, as I
believe, all the petitions that we offer in the name or
spirit of Christ, touching the outward or material
conditions of existence. Nothing can be more exclu
sively inward and spiritual than all the other clauses of
the divine model of Prayer. God’s “ Name,” or
Being, is to be held holy in our hearts. His Govern
ment and His Will are to be as unquestionable with
us on Earth as we conceive them to be with Beings of
higher powers of appreciation, inhabiting higher
spheres in the hierarchy of the Universe. His Will
to be done on Earth as in Heaven, but by no means
in Heaven as on Barth. The are to discipline our
selves to forgive our earthly Brother as sole condition
of being ourselves forgiven of our Heavenly Father,
�the Efficacy of Prayer.
T3
and we implore that we may be strengthened in hours
of temptation and delivered from spiritual evil (rov
Trovripov).
That our Liturgical Services recognise Christ’s
teaching on the doctrine of Prayer, as being of
authority beyond appeal, belongs of course to the
nature of the case; but if it needed any argument,
we have it at once in the frequent reference, or
“ harking back,” as it were, to the divine standard of
our one High Spiritual Priest. That we also pray
for protection against all the various physical, as
well as moral, evils by which we are beset, is, as
already said, to be set down to commemorative exer
cise of devotion, reminding us when gathered together
of all the manifold manifestations of Power and
Wisdom by which, whether collectively or indivi
dually, we live and have our Being. When we pray
against Plague and Pestilence, does any one suppose
that such Prayer militates with our bounden duty,
Godward and Manward, to “wash and be clean?”
Is it not rather to strengthen and stimulate our faith
in the fulfilment of God’s Laws of health that we put
up such petition ? When we pray for “ the kindly
fruits of the earth, that in due time we may enjoy
them,” do we risk the inculcation of sloth and
negligence in the business of Agriculture ? Is not
the whole tone and tenor of such orisons in the
direction of “ up and be doing,” strengthening our
faith, and cheering our hope in working out our own
welfare with the sufficiency, and according to the
means 'given us of God F Would any of us neglect
the electric conductor because he had prayed against
lightning and tempest? Would such Prayer be less
blessed in its working because of the conductor, or
that of the conductor because of the Prayer ? It
would be a dim and narrow view that did not per
ceive how they supplement each other. Does any
Subject or Citizen of our United Kingdom find it
�14
The Efficacy of Prayer.
derogate from his political rights and duties to pray
that our earthly Sovereign may have affiance in our
Heavenly King of Kings ? Are the bonds of our
Social fellowship in Church and State so strongly
knit, or in danger of being so relaxed by congregational
idealism, that we should refrain from praying that
our clergy may set forth God’s Word by their preach
ing and living—that our Magistrates (Judges) may
execute justice and maintain truth—that our Nobles
may be endued with grace, wisdom, and under
standing? Would Socrates or Plato, or any other
of the Human-Catholic Church, demur to join any
Nation under Heaven in thus reverencing God,
honouring the King, and loving the Brotherhood ?
In fact, when the Service winds up, as it always does,
with the Saving Clause of St. Chrysostom, that our
Prayers should be granted only in so far as “ expe
dient ” for us, we have Christian and highest Ethnic
Piety joining hands in common confession to that
“ Fountain of all Wisdom, who knows our necessities
before we ask, and our ignorance in asking.” If you
tolerate a scrap of Greek, let me quote Socrates in
epigram on “ Efficacy of Prayer,” and see whether he
did not hold much the same doctrine as taught by
our Liturgy :
ZsiT BacriAgiT,
t« pCtv eadXa Kai evxop.&ois Kai avevKrois
Appt SlSov 'rafie Xvypa, Kai
airepvKOis,
freely but faithfully translated
Put away from us, O Lord, such, things as he hurtful,
And grant us such things as be profitable,
Whatever our ignorance in asking them.
If any one would convince himself that the spirit of
our Liturgy is that of the “ Lord’s Prayer,” namely
of inward not outward tendency, let him only turn to
the “ Collects,” the oldest and most concentrated of
all our formularies, and he will note consecutive peti
tions that “ we may so pass through things temporal
�'The Efficacy of Prayer.
as not to lose the things that are eternal; ” that
Goodness and true Religion may increase within us ;
that hurtful things may be put away from us, and
things profitable given us ; that we may have the
spirit to think and do such things as be rightful;
that in order to obtain our petitions we may ask such
things as it may please God to give us ; and that we
may have grace to run the way of God’s Laws, in order
to gain His promises and partake His treasures ! I
have merely taken a word or two out of consecutive
Collects after Trinity, and could add to them indefi
nitely to the same effect. Could any tone of prayer
be desired or imagined of larger and loftier scope, of
more “ Socratic ” or transcendent import, or in which
greater stress were laid on our adapting our human
Will to the divine, rather than vainly attempting the
converse process ?
