ROOM FOR PRAYER IN GOD'S UNIVERSE, ON PHILOSOPHIC AND RATIONAL GROUNDS. OUR Primate has tried his hand at a national prayer in connection with the threatened visitation of cholera, and the great calamity of the cattle plague. This has been the signal for a sharp controversy, in which the whole ground and significance of prayer have been somewhat freely handled. The Primate's national prayer has been, in truth, only the signal for the commencement of a strife long pending, in which physical science, on the one side, and the vague conceptions of prayer, current amongst pious but not very thoughtful people, on the other side, have come into fierce collision. The Pall Mall Gazette has been the arena of conflict. Professor Tyndall is the apt and clever exponent of the physical-science view of prayer. His proposition is:-That we have no reason whatever for praying for divine interference in regard to events which are the result of physical laws. With this, as a general proposition, we do not quarrel. But he, and other writers in this strain, seem disposed to push the assertion to such an extreme that no place whatsoever is left for prayer in God's universe. He attributes great part of prayer to ignorance, and insists that larger, fuller knowledge takes away its significance." In cases of national supplications," says he, "the antecedents are often very clear to one class of the community, though very dark to another and a larger class. This explains the fact that, while the latter are ready to resort to prayer, the former decline doing so. The difference between both classes is one of knowledge, not of religious feeling." Good people in England would deem it absurd to pray that the sun might not rise to-morrow, yet they would join heartily in a prayer for rain. The laws which regulate weather are very obscure; the sunrise rests on clearer grounds. In the same manner a prayer that the atmosphere might support more or less than the appointed weight of water, would have with it no one's sympathy. Yet, says he, "the absence or presence of rain depends upon laws of gaseous pressure, which are just as immutable as those of water pressure; and the only reason I can see for the assumption that the one is the object of divine interference, and the other not, is that one of them is 770 times heavier than the other." To confirm his supposition, and further strengthen his conclusion, the professor dwells on the series of antecedents and consequents which converge in any physical fact. Now to all this there can be little objection, considered from one point of view. But when the reasoning evidently points to a conclusion which would silence the voice of prayer altogether, it is but right to question sharply the arguments brought forward. We propose to show, that in God's universe of cause and effect, there is a place for prayer on rational and philosophic grounds. Our review of the subject is very brief; but a thoughtful mind will find no difficulty in following out the train of thought suggested on the various points. It is not worth while to attempt any controversy with those who regard nature and providence as an eternal succession of change, issuing by fixed law, no supreme will controlling any where. We turn to those who are really striving in such matters to harmonize their religious convictions with their scientific. Now one large class sees in nature and providence only fixed laws with which God does not interfere. These laws are mutually controlling and self compensatory. No possible interference can set one aside or change one single law. "From Nature's chain whatever link you strike, Others, again, whilst acknowledging the supreme will and supervision in all things, yet challenge the proof of divine interference, and ask us to lay our finger on any point in a chain of sequences leading to some special result where Deity has interfered. In some cases this style of reasoning passes into a grave and lofty spirit of sarcasm, as if every ignorant fellow who affects "a gift in prayer," considered that his brawling would influence the grand course of nature, which has continued unchangeable since time began. In other cases the tone is that of sharp contemptuous rebuke; as if Christian people, in lifting up to God the voice of prayer, were therefore neglecting the means which lie within our reach of forestalling calamity or redressing wrong. Instead of idle cries to God for deliverance from the cholera, go cleanse those filthy hovels; go root out those dens of physical and moral pestilence, which disgrace and endanger our great cities, where our labouring poor rot into premature graves. Proclaim the sin of those who live on the rental of such places; point out their danger to those who live in them. Good advice to us as Christians, even though bitterly urged. Still, we ask-does all this deprive us of a ground for prayer? We invite attention to the following considerations. We must pass by altogether the supposition that nature is an eternal, self regulating machine; an idea as uncongenial to intellect and science as to the heart. 1. But in answer to many objections and difficulties we ask :— Is there any disciple of physical science who will not confess that, at the extreme limit of our researches and our knowledge, we find ourselves on the verge of an unknown, where causes may be working which affect all our experience? Dr. Chalmers has argued out this point with great effect. The higher and remote causes of things remain concealed from view. No observation brings them near to us. Yet we know that there are forged the originating links of the chain of cause and effect, whose final results we here apprehend. Who shall venture absolutely to assert that prayer may not move the hand of God,* there to touch and change the whole sequence? No disorder would ensue in nature-no seeming interference; yet all would obey that hidden touch. How short a distance we can trace, or expect to trace, the causes of the most common events. The law of storms yet baffles all investigation. How far does medical science carry us toward the ultimate conditions of health and disease? Nay, does not medical science, in its noblest and clearest oracles tell us, that there is a point where