REFLECTIONS ON PR A YER AND NATURAL LA W 



99 



present power of science to demonstrate 

 that the Tyrolese priest, or his colleague 

 of the Rhone valley, asked for an " im- 

 possibility " in praying for good weather ; 

 but Science can demonstrate the incom- 

 pleteness of the knowledge of nature 

 which limited their prayers to this narrow 

 ground ; and she may lessen the number 

 of instances in which we "ask amiss " by 

 showing that we sometimes pray for the 

 performance of a miracle when we do 

 not intend it. She does assert, for 

 example, that without a disturbance of 

 natural law, quite as serious as the stop- 

 page of an eclipse or the rolling of the 

 river Niagara up the Falls, no act of 

 humiliation, individual or national, could 

 call one shower from heaven or deflect 

 towards us a single beam of the sun. 



Those, therefore, who believe that the 

 miraculous is still active in nature may, 

 with perfect consistency, join in our 

 periodic prayers for fair weather and for 

 rain ; while those who hold that the age 

 of miracles is past will, if they be con- 

 sistent, refuse to join in these petitions. 

 And these latter, if they wish to fall back 

 upon such a justification, may fairly urge 

 that the latest conclusions of science are 

 in perfect accordance with the doctrine 

 of the Master himself, which manifestly 

 was that the distribution of natural 

 phenomena is not affected by moral or 

 religious causes. " He maketh His sun 

 to rise on the evil and on the good, 

 and sendeth rain on the just and on the 

 unjust." Granting "the power of Free Will 

 in man," so strongly claimed by Professor 

 Mansel in his admirable defence of the 

 belief in miracles, and assuming the 

 efficacy of free prayer to produce 

 changes in external nature, it necessarily 

 follows that natural laws are more or less 

 at the mercy of man's volition, and no 

 conclusion founded on the assumed per- 

 manence of those laws would be worthy 

 of confidence. 



It is a wholesome sign for England 

 that she numbers among her clergy men 

 wise enough to understand all this, and 

 courageous enough to act up to their 

 knowledge. Such men do service to 



public character by encouraging a manly 

 and intelligent conflict with the real 

 causes of disease and scarcity, instead of 

 a delusive reliance on supernatural aid. 

 But they have also a value beyond this 

 local and temporary one. They prepare 

 the public mind for changes which, 

 though inevitable, could hardly, without 

 such preparation, be wrought without 

 violence. Iron is strong ; still, water in 

 crystallising will shiver an iron envelope, 

 and the more unyielding the metal is 

 the worse for its safety. There are in the 

 world men who would encompass philo- 

 sophic speculation by a rigid envelope, 

 hoping thereby to restrain it, but in 

 reality giving it explosive force. In 

 England, thanks to men of the stamp to- 

 which I have alluded, scope is gradually 

 given to thought for changes of aggrega-- 

 tion, and the envelope slowly alters its. 

 form, in accordance with the necessities .. 

 of the time. 



The proximate origin of the foregoing slight 

 article, and probably the remoter origin of the 

 next following one, was this. Some years ago 

 a day of prayer and humiliation, on account of 

 a bad harvest, was appointed by the proper 

 religious authorities; but certain clergymen of 

 the Church of England, doubting the wisdom 

 of the demonstration, declined to join in the 

 services of the day. For this act of noncon- 

 formity they were severely censured by some 

 of their brethren. Rightly or wrongly, my 

 sympathies were on the side of these men ; and,- 

 to lend them a helping hand in their struggle- 

 against odds, I inserted the foregoing chapter 

 in a little book entitled Mountaineering in 



1861. Some time subsequently I received from a 

 gentleman of great weight and distinction in the 

 scientific world, and, I believe, of perfect ortho- 



doxy in the religious one, a note directing my 

 attention to an exceedingly thoughtful article on 

 Prayer and Cholera in the Pall Mall Gazette. 

 My eminent correspondent deemed the article 

 a fair answer to the remarks made by me in 

 1861. I, also, was struck by the temper and 

 ability of the article ; but I could not deem its 

 arguments satisfactory, and in a short note to 

 the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette I ventured 

 to state so much. The letter elicited some very 

 able replies, and a second leading article was 

 also devoted to the subject. In answer to all, 

 I risked the publication of a second letter, and 

 soon afterwards, by an extremely courteous note 

 from the editor, the discussion was closed. 



Though thus stopped locally, the discussion 

 flowed in other directions. Sermons were 