Could any language more expressly limit our
gaining what is good for us to the condition of
“ running the way of God’s commandments ” ? One
cannot imagine any point of view from which such
spirit of prayer could be otherwise than welcome and
edifying to every mind recognising a divine sentient
Godhead as pervading the Universe, and esteeming
aspirations towards that God as the characterising
and distinguishing prerogative of our human nature.
The quotations cited go far, moreover, towards estab
lishing the position from which I ventured to set out,
namely, that our Biblical and Liturgical doctrines on
prayer and its efficacy will admit, in their highest
interpretation, of conclusions identical with those of
nearly all earnest and sober thinkers, yearning to
worship God with their spirit in unison with their
understanding.
You will perhaps think I am now dwelling less on
the efficacy of prayer than of the “ Prayer Book,”
yet is our Anglican—Parliamentary—Liturgy so
�16
The Efficacy of Prayer.
saturated with the spirit and letter of the Bible, that
it might almost claim the recognition of Universal
Christendom as a fair exponent of Scriptural teaching
on the subject. Then again, independently of different
Communions within the limits of the United King
dom, it seems to possess quite a special interest to
every British Subject and Citizen as being hitherto,
at least, the most effective extant instrument of
“National Education” among us. One can scarcely
help thinking its value even under-rated in this
respect, and that, had it not been for this Parlia
mentary boon to the Empire, our English character
would hardly have stood so high among Nations as
it in general has done for the last three centuries.
If we value the language Shakspeare spake, the
morals Milton held, and hold that education is rather
the inculcation of good principles and good manners,
than of mere intellectual accomplishments, then you
will agree with me that our “ Morning and Evening
Services,” known by heart, as they have been by
successive millions of our Countrymen, almost from
the cradle to the coffin, are entitled to some pro
minence in the consideration of Prayer at the hands
of every dweller in these Islands. I for one, at any
rate, believe that the spirit to do our work and fight
our battles has been in no small measure imbibed
from the rhythmical beauty and deep earnestness of
the teaching so dear and familiar to most of us, from
the “ Lawful and Right” of the Prophet Ezekiel to the
triune benediction of the Apostle Paul. So if I say
too much about the “ Book ” for the efficacy of
Human Prayer in general, let it pass for something
to the purpose as to that of British Prayer in parti
cular.
You will have seen at once what I mean when
bargaining for the “highest and broadest” inter
pretation of our Christian Oracles, to the effect of
�The Efficacy of Prayer.
17
excluding low and narrow notions that might easily
be propped up with single “ texts,” giving no fairei’
idea of the general scope of Christianity than would
single stones of the architecture of the Temple. You
are not the man to meet me with the argument of
££ Elias holding back the rain for three years and six
months,” even though an Apostolic text can be
quoted in its favour. You will allow that if we would
know what horizon the Christian Temple commands
we must go to the top of it, and that top is the Cross
of the Spiritual Gospel, showing us that our God is a
Universal Spirit, seeking worship only in universal
spiritual truth. If St James himself believed in the
efficacy of Elias’s prayer to such coarse material
purpose, his belief can to us have only ££ subjective ”
worth, as the critics call it, that is, only establishing
his own individual persuasion, but by no meats
substantiating such notions as an “ objective ” or
palpable fact. He may indeed have only availed
himself of such “ subjectivity,” or popular persuasion,
on the part of his countrymen; it afforded him an
illustration and he employed it. They were not likely
to question traditional noble works heard with their
ears and declared by their Fathers, as done in their
days, and in old time before them. But we measure
God’s ££ noble works ” by another standard, and know
that mortal prayer, in its fitful waywardness, can
never avail to change the Law that sends sunshine
and rain alike upon the just and the unjust. The
same reply is ready to the hand of every Christian,
when ££ beggarly elements ” and ££ old wives’ fables ”
are rudely thrust upon him by devotees of the ££ letter”
that kills, rather than of the spirit that quickens.
Did a Jew of that time and place believe it ? then we
respect his belief then and there. “ Sed credat tunc
temporis Judaeus, non ego I”
One feels, however, that the real paramount diffi
�18
’The Efficacy of Prayer.
culty of the whole subject is the deeply-rooted reluct
ance of human nature to acknowledge its own
apparent insignificance in presence of changeless
and unchangeable physical or material laws. The
weight of evidence to such effect seems indeed
crushing, yet it has not sufficed, and will not easily
suffice, to crush human faith and hope in doctrine of
a less dreary and desolate aspect. We instinctively
cling to any principle, or any persuasion, that re-estab
lishes us in our own eyes, as of more importance than
to be made the sport of earthly elements—drowned
by water, burnt by fire, starved by cold, with as little
elemental remorse as were the existence but of mice,
rather than men, at stake on the issue !