the physical becomes strangely intertwined with the mental, and obeys a far other law? 2. This last remark suggests to us our next consideration. Surely no philosophy pretends that physical causes are the only causes in the universe. Professor Tyndall himself confessesthough he hardly sees the effect of that confession-that another kind of cause altogether operates in physical events. "The external motion of your arm," says he " is derived immediately from a motion within your arm-it is in fact this motion in another shape. While you were pushing your inkstand, a certain amount of oxidation occurred in the muscles of your arm, which oxidation, under normal circumstances, produces a certain definite amount of heat. . . . The force employed is the force of your food, which is stored up in your muscles. The motor nerves pull the trigger, and discharge this force. You have here a series of transformations of purely physical energy, with one critical point involved in the question;-What causes the motor nerves to pull the trigger? Is the cause physical or super-physical? Is it a sound or a gleam, or an external prick or purpose, or some internal uneasiness that stimulates the nerves to unlock the muscular force, or is it free will? Whatever the true answer to the question may be, your safety consists in affirming boldly that free *It will be borne in mind that we are dealing here with the objections of physical science alone; the moral and metaphysical difficulty must be otherwise dealt with. will must be the cause of the nervous action." Here, then, is a new and mighty cause making its appearance in the chain of events: WILL. And, certainly, look where we may, the mental cause utterly dominates the physical. The only true power, indeed, in the universe is mind. "Will gravitation cease as you go by?" said Pope, rhyming the philosophy of Bolingbroke. We answer, Yes! The will within us conquers gravitation every minute and in almost every act. Now let us rise to the great Supreme Will. Shall this be true of man, and not of God? Nay, can we for a moment deny that the Supreme Will may influence to the mightiest changes by the will of man? God may not indeed seemingly arrest the course of nature in answer to prayer. He will not stay the deadly inroad of the cholera or the fever as by a word. But if a number of the poor doomed dwellers in some of our fever-stricken alleys could be gathered together, and after some words of explanation, prayer should be offered that God might affect their wills and the wills of all who had power in the matter to cleanse, purify, and watch against the terrible destroyer, shall any one dare to say that such a prayer is not in consonance with all the principles of science? And if I utter such a prayer in my closet, am I less rational? In this very point, of the power of will, is the strongest ground for the use of prayer. Remark how continually it is illustrated to us in God's dealings. The history of Joseph is the history of a series of events depending on human feeling. All is perfectly natural; yet in that sequence is every opportunity for the exercise of divine influence. So in the history of Moses. 3. But we must not forget yet a further consideration. We have seen that the will is the mightiest of all causes of change. Let us add to this; that there is such a thing as a moral cause. It is expedient to keep that in view, because there is often an implied sneer in the reasonings of physical science in regard to prayer; a sneer which makes stinging use of the insignificance of man and his concerns in comparison with the grandeur of the universe, and its vast evolutions, in comparison with God and His designs. It has been well reasoned by the author of "The Plurality of Worlds," that the explanation of God's interference on behalf of this world in the sending of His Son, is not to be explained by any material or intellectual glory in our globe or ourselves. It is to be explained altogether from a moral ground. And the grandeur of this world to God, and all spiritual intelligences, is vitally associated with the great purpose involved in salvation. We remark, then, in opposition to the contemptuous tone of writers in speaking of man's prayer to the Infinite God, that God is not moved by such influences, nor acts on such grounds, as seem to commend themselves to our pride and self-complacency. His interest is won by motives which pass by many things of vast power to the human affections, and can only be explained by some cause to which may be especially attributed the term moral. "The Great First Cause Acts not by partial but by general laws,” says Pope. True; but the great moral laws of the universe are the greatest and most usual of all, and specially influential in the divine mind. On these grounds, briefly given, but, perhaps, sufficient to suggest the full argument, we hold that there is a place for prayer in God's universe; and that in harmony with true science. True, the significance of prayer requires to be more earnestly considered by Christians and more adequately stated. prayer is itself a divine reality. "For what are men better than sheep or goats That nourish a blind life within the brain, If knowing this they lift not holy hands Both for themselves, and those they call their friends? For so the great round world is every way Bound with gold chains about the feet of God." But OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. WE need be at no pains to explain what we mean by this heading. Everybody knows that under this title Mr. Dickens has been issuing for the last nineteen months, one of those charming serials that he alone can write, and that have made his name familiar in every household in England. He has just completed his work, and as we have followed his heroes and heroines through their tortuous course, and along many a devious way, we are tempted to express our opinion of the persons themselves, and of the art by which they have been connected together in one story. We are in some sense invited to do this by their author, for in a "postscript in lieu of preface" added to the second volume, he speaks of himself as an artist, and defends the method of his work. The sense, however, is only a very mild |