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teem with records of individual illnesses and of broad averages of disease,
but I have been able to discover hardly any instance in which a medical
man of any repute has attributed recovery to the influence of prayer. There
is not a single instance, to my knowledge, in which papers read before
statistical societies have recognized the agency of prayer either on disease
or on anything else. The universal habit of the scientific world to ignore
the agency of prayer is a very important fact. To fully appreciate “the
eloquence of the silence” of medical men, we must bear in mind the care
with which they endeavour to assign a sanatory value to every influence.
Had prayers for the sick any notable effect, it is incredible but that the
doctors, who are always on the watch for such things, should have
observed it, and added their influence to that of the priests towards
obtaining them for every sick man. If they abstain from doing so, it is not
because their attention has never been awakened to the possible efficacy
of prayer, but, on the contrary, that although they have heard it insisted on
from childhood upwards, they are unable to detect its influence. Most
people have some general belief in the objective efficacy of prayer, but
none seem willing to admit its action in those special cases of which they
have scientific cognizance.
Those who may wish to pursue these inquiries upon the effect of
prayers for the restoration of health could obtain abundant materials from
hospital cases, and in a different way from that proposed in the challenge
to which I referred at the beginning of these pages. There are many
common maladies whose course is so thoroughly well understood as to
admit of accurate tables of probability being constructed for their duration
and result. Such are fractures and amputations. Now it would be perfectly
practicable to select out of the patients at different hospitals under
treatment for fractures and amputations two considerable groups; the one
consisting of markedly religious and piously befriended individuals, the
other of those who were remarkably cold-hearted and neglected. An
honest comparison of their respective periods of treatment and the results
would manifest a distinct proof of the efficacy of prayer, if it existed to
even a minute fraction of the amount that religious teachers exhort us to
believe.
An inquiry of a somewhat similar nature may be made into the
longevity of persons whose lives are prayed for; also that of the praying
classes generally; and in both these cases we can easily obtain statistical
facts. The public prayer for the sovereign of every state, Protestant and
Catholic, is and has been in the spirit of our own, “Grant her in health