The facts, it must be confessed, are fearfully
blunt in their testimony against our higher preten
sions. That Biscayan billow rolls into the Tagus,
and sweeps away 30,000 men, women, and children, as
if the inhabitants of a European capital were no more
than the denizens of an ant-hill! Yet how Priests
and People petition Heaven’s grace for dear life, as
they crowd down to that fatal quay to escape the
shock that has levelled their proud city. How would
it have been had some Priest of Nature warned them
with his Kiipte eXerjaov to flee up hill from the reac
tionary volcanic surge of that mass of pitiless brine !
Look again into yon grand Catholic Church far away
beyond the South'Atlantic, under the shadow of the
sunny Andes. See how the lights shine, the banners
wave, and clouds of incense rise with pealing organs
and anthems to the glory of God, according to the
worship of the forefathers of those two thousand
women and children that are praying for health and
wealth, after their knowledge! Yet a gentle fresher
zephyr from without blandly waves that long muslin
streamer into the tall torch lazily lambent on its silver
sconce, and, gracious Heaven! by La/w of fire and fuel,
�The Efficacy of Prayer.
19
it flashes from beam to beam, leaps from rafter to
rafter, and the frantic, shrieking crowd rush headlong
upon those great gates that open inwards on their
hinges ! Let who will read the newspapers of no
distant date for the how and how long lasted the
agony of that holocaust of charred bones, but even
now a multitude of mostly young, beautiful, festivelyadorned, and God-adoring humanity I But why cross
the Atlantic for illustrations; cannot even middleaged men recall the Irish famine, when the potatosick soil refused longer health and strength to the
single root to which millions of human beings, con
trary to the laws of God, looked for their sole
sustenance; and did not a million or more of the
subjects of the richest empire in the world pay with
their lives for the rotten scab of that poor vege
table bulb. Had we prayed with the plough for the
“ daily bread ” of Ireland, would that million of our
countrymen have been sacrificed to the leprosy of
“ lumpers ? ” Look again, if we like to dwell on
human humiliation in presence of the divine laws
of material creation, look to that proud “ iron-clad ”
Man-of-War, equipped with all that the ways and
means of the British Empire could devise, except one
poor requirement of the law of“ central gravita
tion.” Look and see, if we can through our tears,
that leviathan reversed, and five hundred of our best
and bravest dismally drowned on the dark night off
Corunna, by behest of the stern statute that sent
them to the bottom with as little compunction as it
would have capsized a child’s toy in a pond or
puddle. Think we prayers were wanting for that
ship’s company, or that more prayers would have
given her increased stability ? There seems no
possibility of reasonably or religiously resisting
such evidence as this, and we all know it can
be indefinitely extended.
Ask medical doctors
�20
The Efficacy of Prayer.
what “ efficacy ” they assign to prayer, and they
will at once, and of course, limit it to the sooth
ing effect that Faith and Hope, or cheerfulness
and elasticity of mind, may work on the body
through the nervous system. But that any amount
or any intensity of prayer, by or for the patient, will
work materially to set a broken, or renew a lost limb,
is a proposition to which they, will not listen, and
cannot reply. Could such interposition prevail, how
gladly would they call it in to temper that inexorable
statute that visits with consumption, insanity, and the
rest, the third and fourth generation of those, that
with guilt or innocence, have transgressed a Law.
Ask commercial calculators in companies of in
surance against fire and hail, securing, through accu
rate reckoning, profit to themselves, while saving
individuals from ruin, by spreading loss over larger
surface—do they recognise the existence of an un
known, impalpable, inappreciable, influence, that
would set their tables and tariffs at nought ? To
seek ampler illustration would be useless and tedious.
Established facts are sacred revelations, and there can
scarcely be a better established fact than the utter
disrespect to human persons displayed by the execu
tive powers that preside over the physical phenomena
of the world we live in. We have only honestly and
humbly to acknowledge the truth, and seek consola
tion for its seeming harshness in our reverential faith
that whatever is is ultimately right, and that, in the
language of devotion, we are in the hands of an
Almighty Power, declaring itself most chiefly in
mercy and pity.
What that sphere of “most chief” mercy is, we
need not go far to inquire. The most chief lesson of
our religion is not to fear the powers that may indeed
kill the body, but have no might or right to meddle
with the “soul,” that alone constitutes the divine
�Phe Efficacy of Prayer.
