IV. Relations of the Doctrine of Providence.1. To miracles and works of grace.Particular providence is the agency of God in what seem to us the minor affairs of nature and human life. Special providence is only an instance[pg 432]of God's particular providence which has special relation to us or makes peculiar impression upon us. It is special, not as respects the means which God makes use of, but as respects the effect produced upon us. In special providence we have only a more impressive manifestation of God's universal control.Miracles and works of grace like regeneration are not to be regarded as belonging to a different order of things from God's special providences. They too, like special providences, may have their natural connections and antecedents, although they more readily suggest their divine authorship. Nature and God are not mutually exclusive,—nature is rather God's method of working. Since nature is only the manifestation of God, special providence, miracle, and regeneration are simply different degrees of extraordinary nature. Certain of the wonders of Scripture, such as the destruction of Sennacherib's army and the dividing of the Red Sea, the plagues of Egypt, the flight of quails, and the draught of fishes, can be counted as exaggerations of natural forces, while at the same time they are operations of the wonder-working God.The falling of snow from a roof is an example of ordinary (or particular) providence. But if a man is killed by it, it becomes a special providence to him and to others who are thereby taught the insecurity of life. So the providing of coal for fuel in the geologic ages may be regarded by different persons in the light either of a general or of a special providence. In all the operations of nature and all the events of life God's providence is exhibited. That providence becomes special, when it manifestly suggests some care of God for us or some duty of ours to God. Savage, Life beyond Death, 285—“Mary A. Livermore's life was saved during her travels in the West by her hearing and instantly obeying what seemed to her a voice. She did not know where it came from; but she leaped, as the voice ordered, from one side of a car to the other, and instantly the side where she had been sitting was crushed in and utterly demolished.”In a similar way, the life of Dr. Oncken was saved in the railroad disaster at Norwalk.Trench gives the name of“providential miracles”to those Scripture wonders which may be explained as wrought through the agency of natural laws (see Trench, Miracles, 19). Mozley also (Miracles, 117-120) calls these wonders miracles, because of the predictive word of God which accompanied them. He says that the difference in effect between miracles and special providences is that the latter givesomewarrant, while the former givefullwarrant, for believing that they are wrought by God. He calls special providences“invisible miracles.”Bp. of Southampton, Place of Miracles, 12, 13—“The art of Bezaleel in constructing the tabernacle, and the plans of generals like Moses and Joshua, Gideon, Barak, and David, are in the Old Testament ascribed to the direct inspiration of God. A less religious writer would have ascribed them to the instinct of military skill. No miracle is necessarily involved, when, in devising the system of ceremonial law it is said:‘Jehovah spake unto Moses’(Num. 5:1). God is everywhere present in the history of Israel, but miracles are strikingly rare.”We prefer to say that the line between the natural and the supernatural, between special providence and miracle, is an arbitrary one, and that the same event may often be regarded either as special providence or as miracle, according as we look at it from the point of view of its relation to other events or from the point of view of its relation to God.E. G. Robinson:“If Vesuvius should send up ashes and lava, and a strong wind should scatter them, it could be said to rain fire and brimstone, as at Sodom and Gomorrha.”There is abundant evident of volcanic action at the Dead Sea. See article on the Physical Preparation for Israel in Palestine, by G. Frederick Wright, in Bib. Sac., April, 1901:364. The three great miracles—the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha, the parting of the waters of the Jordan, the falling down of the walls of Jericho—are described as effect of volcanic eruption, elevation of the bed of the river by a landslide, and earthquake-shock overthrowing the walls. Salt slime thrown up may have enveloped Lot's wife and turned her into“a mound of salt”(Gen. 19:26). In like manner, some of Jesus' works of healing, as for instance those wrought upon paralytics and epileptics, may be susceptible of natural explanation, while yet they show[pg 433]that Christ is absolute Lord of nature. For the naturalistic view, see Tyndall on Miracles and Special Providences, in Fragments of Science, 45, 418.Per contra, see