70 



meant to satisfy, or a thirst He never intended to assuage; nor 

 could He say to His creature, Thou shalt ever ask, but I will 

 never answer." We may safely believe, then, that God will and 

 does reply to desires of His own implanting. 



Christ has revealed to us the true love of God, in re-opening 

 access to Him. Christ has taught us, in noble and elevated 

 language, all we know. He banished for ever all gross, 

 mercenary, and superstitious ideas ; it cannot be said He ever 

 encouraged spiritual presumption. What then is His idea of 

 prayer? Does He consider it merely an elevating of the soul ? — 

 a spiritual exercise ? Eather, does He not ever assume that prayer 

 modifies events, and that success depends on the intensity of 

 our faith ? Look at the bold images He employs — the unjust 

 judge; the selfish friend. And besides Christ^s direct teaching, 

 look at the general inference from Scripture : Abraham^s prayer 

 for Sodom ; Jacob's struggle with the Angel ; Christ and the 

 Canaanitish woman ; — in all these cases prayer is shown to us 

 a sovereign act, influencing first ourselves, then others ; and 'so 

 proceeding onward to outward events, and the course of the 

 world. 



Let us take the objections : Prayer, they say, cannot be effica- 

 cious, because, if it were, it would change the course of Nature. 

 As before observed, all the researches of science tend to establish 

 the permanence of natural law ; why should we pray for fine 

 weather, or rain, when we know that both depend upon meteo- 

 rological laws? why pray for the preservation of human life, 

 when statistical returns show for every given period an unvary- 

 ing proportion of births and deaths ? 



We are asked to leave prayer to children, who think each 

 fine spring day made for their own especial gratification; and 

 under this objection, they look upon our faith as crushed. But 

 if it be true that the laws of nature are incapable of modification, 

 why should men who reason thus take any action ? why seek 

 food ? why sow ? build ? or plant ? Each act is in flagrant con- 

 tradiction with their system. You cannot modify the course of 

 Nature, says the sceptic; nevertheless it is done every time a 

 stone is lifted, or a house built; for the time, the laws of gravita- 

 tion are suspended and varied ; the same is done every time a 

 tree is grafted, or new life introduced to a diseased member of 

 the body. 



Man is ever transforming into forces of life the crude powers 

 of Nature, which would otherwise have spread devastation 

 and death. Man does the same when he extracts healing 

 remedies from poisonous plants. Man does all this — nay, more ; 

 he often, by his own unruly will, resists the will of God, and 

 delays material and spiritual progress till the dawn of the per- 



