Ill 
individual or national, could call one shower from heaven, or 
deflect towards us a single beam of the sun” (p. 33). 
11. It is true that these particular examples of misplaced 
prayer are mentioned to caution us, lest in our prayers we 
“ ask amiss/* and not definitely to prohibit all prayer. 
But this is a condescension, only for a time, to our tion to prayer 
infirmities; for a principle is asserted which Dr. be par * 
Tyndall certainly refuses to limit, though, in these 
instances, it has only a particular application to one class of 
prayers. He mentions in a note, that in so applying it (p. 38), 
he had in view certain prayers for good harvest and fair weather, 
then recently ordered in our churches, and he praises the dis- 
cernment of a few advanced clergymen who declined to adopt 
these prayers. If the uniformity of natural law is a bar to prayer 
in some cases, it is difficult for us to see how to refuse the 
principle in others. Some kind of prayer, indeed, as a sort of 
“emotional” outlet, to which we will again allude, seems 
allowed at times by Dr. Tyndall, as if an indulgence to almost 
pardonable weakness, but by no means as relaxing his assertion 
of a real physical necessity pervading all nature, inconsistent 
with all prayer, as commonly understood or used, in any of the 
conditions of human life. 
12. Let us now diverge for a moment from the atoms and 
molecules, the attractions and repulsions and motions of the 
universe broadly considered, to those which are to Bat will 
be found in the human organization, which Dr. ™* c d b /£/ Tery f 
Tyndall fully recognizes, of course, a little further oar life as 
on, but which he does not much dwell on till he has men ’ 
rejected certain kinds of prayer. He says (p. 120) that “/or every 
fact of consciousness” (he having examined, of course, a very few), 
“ whether in the domain of sense, of thought , or of emotion, a 
definite molecular condition of motion or structure is set up in 
the brain.” The relation “ of physics to consciousness being 
invariable” (he continues), “it follows that, given the state of 
the brain, the corresponding thought or feeling might be in- 
ferred; or, given the thought or feeling, the corresponding 
state of the brain might be inferred.” At the same time he 
almost contradicts himself by saying that his “ molecular 
groupings, and his molecular motions, do not explain every- 
thing. In reality (he adds) they explain nothing .” 
13. It passes our power to imagine how Dr. Tyndall, with 
this admission that his science has no final explanation to offer 
as to the primary action or motion of either atoms Ul)geientifio 
or molecules, and saying that “ attraction ” and character of 
“ repulsion ” can only be described as “ a pull ” or thia objectioa ’ 
“ a push,” a “ pull ” of which he knows not what pulls it, and 