Farrar, on Divine Providence and General Laws, in Science and Theology, 54-80; Row, Bampton Lect. on Christian Evidences, 109-115; Godet, Defence of Christian Faith, Chap. 2; Bowne, The Immanence of God, 56-65.2. To prayer and its answer.What has been said with regard to God's connection with nature suggests the question, how God can answer prayer consistently with the fixity of natural law.Tyndall (see reference above), while repelling the charge of denying that God can answer prayer at all, yet does deny that he can answer it without a miracle. He says expressly“that without a 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 deflect toward us a single beam of the sun.”In reply we would remark:A. Negatively, that the true solution is not to be reached:(a) By making the sole effect of prayer to be its reflex influence upon the petitioner.—Prayer presupposes a God who hears and answers. It will not be offered, unless it is believed to accomplish objective as well as subjective results.According to the first view mentioned above, prayer is a mere spiritual gymnastics—an effort to lift ourselves from the ground by tugging at our own boot-straps. David Hume said well, after hearing a sermon by Dr. Leechman:“We can make use of no expression or even thought in prayers and entreaties which does not imply that these prayers have an influence.”See Tyndall on Prayer and Natural Law, in Fragments of Science, 35. Will men pray to a God who is both deaf and dumb? Will the sailor on the bowsprit whistle to the wind for the sake of improving his voice? Horace Bushnell called this perversion of prayer a“mere dumb-bell exercise.”Baron Munchausen pulled himself out of the bog in China by tugging away at his own pigtail.Hyde, God's Education of Man, 154, 155—“Prayer is not the reflex action of my will upon itself, but rather the communion of two wills, in which the finite comes into connection with the Infinite, and, like the trolley, appropriates its purpose and power.”Harnack, Wesen des Christenthums, 42, apparently follows Schleiermacher in unduly limiting prayer to general petitions which receive only a subjective answer. He tells us that“Jesus taught his disciples the Lord's Prayer in response to a request for directions how to pray. Yet we look in vain therein for requests for special gifts of grace, or for particular good things, even though they are spiritual. The name, the will, the kingdom of God—these are the things which are the objects of petition.”Harnack forgets that the same Christ said also:“All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them”(Mark 11:24).(b) Nor by holding that God answers prayer simply by spiritual means, such as the action of the Holy Spirit upon the spirit of man.—The realm of spirit is no less subject to law than the realm of matter. Scripture and experience, moreover, alike testify that in answer to prayer events take place in the outward world which would not have taken place if prayer had not gone before.According to this second theory, God feeds the starving Elijah, not by a distinct message from heaven but by giving a compassionate disposition to the widow of Zarephath so that she is moved to help the prophet.1 K. 17:9—“behold, I have commanded a widow there to sustain thee.”But God could also feed Elijah by the ravens and the angel (1 K. 17:4; 19:15), and the pouring rain that followed Elijah's prayer (1 K. 18:42-45) cannot be explained as a subjective spiritual phenomenon. Diman, Theistic Argument, 268—“Our charts map out not only the solid shore but the windings of the ocean currents, and we look into the morning papers to ascertain the gathering of storms on the[pg 434]slopes of the Rocky Mountains.”But law rules in the realm of spirit as well as in the realm of nature. See Baden Powell, in Essays and Reviews, 106-162; Knight, Studies in Philosophy and Literature, 340-404; George I. Chace, discourse before the Porter Rhet. Soc. of Andover, August, 1854. Governor Rice in Washington is moved to send money to a starving family in New York, and to secure employment for them. Though he has had no information with regard to their need, they have knelt in prayer for help just before the coming of the aid.(c) Nor by maintaining that God suspends or breaks in upon the order of nature, in answering every prayer that is offered.—This view does not take account of natural laws as having objective existence, and as revealing the order of God's being. Omnipotence might thus suspend natural law, but wisdom, so far as we can see, would not.This third theory might well be held by those who see in nature no force but the all-working will of God. But the properties and powers of matter are revelations of the divine will, and the human will has only a relative independence in the universe. To desire that God would answer all our prayers is to desire omnipotence without omniscience. All true prayer is therefore an expression of the one petition:“Thy will be done”(Mat. 6:10). E. G. Robinson:“It takes much common sense to pray, and many prayers are destitute of this quality. Man needs to pray audibly even in his private prayers, to get the full benefit of them. One of the chief benefits of the English liturgy is that the individual minister is lost sight of. Protestantism makes you work; in Romanism the church will do it all for you.”