Chapter 26

OUR experiences are little worth unless they teach us toreflect. Let us then pause to consider this hourlyexperience of human beings - this remarkable efficacy ofprayer. There can hardly be a contemplative mind to which,with all its difficulties, the inquiry is not familiar.

　　To begin with, 'To pray is to expect a miracle.' 'Prayer inits very essence,' says a thoughtful writer, 'implies abelief in the possible intervention of a power which is abovenature.' How was it in my case? What was the essence of mybelief? Nothing less than this: that God would havepermitted the laws of nature, ordained by His infinite wisdomto fulfil His omniscient designs and pursue their naturalcourse in accordance with His will, had not my requestpersuaded Him to suspend those laws in my favour.

　　The very belief in His omniscience and omnipotence subvertsthe spirit of such a prayer. It is on the perfection of Godthat Malebranche bases his argument that 'Dieu n'agit pas pardes volontes particulieres.' Yet every prayer affects tointerfere with the divine purposes.

　　It may here be urged that the divine purposes are beyond ourcomprehension. God's purposes may, in spite of theinconceivability, admit the efficacy of prayer as a link inthe chain of causation; or, as Dr. Mozely holds, it may bethat 'a miracle is not an anomaly or irregularity, but partof the system of the universe.' We will not entangleourselves in the abstruse metaphysical problem which suchhypotheses involve, but turn for our answer to what we doknow - to the history of this world, to the daily life ofman. If the sun rises on the evil as well as on the good, ifthe wicked 'become old, yea, are mighty in power,' still, thelightning, the plague, the falling chimney-pot, smite thegood as well as the evil. Even the dumb animal is notspared. 'If,' says Huxley, 'our ears were sharp enough tohear all the cries of pain that are uttered in the earth byman and beasts we should be deafened by one continuousscream.' 'If there are any marks at all of special design increation,' writes John Stuart Mill, 'one of the things mostevidently designed is that a large proportion of all animalsshould pass their existence in tormenting and devouring otheranimals. They have been lavishly fitted out with theinstruments for that purpose.' Is it credible, then, thatthe Almighty Being who, as we assume, hears this continuousscream - animal-prayer, as we may call it - and not only paysno heed to it, but lavishly fits out animals with instrumentsfor tormenting and devouring one another, that such a Beingshould suspend the laws of gravitation and physiology, shouldperform a miracle equal to that of arresting the sun - forall miracles are equipollent - simply to prolong the briefand useless existence of such a thing as man, of one man outof the myriads who shriek, and - shriek in vain?

　　To pray is to expect a miracle. Then comes the furtherquestion: Is this not to expect what never yet has happened?

　　The only proof of any miracle is the interpretation thewitness or witnesses put upon what they have seen.

　　(Traditional miracles - miracles that others have been told,that others have seen - we need not trouble our heads about.)What that proof has been worth hitherto has been commentedupon too often to need attention here. Nor does the weaknessof the evidence for miracles depend solely on the fact thatit rests, in the first instance, on the senses, which may bedeceived; or upon inference, which may be erroneous. It isnot merely that the infallibility of human testimonydiscredits the miracles of the past. The impossibility thathuman knowledge, that science, can ever exhaust thepossibilities of Nature, precludes the immediate reference tothe Supernatural for all time. It is pure sophistry toargue, as do Canon Row and other defenders of miracles, that'the laws of Nature are no more violated by the performanceof a miracle than they are by the activities of a man.' Ifthese arguments of the special pleaders had any force at all,it would simply amount to this: 'The activities of man'

　　being a part of nature, we have no evidence of a supernaturalbeing, which is the sole RAISON D'ETRE of miracle.

　　Yet thousands of men in these days who admit the force ofthese objections continue, in spite of them, to pray.

　　Huxley, the foremost of 'agnostics,' speaks with the utmostrespect of his friend Charles Kingsley's conviction fromexperience of the efficacy of prayer. And Huxley himselfrepeatedly assures us, in some form or other, that 'thepossibilities of "may be" are to me infinite.' The puzzleis, in truth, on a par with that most insolvable of allpuzzles - Free Will or Determinism. Reason and the instinctof conscience are in both cases irreconcilable. We areconscious that we are always free to choose, though not toact; but reason will have it that this is a delusion. Thereis no logical clue to the IMPASSE. Still, reasonnotwithstanding, we take our freedom (within limits) forgranted, and with like inconsequence we pray.

