PRAYER AND PROVIDENCE.
rro THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."]
November 12, 1865. SIR,—I have abstained from addressing you further upon the sub- ject of my letter published in your paper of the 29th October, and the remarks upon it contained in a powerful article in the same paper, in the hope that some other of your correspon- dents might take up the discussion of a question of which the full and earnest discussion is certainly of no little importance to religious faith at the present time. As, however, with the exception of a short letter by " J. R. " in your number of 11th inst., I have been disappointed in this hope, I wish to add a few observations upon a point not noticed, as you have remarked in my former letter, namely, what I may call the reaction of prayer on the providence of God.
But first, in reply to " J. R.'s " suggestion that " God may grant petitions affecting even the operation of physical laws, on condition of a certain elevation of soul or earnestness of desire in the supplicant." I would say, if such conditions are part of the system of the universe, let the fact be placed beyond a doubt by tests applied in unambiguous instances. Let "J. R." produce any person, or number of persons, who can make water rise visibly from the bottom of a house to its top by fulfilling the condition of sufficient earnestness of desire, as it can be made to rise any day
by fulfilling the condition of pumping, and I will concede his hypo- thesis to be well founded. Probably "J. R." may allege that to make such a trial would be to "tempt God." But why should the trial of one condition tempt God more than that of another ? The scientific thinker and " J. R." differ as to whether his alleged condition is a condition really belonging to the order of things. To subject the question to the test of experiment would be not to "tempt God," but only to try man's opinions. The lives of the saints abound in stories of physical effects produced instantaneously through prayer. If they cannot be produced now, what shall we say?—that God has chimged, or that man was mistaken ? Or are we to take for granted that prayer can produce physical effects whenever we cannot test its action, though it incomprehensibly fails to do so whenever we can test it ?
Very different in kind is the suggestion made in the article referred to above, that prayer, though it does not influence physical events directly, influences them indirectly through an action originating in that debateable ground of emotion and thought lying between the freedom of will and the necessity of nature, where no analysis is delicate enough accurately to discriminate our own action from that which acts upon us. Here I admit that there is room for placing a special divine action determined by prayer without con- tradicting our experience. But that there is any clear evidence of such an action cannot, I think, be maintained. And it seems to me very questionable whether, in assuming its existence, we do not sacrifice a greater object of faith to obtain a leas object. Do we not practically weaken our trust in God as the ever present Author of natural action, by ascribing to Him an occasional interblending with it of another kind of action in answer to our requests? If some of our thoughts or emotions are to be specially referred to God, what are we to say of the remainder ? Are these not due to Hisaction? Is not all natural action in thought or emotion an expression of the divine will, working through those subtle mental agencies of which so little is understood? But if so why should we select any particular phase of these agencies as more especially the act of God than any other phase ?
If we confine the effect of prayer to the production of an inter- course between the divine will and our wills, difficulties of this sort are avoided, because the especial divine action is assumed to be always conditioned by acts of the human will, to which the provi- dence of God may indeed lead men, by the play of all the varied agencies acting on them in nature, or through the course of man's religious history unfolded in connection with these natural agencies, but leads them by such means alone. But introduce among natural agencies a special divine action, not natural nor historical, to explain some things good or true in human thought or emotion, and you unavoidably call up the notion of a counteraction to explain other things in them bad or false, till the mind of man is converted, to imagination, as was the case during the middle ages, into a jousting ground, where angels and devils run tilts at each
other. •
Prayer enters, as I apprehend, into the plan of God's provi- dence through its effect on the human will. It is the salt to keep man's spiritual faculties sweet, the elixir to purify and strengthen them. Thus it fulfils in the truest manner "J. R.'s " demand that " something be granted in compliance with, or at least in consequence of, our prayers," by fulfilling the function ascribed to it in your article. The world of earth would be very different from what it is, in its industrial, social, and political aspects, if the human race generally and habitually lived in the exercise of their privilege of holding communion with God in prayer, and thus prayer may be the real condition of innumerable physical benefits. But the more I reflect upon the subject, the greater difficulty do I feel in assigning to it any direct influence beyond that influence on the will in which the Catholic Church, untaught by science, always placed its highest function, and to which the Catholic Church, taught by science, will I think discover that this influence must be confined.—Believe me, yours faithfully,
E. V. N.
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