(d) Nor by considering prayer as a physical force, linked in each case to its answer, as physical cause is linked to physical effect.—Prayer is not a force acting directly upon nature; else there would be no discretion as to its answer. It can accomplish results in nature, only as it influences God.We educate our children in two ways: first, by training them to do for themselves what they can do; and, secondly, by encouraging them to seek our help in matters beyond their power. So God educates us, first, by impersonal law, and, secondly, by personal dependence. He teaches us both to work and to ask. Notice the“perfect unwisdom of modern scientists who place themselves under the training of impersonal law, to the exclusion of that higher and better training which is under personality”(Hopkins, Sermon on Prayer-gauge, 16).It seems more in accordance with both Scripture and reason to say that:B. God may answer prayer, even when that answer involves changes in the sequences of nature,—(a) By new combinations of natural forces, in regions withdrawn from our observation, so that effects are produced which these same forces left to themselves would never have accomplished. As man combines the laws of chemical attraction and of combustion, to fire the gunpowder and split the rock asunder, so God may combine the laws of nature to bring about answers to prayer. In all this there may be no suspension or violation of law, but a use of law unknown to us.Hopkins, Sermon on the Prayer-gauge:“Nature is uniform in her processes but not in her results. Do you say that water cannot run uphill? Yes, it can and does. Whenever man constructs a milldam the water runs up the environing hills till it reaches the top of the milldam. Man can make a spark of electricity do his bidding; why cannot God use a bolt of electricity? Laws are not our masters, but our servants. They do our bidding all the better because they are uniform. And our servants are not God's masters.”Kendall Brooks:“The master of a musical instrument can vary without limit the combination of sounds and the melodies which these combinations can produce. The laws of the instrument are not changed, but in their unchanging steadfastness produce an infinite variety of tunes. It is necessary that they should be[pg 435]unchanging in order to secure a desired result. So nature, which exercises the infinite skill of the divine Master, is governed by unvarying laws; but he, by these laws, produces an infinite variety of results.”Hodge, Popular Lectures, 45, 99—“The system of natural laws is far more flexible in God's hands than it is in ours. We act on second causes externally; God acts on them internally. We act upon them at only a few isolated points; God acts upon every point of the system at the same time. The whole of nature may be as plastic to his will as the air in the organs of the great singer who articulates it into a fit expression of every thought and passion of his soaring soul.”Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 155—“If all the chemical elements of our solar system preëxisted in the fiery cosmic mist, there must have been a time when quite suddenly the attractions between these elements overcame the degree of caloric force which held them apart, and the rush of elements into chemical union must have been consummated with inconceivable rapidity. Uniformitarianism is not universal.”Shaler, Interpretation of Nature, chap. 2—“By a little increase of centrifugal force the elliptical orbit is changed into a parabola, and the planet becomes a comet. By a little reduction in temperature water becomes solid and loses many of its powers. So unexpected results are brought about and surprises as revolutionary as if a Supreme Power immediately intervened.”William James, Address before Soc. for Psych. Research:“Thought-transference may involve a critical point, as the physicists call it, which is passed only when certain psychic conditions are realized, and otherwise not reached at all—just as a big conflagration will break out at a certain temperature, below which no conflagration whatever, whether big or little, can occur.”Tennyson, Life, 1:324—“Prayer is like opening a sluice between the great ocean and our little channels, when the great sea gathers itself together and flows in at full tide.”Since prayer is nothing more nor less than appeal to a personal and present God, whose granting or withholding of the requested blessing is believed to be determined by the prayer itself, we