　　It must, I think, be admitted that the belief, delusive orwarranted, is efficacious in itself. Whether generated inthe brain by the nerve centres, or whatever may be itsorigin, a force coincident with it is diffused throughout thenervous system, which converts the subject of it, justparalysed by despair, into a vigorous agent, or, if you will,automaton.

　　Now, those who admit this much argue, with no little force,that the efficacy of prayer is limited to its reaction uponourselves. Prayer, as already observed, implies belief insupernatural intervention. Such belief is competent to begethope, and with it courage, energy, and effort. Supposecontrition and remorse induce the sufferer to pray for Divineaid and mercy, suppose suffering is the natural penalty ofhis or her own misdeeds, and suppose the contrition and theprayer lead to resistance of similar temptations, and henceto greater happiness, - can it be said that the power toresist temptation or endure the penalty are due tosupernatural aid? Or must we not infer that the fear of theconsequences of vice or folly, together with an earnestdesire and intention to amend, were adequate in themselves toaccount for the good results?

　　Reason compels us to the latter conclusion. But what then?

　　Would this prove prayer to be delusive? Not necessarily.

　　That the laws of Nature (as argued above) are not violated bymiracle, is a mere perversion of the accepted meaning of'miracle,' an IGNORATIO ELENCHI. But in the case of prayerthat does not ask for the abrogation of Nature's laws, itceases to be a miracle that we pray for or expect: for arenot the laws of the mind also laws of Nature? And can weexplain them any more than we can explain physical laws? Apsychologist can formulate the mental law of association, buthe can no more explain it than Newton could explain the lawsof attraction and repulsion which pervade the world ofmatter. We do not know, we cannot know, what the conditionsof our spiritual being are. The state of mind induced byprayer may, in accordance with some mental law, be essentialto certain modes of spiritual energy, specially conducive tothe highest of all moral or spiritual results: taken in thissense, prayer may ask, not the suspension, but the enactment,of some natural law.

　　Let it, however, be granted, for argument's sake, that thebelief in the efficacy of prayer is delusive, and that thebeneficial effects of the belief - the exalted state of mind,the enhanced power to endure suffering and resist temptation,the happiness inseparable from the assurance that God hears,and can and will befriend us - let it be granted that allthis is due to sheer hallucination, is this an argumentagainst prayer? Surely not. For, in the first place, theincontestable fact that belief does produce these effects isfor us an ultimate fact as little capable of explanation asany physical law whatever; and may, therefore, for aught weknow, or ever can know, be ordained by a Supreme Being.

　　Secondly, all the beneficial effects, including happiness,are as real in themselves as if the belief were no delusion.

　　It may be said that a 'fool's paradise' is liable to beturned into a hell of disappointment; and that we pay thepenalty of building happiness on false foundations. This istrue in a great measure; but it is absolutely without truthas regards our belief in prayer, for the simple reason thatif death dispel the delusion, it at the same time dispels thedeluded. However great the mistake, it can never be foundout. But they who make it will have been the better and thehappier while they lived.

　　For my part, though immeasurably preferring the pantheism ofGoethe, or of Renan (without his pessimism), to theanthropomorphic God of the Israelites, or of their theosophiclegatees, the Christians, however inconsistent, I stillbelieve in prayer. I should not pray that I may not die 'forwant of breath'; nor for rain, while 'the wind was in thewrong quarter.' My prayers would not be like thoseoverheard, on his visit to Heaven, by Lucian's Menippus: 'OJupiter, let me become a king!' 'O Jupiter, let my onionsand my garlic thrive!' 'O Jupiter, let my father soon departfrom hence!' But when the workings of my moral nature wereconcerned, when I needed strength to bear the ills whichcould not be averted, or do what conscience said was right,then I should pray. And, if I had done my best in the samedirection, I should trust in the Unknowable for help.

