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feet day; and yet, when we would pray, there are some who 
would stop the impulse by alleging the inflexibility of Nature. 
What ! my intelligence can direct the hidden forces of Nature 
to work an end subservient to purposes of usefulness ; and shall 
my soul alone be powerless? The fact that we can control the 
powers of Nature is beyond dispute, and yet, if this be admitted, 
fatalism falls to the ground. 
Sceptics may reply that man’s power to modify the course of 
Nature is visible and appreciable, and that there is no relation 
between this and the doctrine of the influence of prayer, which 
is and must remain wholly invisible. But that is not the ques- 
tion — which is. Can man modify the course of Nature, or can 
he not? The invisible mode of the action of prayer is beside 
the argument; for how few operations which we know take place 
can we comprehend ? How does spirit act on matter ? How, 
or why, does the movement of my hand obey the volition of my 
intelligence? Here is a question which baffles learned and 
simple alike. When the farmer casts his seed into the ground, 
does he understand the germinative process? Of course he 
does not, neither can the most learned man of science explain 
it to him ; yet he trusts his grain to the ground confidently. 
Neither do we know how prayer acts; but we may safely 
leave the result to God, certain that each spiritual seed will 
find its own furrow, and bear an appropriate and abundant 
harvest. 
And, after all, who are the unbelievers in the efficacy of 
prayer? — who are its opponents ? The Sceptic and the Atheist 
— the very persons who never pray, and, consequently, are 
utterly unable to testify as to the results of prayer. Indiffer- 
ence or lukewarmness in the act, coupled with a want of 
reverence to the Dispenser of all Gifts, must ever of themselves 
be fatal to the realization of the petitions of prayer. We must 
pray and not faint, pray in faith, nothing doubting. 
The very essence of prayer consists in an implicit belief that 
the person addressed, whether human or Divine, has the power 
to grant its petition ; and, indeed, how do we know that, beyond 
the laws that human ingenuity and science have discovered, 
there may not exist occult laws framed to meet and govern 
every conceivable variety of circumstance, and which laws are 
only called into operative action by spiritual and submissive 
faith, belief in God’s love, and humble acknowledgment of His 
Omnipotence? 
It may be one of God’s laws that a petition for spiritual 
advancement (in contradistinction to one of mere personal 
aggrandisement), if presented in humble faith and dependence 
upon God’s love, may be accorded, which, without that prayer 
