ON PRA YES AS A FORM OF PHYSICAL ENERG T. 373 
intelligent person to look the problem honestly in the face, 
and then to say whether, in the estimation of the great 
body of those who sincerely resort to it, prayer does not, at 
ail events upon special occasions, invoke a power which 
checks and augments the descent of rain, which changes 
the force and direction of winds, which affects the growth, 
of corn and the health of men and cattle a Power, in 
short, which, when appealed to under pressing circum- 
stances, produces the precise effects caused by physical 
energy in the ordinary course of things. To any person 
who deals sincerely with the subject, and refuses to blur 
his moral vision by intellectual subtleties, this, I think, 
will appear a true statement of the case. 
It is under this aspect alone that the scientific student, 
so far as I represent him, has any wish to meddle with 
prayer. Forced upon his attention as a form of physical 
energy, or as the equivalent of such energy, he claims the 
right of subjecting it to those methods of examination 
from which all our present knowledge of the physical 
universe is derived. And if his researches lead him to a 
conclusion adverse to its claims if his inquiries rivet him 
still closer to the philosophy implied in the words, " He 
maketh his sun to shine on the evil and on the good, and 
sendeth rain upon the just and upon the unjust" he 
contends only for the displacement of prayer, not for its 
extinction. He simply says, physical nature is not its 
legitimate domain. 
This conclusion, moreover, must be based on pure phys- 
ical evidence, and not on any inherent unreasonableness 
in the act of prayer. The theory that the system of nature 
is under the control of a Being who changes phenomena in 
compliance with the prayers of men, is, in my opinion, a 
perfectly legitimate one. It may of course be rendered 
futile by being associated with conceptions which contradict 
it; but such conceptions form no necessary part of- the 
theory. It is a matter of experience that an earthly father, 
who is at the same time both wise and tender, listens to 
the requests of his children, and, if they do not ask amiss, 
takes pleasure in granting their requests. We know also 
that this compliance extends to the alteration, within cer- 
tain limits, of the current of events on earth. With this 
suggestion offered by experience, it is no departure from 
scientific method to place behind natural phenomena a 