must conclude that prayer moves God, or, in other words, induces the putting forth on his part of an imperative volition.The view that in answering prayer God combines natural forces is elaborated by Chalmers, Works, 2:314, and 7:234. See Diman, Theistic Argument, 111—“When laws are conceived of, not as single, but as combined, instead of being immutable in their operation, they are the agencies of ceaseless change. Phenomena are governed, not by invariable forces, but byendlessly varying combinations of invariable forces.”Diman seems to have followed Argyll, Reign of Law, 100.Janet, Final Causes, 219—“I kindle a fire in my grate. I only intervene to produce and combine together the different agents whose natural action behooves to produce the effect I have need of; but the first step once taken, all the phenomena constituting combustion engender each other, conformably to their laws, without a new intervention of the agent; so that an observer who should study the series of these phenomena, without perceiving the first hand that had prepared all, could not seize that hand in any especial act, and yet there is a preconceived plan and combination.”Hopkins, Sermon on Prayer-gauge: Man, by sprinkling plaster on his field, may cause the corn to grow more luxuriantly; by kindling great fires and by firing cannon, he may cause rain; and God can surely, in answer to prayer, do as much as man can. Lewes says that the fundamental character of all theological philosophy is conceiving of phenomena as subject to supernatural volition, and consequently as eminently and irregularly variable. This notion, he says, is refuted, first, by exact and rational prevision of phenomena, and, secondly, by the possibility of our modifying these phenomena so as to promote our own advantage. But we ask in reply: If we can modify them, cannot God? But, lest this should seem to imply mutability in God or inconsistency in nature, we remark, in addition, that:(b) God may have so preärranged the laws of the material universe and the events of history that, while the answer to prayer is an expression of his will, it is granted through the working of natural agencies, and in perfect accordance with the general principle that results, both temporal and spiritual, are to be attained by intelligent creatures through the use of the appropriate and appointed means.[pg 436]J. P. Cooke, Credentials of Science, 194—“The Jacquard loom of itself would weave a perfectly uniform plain fabric; the perforated cards determine a selection of the threads, and through a combination of these variable conditions, so complex that the observer cannot follow their intricate workings, the predesigned pattern appears.”E. G. Robinson:“The most formidable objection to this theory is the apparent countenance it lends to the doctrine of necessitarianism. But if it presupposes that free actions have been taken into account, it cannot easily be shown to be false.”The bishop who was asked by his curate to sanction prayers for rain was unduly sceptical when he replied:“First consult the barometer.”Phillips Brooks:“Prayer is not the conquering of God's reluctance, but the taking hold of God's willingness.”The Pilgrims at Plymouth, somewhere about 1628, prayed for rain. They met at 9 A. M., and continued in prayer for eight or nine hours. While they were assembled clouds gathered, and the next morning began rains which, with some intervals, lasted fourteen days. John Easter was many years ago an evangelist in Virginia. A large out-door meeting was being held. Many thousands had assembled, when heavy storm clouds began to gather. There was no shelter to which the multitudes could retreat. The rain had already reached the adjoining fields when John Easter cried:“Brethren, be still, while I call upon God to stay the storm till the gospel is preached to this multitude!”Then he knelt and prayed that the audience might be spared the rain, and that after they had gone to their homes there might be refreshing showers. Behold, the clouds parted as they came near, and passed to either side of the crowd and then closed again, leaving the place dry where the audience had assembled, and the next day the postponed showers came down upon the ground that had been the day before omitted.Since God is immanent in nature, an answer to prayer, coming about through the intervention of natural law, may be as real a revelation of God's personal care as if the laws of nature were suspended, and God interposed by an exercise of his creative power. Prayer and its answer, though having God's immediate volition as their connecting bond, may yet be provided for in the original plan of the universe.The universe does not exist for itself, but for moral ends and moral beings, to reveal God and to furnish facilities of intercourse between God and intelligent creatures. Bishop Berkeley:“The universe is God's ceaseless conversation with his creatures.”The