ON PR A 7ER ASA FORM F PHYSICAL EN ERG T. 3 73 



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 



