Sacramento daily record-union., 1881-07-09
PRAYER AND NATURAL LAW.

mOn1alb OIL uuihiiasAoA oA20 RA"JSA A~
sensibly diminished, and there can be no
doubt that this change is attributable to
the light which has been thrown on the re-
lations between prayer and natural law.
The subject is indeed an old one. The
more thoughtful have at various times
questioned the utility and even the ration
ality of such public implorations, and
though ecclesiastical tyranny for long
period rendered free discussion of the mat
ter dangerous, there is evidence that even
medieval philosophers were capable OF
dealing with it cogently. 1t would, for
example, be difficult to put the case more
forcibly than it was put by Maximus
Tyrius, in the sixteenth century. That
thinker wrote The designs of God exist
from all eternity. If the object prayed
'for be conformable to his immutable
twill, it must be perfectly useless to re-
"quest of him the very thing which he
'shas determined to do. If he is prayed
sc for the reverse of what he has deter
90 mined to do, he is prayed to be weak,
!" feeble, inconstant such prayer I'M
"plies that this is thought to be his char
"acter, and is nothing better than ridicule
cor mockery of him. You either request OF
chin what is just and right, in which
"case he ought to do it, and it will be
actually done without any solicitation,
(which in fact shows distrust of his rectl-
"tude; or what you request is unjust, and
then you insult him. You are either
worthy or unworthy of the favor you
"implore if worthy he knows it better
" than you do yourself; if unworthy, you
:" commit an additional crime in requesting
' that which you do not merit. In
"word, we offer up prayer to God only
"because we have made him after our own
"image. We treat him like Pasha or a
''Sultan who is capable of being exasper-
"ated or appeased."
In modern times prayer is objected to on
the ground that, in so far as it solicits in
reference of any kind with natural law, it
is demand for miracles, and necessarily
and by inference denial of confidence in
the order, and method, and stability, and
wisdom of the government of the universe.
A Supreme Being capable of being moved
by prayer must be Being capable of
repenting of what he has done; that is to
say, a finite, imperfect, fallible Being.
Now it is certainly possible that the exter-
nal Intelligence is of this character, and it
has been argued that many circumstances
warrant such belief. But that hypothe-
sis will not help those who maintain the
necessity and propriety of prayer, for they
hold that omniscience is one of the attri-
butes of the Supreme Being, though in
practice they show their disbelief in this
by continually asking that Being to recon
slider his decisions. In fact there is distinct
Manicheism in the theory of the advo-
Gates OF prayer, for they are continually i'm
plying that things have been done either
without the knowledge, or without the ap-
proval, or in opposition to the ultimate in
tentions of God, and as continually imply
ing that He can, by calling his attention
to what has gone wrong, be moved to
remedy it.
The way in which prayer ignores natu-
raj law, however, is very curious. People
who resort to it do not seem to realize that
in number of cases they are asking for
changes in the course of nature as emphatic
and unreasonable as the legendary stoppage
of the earth's revolution by Joshua. Sci
ence shows that there is no natural phe-
nomenon, however apparently trivial,
which is not the product OF the same rigid
and immutable laws which keep the plan
cts in their course She makes it plain
that the simple folks who think it quite
reasonable to pray for fine weather or for
rain, are asking nothing less than miracles,
however little they may suspect it. She
asserts, as Tyndall observes, " that with
"out disturbance of natural law quite as
SERIOUS as the stoppage of an eclipse, or
"the rolling of the st. Lawrence up the
Falls OF Niagara, no act of humiliation,
"individual or national, could call one
''shower from heaven, or defect toward US
ga single beam of the sun.
The permanence of natural law has been
recognized perforce by the more enlightened
ecclesiastics of this century. They found
that it was quite useless to make any fur
ther denials in that direction. But in
making this admission they cut the ground
from under their own feet in the matter OF
prayer, and they avowed the uselessness
and irrationality of all supplications hav-
ing for their object the interference with
or change of the natural sequence of phe-
nomena. The recent propositions for
prayer meetings on behalf OF the President
are within the category of these futile and
irrational ceremonies. Nothing can be
more certain than that if the order of
nature is permanent such appeals must be
wholly vain. The recovery of Presi-
dent Garfield depends altogether upon cir
cumstances already predetermined, and no
implorings or beseechings can possibly
affect the outcome one way or the other.
The mischief of fostering belief in the
offering of prayer under such circum.
stances consists in the fact that the
kind of religious faith SO fostcred is
in no essential respect superior to Fetish
ism. The African chief who pretends to
WELD power over the weather, and to make
rain come at his pleasure, is in regard to
his pretensions on all-fours with those who
teach that the course of Nature can be
altered in any particular by human suppli-
cations, and who maintain that the offering
of such prayers is either rational or truly
reverential