21
and abiding life of man. The physical laws that
govern fire and water, the laws of gravitation, of
chemistry, and of electricity, do indeed evince no
respect for the corporeal life that, designedly or undesignedly, trenches on their domain. Whether it be
the life of thonsands, or the life of nnits, the life of
saints, or the life of sinners, we have no shadow of
reason for believing that such laws manifest the
slightest respect or recognition of our persons. No
man in his senses will maintain that an eruption of
Etna will respect the city of Catania on its flanks,
and Catania is no mean'city. And, were it the city of
London and Westminster to boot, a stream of lava
miles wide and deep as the height of a church-tower,
would make short work of it. But let us take courage
and be of good cheer, when we remember that all the
lava of all the volcanos in the Planetary System
could not suffice to suffocate a single human
“ soul,” and that the soul’s life is the only life
whose Salvation Religion recognises as worth the
saving. Our bodies come and go, circulating through
mineral, animal, and vegetable—great Caesar’s dust, or
dust that stops a bung-hole. It is for the spirit alone,
which for a while dwells in such dust, that Religion
will condescend to pray, or that God, who is a Spirit,
(with reverence be it spoken), will condescend to hear.
We have eaten so much of the fruit of the Tree of
Knowledge, that we become terror-stricken at the
incomprehensible ineffable Deity we have discovered;
the higher our Godhead soars viewless into the Heaven
of Heavens, the deeper the relative “Fall of Man”
in his consciousness of his nakedness and his nothingness. We grope round on every side for mediating
connecting links between the finite and the infinite.
Guardian Angels—Patron Saints—and all the mytho
logical machinery of Greek and Goth have had their
day—but every Prospero in his turn, as we grow older
�22
The Efficacy of Prayer.
and wiser, abjures his “ rough magic,” buries his wand,
and plunges his book deeper than plummet’s sound; all
Prosperos but the divine Son, that still bridges the
gaping chasm that separates Man from his God,
teaching us to serve Him with a “ Reasonable Ser
vice ” of all the mind no less than of all the heart.
This is the only Service and the only Religion
we cannot outgrow, for it is of us and within us,
growing with our growth, strengthening with our
strength, endured with powers of expansion to adapt
itself, by higher and broader interpretation, to all the
changes and chances of life’s mystery. It is the only
true and “ Catholic ” Religion, because it is the only
one that sanctifies and ennobles Sorrow, and to sorrow
we are born as the sparks fly upward. We begin
with wailing and we end with groaning, and it were
no desirable privilege to be exempt from educational
wailing and groaning as we go along ; for sweet are
the uses of adversity, and at times better is the house
of mourning than that of gladness. Against bodily
rack and ruin we have no Guardian-Angel but our
own Prudence, learning the laws of health and
strength, and living them; for the Body’s fleeting
claims,“ Nullum Numen si sit Prudentia”—but for the
Soul’s eternal health and wealth Angels in Heaven
do continually regard the light of God’s Face in our
behalf (a Christian Article of Faith that might be made
more of than it is), and by them, ascending and de
scending the patriarchal ladder, are borne the availing
prayers of such as pray in righteous prayer and spirit.
People ask why and how Christ’s Religion has so spread
and struck root; surely because it is the religion that
best knows what we are, and what we need, that best
strengthens our faith in the midst of mystery, best
consoles us in sorrow and cheers us in resignation;
a religion preached and practised by the divine Man
whose religion teaches us that the only efficacious
�The Efficacy of Prayer.
23
prayer is “ Fiat Voluntas,” not our will but “ Our
Father’s in Heaven” be done.
To sum up ;—Prayer efficacious only mentally and
reflexively;—powerless circumstantially, till translated
into Action, and then valid only in direction of, and
conformity with, changeless Laws ;—though intense
Prayer must needs be silent individual concentration,
yet does the conventional language of Public-Service
greatly strengthen us, in the sense of commemorative
and eucharistic devotion, forming the best and
steadiest basis of “ National Education.”
If I have written you more of a sermon than a
letter, put it down, as far as you can, to the solemnity
of the subject proposed ; and if my “ idealism ” does
not always meet your sympathy, remember, at any
rate, that I am real when signing myself,
Yours faithfully,
Foreign Chaplain.
Thomas Scott, Esq.
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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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
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Original Format
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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
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The efficacy of prayer
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 23, [1] p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: "A letter to Thomas Scott by a foreign chaplain." From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. First page only of publisher's list (Abbot-Bastard) on unnumbered page at the end.
Publisher
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Thomas Scott
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1873
Identifier
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CT120
Creator
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[Unknown]
Subject
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Prayer
Rights
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<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 (The efficacy 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
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Conway Tracts
Prayer