The New York herald., 1874-09-15
The Prayer for Rain.

The prayer gauge which Professor Tyndall
proposed should be used in the London hos
pitals to test the efficacy of prayer as an as
sistance to medicine was never used, nor
should it have been. Religion and science
should not be forced into prize ring to fight
out the question of superiority 1t is proba-
BILE that Professor Tyndall would have had the
best Of the contest, for prayer has never been
known in our time to set broken leg nor to
do cracked head as much good as a poor
mans plaster. But that claim for it is not
made by religious people, who do not expect
miracles, and do not desire surgeon to
pray for a fractured limb when be
ought to put it in splint. The strange
sect in London known as the Peculiar
People is an exception to this rule Its men,
bers depend wholly upon prayer for the healing
of their sick, and the death of child thus
treated recently caused the arrest of the father
for manslaughter. Ho was properly acquitted
for there is no law to compel sick people to
take medicine, and, with the exception of a
physicians services, the child had proper at
tenton
The extreme drought which has for manv
weeks prevailed in the Middle States, wither
ing the foliage, consuming the pasturage, dry
ing up the brooks, filing the cir with dust
and inficting suffering upon man and beast,
is no doubt caused by law of nature.
The winds and the tides and the
clouds are not directed by chance, but like
all other phenomena are governed by laws, 50
that, indeed, as the knowledge of meteoroloov
increases, the state of the weather can be
predicted from day to day. Yet while this
is known the intense suffering and mortality
caused by extreme heat are as hard to bear as
in the days when such calamities were looked
upon as the punishments of mankind. In Phila-
delphia as our dispatches show, the drought
is not only the cause of discomfort, but an
injury to business. The surrounding country
is burnt by the fires of heaven. New York
along the Hudson River is like desert on
the line Of the Equator, and Now Jersey is
scorched with conhagrations and the air heavy
with clouds of dust Is it strange that under
such circumstances the people of Philadelphia
should have offered up in all their churches
last Sunday-Roman Catholic, Episcopal
Lutheran, Methodist, Baptist-one earnest
prayer for the cooling and refreshing rain
We think not nor should such pleading be
ridiculed by those who believe it to be una
vailing.
For if men pray for one thing it is right for
them to pray for all. Prayer is the natural
outpouring of the human soul to the power to
which it humbly submits. Prayer perneates
all our lives and thoughts, from the formal
intercession of the priest to the simple "God
bless you" of the parting friends. 1t is an
instinct which science cannot Destroy After
all that science can do for the suffering
sick we implore relief from sources which
science cannot reach. 1t may not be logical,
but it is necessary, for our very wishes are
prayers, and we cannot say that it is useless.
Those who have faith in Power which cares
for the happiness of human beings will not
presume to ask Him TO alter the laws by which
the universe is governed, but they are not for
hidden to ask that He will supply their wants
The greatest of all prayers was not made only
for spiritual strength and salvation, but for 80
common a thing M 50 our daiiv bread" and