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 wit............