　　Then too, is not gratitude to Heaven the best of prayers?

　　Unhappy he who has never felt it! Unhappier still, who hasnever had cause to feel it!

　　It may be deemed unwarrantable thus to draw the lines betweenwhat, for want of better terms, we call Material andSpiritual. Still, reason is but the faculty of a very finitebeing; and, as in the enigma of the will, utterly incapableof solving any problems beyond those whose data are furnishedby the senses. Reason is essentially realistic. Science isits domain. But science demonstratively proves that thingsare not what they seem; their phenomenal existence is nothingelse than their relation to our special intelligence. Wespeak and think as if the discoveries of science wereabsolutely true, true in themselves, not relatively so for usonly. Yet, beings with senses entirely different from ourswould have an entirely different science. For them, our bestestablished axioms would be inconceivable, would have no moremeaning than that 'Abracadabra is a second intention.'

　　Science, supported by reason, assures us that the laws ofnature - the laws of realistic phenomena - are neversuspended at the prayers of man. To this conclusion theeducated world is now rapidly coming. If, nevertheless, menthoroughly convinced of this still choose to believe in theefficacy of prayer, reason and science are incompetent toconfute them. The belief must be tried elsewhere, - it mustbe transferred to the tribunal of conscience, or to ametaphysical court, in which reason has no jurisdiction.

　　This by no means implies that reason, in its own province, isto yield to the 'feeling' which so many cite as theinfallible authority for their 'convictions.'

　　We must not be asked to assent to contradictory propositions.

　　We must not be asked to believe that injustice, cruelty, andimplacable revenge, are not execrable because the Bible tellsus they were habitually manifested by the tribal god of theIsraelites. The fables of man's fall and of the redemptionare fraught with the grossest violation of our moralconscience, and will, in time, be repudiated accordingly. Itis idle to say, as the Church says, 'these are mysteriesabove our human reason.' They are fictions, fabricationswhich modern research has traced to their sources, and whichno unperverted mind would entertain for a moment. Fanaticalbelief in the truth of such dogmas based upon 'feeling' haveconfronted all who have gone through the severe ordeal ofdoubt. A couple of centuries ago, those who held them wouldhave burnt alive those who did not. Now, they have toconsole themselves with the comforting thought of the firethat shall never be quenched. But even Job's patience couldnot stand the self-sufficiency of his pious reprovers. Thesceptic too may retort: 'No doubt but ye are the people, andwisdom shall die with you.'

　　Conviction of this kind is but the convenient substitute forknowledge laboriously won, for the patient pursuit of truthat all costs - a plea in short, for ignorance, indolence,incapacity, and the rancorous bigotry begotten of them.

　　The distinction is not a purely sentimental one - not abelief founded simply on emotion. There is a physical world- the world as known to our senses, and there is a psychicalworld - the world of feeling, consciousness, thought, andmoral life.

　　Granting, if it pleases you, that material phenomena may bethe causes of mental phenomena, that 'la pensee est leproduit du corps entier,' still the two cannot be thought ofas one. Until it can be proved that 'there is nothing in theworld but matter, force, and necessity,' - which will neverbe, till we know how we lift our hands to our mouths, - thereremains for us a world of mystery, which reason never caninvade.

　　It is a pregnant thought of John Mill's, apropos of materialand mental interdependence or identity, 'that the uniformcoexistence of one fact with another does not make the onefact a part of the other, or the same with it.'

　　A few words of Renan's may help to support the argument. 'Cequi revele le vrai Dieu, c'est le sentiment moral. Sil'humanite n'etait qu'intelligente, elle serait athee. Ledevoir, le devouement, le sacrifice, toutes choses dontl'histoire est pleine, sont inexplicables sans Dieu.' Forall these we need help. Is it foolishness to pray for it?

　　Perhaps so. Yet, perhaps not; for 'Tout est possible, memeDieu.'

　　Whether possible, or impossible, this much is absolutelycertain: man must and will have a religion as long as thisworld lasts. Let us not fear truth. Criticism will changemen's dogmas, but it will not change man's nature.