universe certainly subserves moral ends—the discouragement of vice and the reward of virtue; why not spiritual ends also? When we remember that there is no true prayer which God does not inspire; that every true prayer is part of the plan of the universe linked in with all the rest and provided for at the beginning; that God is in nature and in mind, supervising all their movements and making all fulfill his will and reveal his personal care; that God can adjust the forces of nature to each other far more skilfully than can man when man produces effects which nature of herself could never accomplish; that God is not confined to nature or her forces, but can work by his creative and omnipotent will where other means are not sufficient,—we need have no fear, either that natural law will bar God's answers to prayer, or that these answers will cause a shock or jar in the system of the universe.Matheson, Messages of the Old Religions, 321, 322—“Hebrew poetry never deals with outward nature for its own sake. The eye never rests on beauty for itself alone. The heavens are the work of God's hands, the earth is God's footstool, the winds are God's ministers, the stars are God's host, the thunder is God's voice. What we call Nature the Jew called God.”Miss Heloise E. Hersey:“Plato in the Phædrus sets forth in a splendid myth the means by which the gods refresh themselves. Once a year, in a mighty host, they drive their chariots up the steep to the topmost vault of heaven. Thence they may behold all the wonders and the secrets of the universe; and, quickened by the sight of the great plain of truth, they return home replenished and made glad by the celestial vision.”Abp. Trench, Poems, 134—“Lord, what a change within us one short hour Spent in thy presence will prevail to make—What heavy burdens from our bosoms take, What parched grounds refresh as with a shower! We kneel, and all around us seems to lower; We rise, and all, the distant and the near, Stands forth in sunny outline, brave and clear; We kneel how weak, we rise how full of power! Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong, Or others—that we are not always strong; That we are ever overborne with care; That we should ever weak[pg 437]or heartless be, Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer, And joy and strength and courage are with thee?”See Calderwood, Science and Religion, 299-309; McCosh, Divine Government, 215; Liddon, Elements of Religion, 178-203; Hamilton, Autology, 690-694. See also Jellett, Donnellan Lectures on the Efficacy of Prayer; Butterworth, Story of Notable Prayers; Patton, Prayer and its Answers; Monrad, World of Prayer; Prime, Power of Prayer; Phelps, The Still Hour; Haven, and Bickersteth, on Prayer; Prayer for Colleges; Cox, in Expositor, 1877: chap. 3; Faunce, Prayer as a Theory and a Fact; Trumbull, Prayer, Its Nature and Scope.C. If asked whether this relation between prayer and its providential answer can be scientifically tested, we reply that it may be tested just as a father's love may be tested by a dutiful son.(a) There is a general proof of it in the past experience of the Christian and in the past history of the church.Ps. 116:1-8—“I love Jehovah because he heareth my voice and my supplications.”Luther prays for the dying Melanchthon, and he recovers. George Müller trusts to prayer, and builds his great orphan-houses. For a multitude of instances, see Prime, Answers to Prayer. Charles H. Spurgeon:“If there is any fact that is proved, it is that God hears prayer. If there is any scientific statement that is capable of mathematical proof, this is.”Mr. Spurgeon's language is rhetorical: he means simply that God's answers to prayer remove all reasonable doubt. Adoniram Judson:“I never was deeply interested in any object, I never prayed sincerely and earnestly for anything, but it came; at some time—no matter at how distant a day—somehow, in some shape, probably the last I should have devised—it came. And yet I have always had so little faith! May God forgive me, and while he condescends to use me as his instrument, wipe the sin of unbelief from my heart!”(b) In condescension to human blindness, God may sometimes submit to a formal test of his faithfulness and power,—as in the case of Elijah and the priests of Baal.Is. 7:10-13—Ahaz is rebuked for not asking a sign,—in him it indicated unbelief.1 K. 18:36-38—Elijah said,“let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel.... Then the fire of Jehovah fell, and consumed the burnt offering.”Romaine speaks of“a year famous for believing.”Mat 21:21, 22—“even if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou taken up and cast into the sea, it shall be done. And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.”