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experience. A scientific reasoner will scrutinize each separate experience
before he admits it as evidence, and will compare all the cases he has
selected on a methodical system.
The doctrine commonly preached by the clergy is well expressed in the
most recent, and by far the most temperate and learned of theological
encyclopaedias, namely, Smith's Dictionary of the Bible. The article on
'Prayer,' written by the Rev. Dr. Barry, states as follows: 'Its real objective
efficacy, is both implied and expressed (in Scripture) in the plainest terms
.... We are encouraged to ask special blessings, both spiritual and
temporal, in hopes that thus, and thus only, we may obtain them .... It
would seem the intention of Holy Scripture to encourage all prayer, more
especially intercession, in all relations and for all righteous objects.' Dr.
Hook, the present Dean of Chichester, states in his Church Dictionary,
under 'Prayer,' that 'the general providence of God acts through what are
called the laws of nature. By this particular providence God interferes
with those laws, and he has promised to interfere in behalf of those who
pray in the name of Jesus .... We may take it as a general role that we may
pray for that for which we may lawfully labour, and for that only.'
The phrases of our Church service amply countenance this view; and if
we look to the practice of the opposed sections of the religious world, we
find them consistent in maintaining it. The so-called 'Low Church'
notoriously places absolute belief in special providences accorded to pious
prayer. This is testified by the biographies of its members, the journals of
its missionaries, and the 'united prayer meetings' of the present day. The
Roman Catholics offer religious vows to avert danger; they make
pilgrimages to shrines; they hang votive offerings and pictorial
representations, sometimes by thousands, in their churches, of fatal
accidents averted by the manifest interference of a solicited saint.
A prima facie argument in favour of the efficacy of prayer is therefore
to be drawn from the very general use of it. The greater part of mankind,
during all the historic ages, have been accustomed to pray for temporal
advantages. How vain, it may be urged, must be the reasoning that
ventures to oppose this mighty consensus of belief! Not so. The argument
of universality either proves too much, or else it is suicidal. It either
compels us to admit that the prayers of Pagans, of Fetish worshippers, and
of Buddhists who turn praying wheels, are recompensed in the same way
as those of orthodox believers; or else the general consensus proves that it
has no better foundation than the universal tendency of man to gross
credulity.
