IV AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 133 



attach to generalisations from experience of the 

 past, and to expectations for the future based upon 

 that experience ? Nobody can presume to say 

 what the order of nature must be ; all that the 

 widest experience (even if it extended over all 

 past time and through all space) that events had 

 happened in a certain way could justify, would be a 

 proportionally strong expectation that events will 

 go on so happening, and the demand for a propor- 

 tional strength of evidence in favour of any asser- 

 tion that they had happened otherwise. 



It is this weighty consideration, the truth of 

 which every one who is capable of logical thought 

 must surely admit, which knocks the bottom out of 

 all a priori objections either to ordinary " miracles " 

 or to the efficacy of prayer, in so far as the latter 

 implies the miraculous intervention of a higher 

 power. No one is entitled to say a priori that any 

 given so-called miraculous event is impossible ; nd 

 no one is entitled to say a priori that prayer for 

 some change in the ordinary course of nature can- 

 not possibly avail. 



The supposition that there is any inconsistency 

 between the acceptance of the constancy of natural 

 order and a belief in the efficacy of prayer, is the 

 more unaccountable as it is obviously contradicted 

 by analogies furnished by everyday experience. 

 The belief in the efficacy of prayer depends upon 

 the assumption that there is somebody, somewhere, 

 who is strong enough to deal with the earth and 

 u s contents as men deal with the things and events 