“Impossible?”said Napoleon;“then it shall be done!”Arthur Hallam, quoted in Tennyson's Life, 1:44—“With respect to prayer, you ask how I am to distinguish the operations of God in me from the motions of my own heart. Why should you distinguish them, or how do you know that there is any distinction? Is God less God because he acts by general laws when he deals with the common elements of nature?”“Watch in prayer to see what cometh. Foolish boys that knock at a door in wantonness, will not stay till somebody open to them; but a man that hath business will knock, and knock again, till he gets his answer.”Martineau, Seat of Authority, 102, 103—“God is not beyond nature simply,—he is within it. In nature and in mind we must find the action of his power. There is no need of his being a third factor over and above the life of nature and the life of man.”Hartley Coleridge:“Be not afraid to pray,—to pray is right. Pray if thou canst with hope, but ever pray, Though hope be weak, or sick with long delay; Pray in the darkness, if there be no light. Far is the time, remote from human sight, When war and discord on the earth shall cease; Yet every prayer for universal peace Avails the blessed time to expedite. Whate'er is good to wish, ask that of heaven, Though it be what thou canst not hope to see; Pray to be perfect, though the material leaven Forbid the spirit so on earth to be; But if for any wish thou dar'st not pray, Then pray to God to cast that wish away.”(c) When proof sufficient to convince the candid inquirer has been already given, it may not consist with the divine majesty to abide a test imposed by mere curiosity or scepticism,—as in the case of the Jews who sought a sign from heaven.[pg 438]Mat. 12:39—“An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet.”Tyndall's prayer-gauge would ensure a conflict of prayers. Since our present life is a moral probation, delay in the answer to our prayers, and even the denial of specific things for which we pray, may be only signs of God's faithfulness and love. George Müller:“I myself have been bringing certain requests before God now for seventeen years and six months, and never a day has passed without my praying concerning them all this time; yet the full answer has not come up to the present. But I look for it; I confidently expect it.”Christ's prayer,“let this cup pass away from me”(Mat. 26:39), and Paul's prayer that the“thorn in the flesh”might depart from him (2 Cor. 12:7, 8), were not answered in the precise way requested. No more are our prayers always answered in the way we expect. Christ's prayer was not answered by the literal removing of the cup, because the drinking of the cup was really his glory; and Paul's prayer was not answered by the literal removal of the thorn, because the thorn was needful for his own perfecting. In the case of both Jesus and Paul, there were larger interests to be consulted than their own freedom from suffering.(d) Since God's will is the link between prayer and its answer, there can be no such thing as a physical demonstration of its efficacy in any proposed case. Physical tests have no application to things into which free will enters as a constitutive element. But there are moral tests, and moral tests are as scientific as physical tests can be.Diman, Theistic Argument, 576, alludes to Goldwin Smith's denial that any scientific method can be applied to history because it would make man a necessary link in a chain of cause and effect and so would deny his free will. But Diman says this is no more impossible than the development of the individual according to a fixed law of growth, while yet free will is sedulously respected. Froude says history is not a science, because no science could foretell Mohammedanism or Buddhism; and Goldwin Smith says that“prediction is the crown of all science.”But, as Diman remarks:“geometry, geology, physiology, are sciences, yet they do not predict.”Buckle brought history into contempt by asserting that it could be analyzed and referred solely to intellectual laws and forces. To all this we reply that there may be scientific tests which are not physical, or even intellectual, but only moral. Such a test God urges his people to use, inMal. 3:10—“Bring ye the whole tithe into the storehouse ... and prove me now herewith, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.”All such prayer is a reflection of Christ's words—some fragment of his teaching transformed into a supplication (John 15:7; see Westcott, Bib. Com.,in loco); all such prayer is moreover the work of the Spirit of God (Rom. 8:26, 27). It is therefore sure of an answer.But the test of prayer proposed by Tyndall is not applicable to the thing to be tested by it. Hopkins, Prayer and the Prayer-gauge, 22sq.—“We cannot measure wheat by the yard, or the weight of a discourse with a pair of scales.... God's wisdom might see that it was not best for the petitioners, nor for the objects of their petition, to grant their request. Christians therefore could not, without special divine authorization, rest their faith upon the results of such a test.... Why may we not ask for great changes in nature? For the same reason that a well-informed child does not ask for the moon as a plaything.... There are two limitations upon prayer. First, except by special direction of God, we cannot ask for a miracle, for the same reason that a child could not ask his father to burn the house down. Nature is the house we live in. Secondly, we cannot ask for anything under the laws of nature which would contravene the object of those laws. Whatever we can do for ourselves under these laws, God expects us to do. If the child is cold, let him go near the fire,—not beg his father to carry him.”Herbert Spencer's Sociology is only social physics. He denies freedom, and declares anyone who will affix D. V. to the announcement of the Mildmay Conference to be incapable of understanding sociology. Prevision excludes divine or human will. But Mr. Spencer intimates that the evils of natural selection may be modified by artificial selection. What is this but the interference of will? And if man can interfere, cannot God do the same? Yet the wise child will not expect the father to give everything he asks for. Nor will the father who loves his child give him the razor to play with, or stuff him with unwholesome sweets, simply because the child asks these things. If the engineer of the ocean steamer should give me permission to press the lever that sets all the machinery in motion, I should decline to use my power and should prefer to leave such matters to him, unless he first suggested it and showed me how. So the Holy Spirit“helpeth our infirmity; for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself[pg 439]maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered”(Rom. 8:26). And we ought not to talk of“submitting”to perfect Wisdom, or of“being resigned”to perfect Love. Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, 2:1—“What they [the gods] do delay, they do not deny.... We, ignorant of ourselves, Beg often our own harms, which the wise powers Deny us for our good; so find we profit By losing of our prayers.”See Thornton, Old-Fashioned Ethics, 286-297.Per contra, see Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty, 277-294.
IV. Relations of the Doctrine of Providence.1. To miracles and works of grace.Particular providence is the agency of God in what seem to us the minor affairs of nature and human life. Special providence is only an instance[pg 432]of God's particular providence which has special relation to us or makes peculiar impression upon us. It is special, not as respects the means which God makes use of, but as respects the effect produced upon us. In special providence we have only a more impressive manifestation of God's universal control.Miracles and works of grace like regeneration are not to be regarded as belonging to a different order of things from God's special providences. They too, like special providences, may have their natural connections and antecedents, although they more readily suggest their divine authorship. Nature and God are not mutually exclusive,—nature is rather God's method of working. Since nature is only the manifestation of God, special providence, miracle, and regeneration are simply different degrees of extraordinary nature. Certain of the wonders of Scripture, such as the destruction of Sennacherib's army and the dividing of the Red Sea, the plagues of Egypt, the flight of quails, and the draught of fishes, can be counted as exaggerations of natural forces, while at the same time they are operations of the wonder-working God.The falling of snow from a roof is an example of ordinary (or particular) providence. But if a man is killed by it, it becomes a special providence to him and to others who are thereby taught the insecurity of life. So the providing of coal for fuel in the geologic ages may be regarded by different persons in the light either of a general or of a special providence. In all the operations of nature and all the events of life God's providence is exhibited. That providence becomes special, when it manifestly suggests some care of God for us or some duty of ours to God. Savage, Life beyond Death, 285—“Mary A. Livermore's life was saved during her travels in the West by her hearing and instantly obeying what seemed to her a voice. She did not know where it came from; but she leaped, as the voice ordered, from one side of a car to the other, and instantly the side where she had been sitting was crushed in and utterly demolished.”In a similar way, the life of Dr. Oncken was saved in the railroad disaster at Norwalk.Trench gives the name of“providential miracles”to those Scripture wonders which may be explained as wrought through the agency of natural laws (see Trench, Miracles, 19). Mozley also (Miracles, 117-120) calls these wonders miracles, because of the predictive word of God which accompanied them. He says that the difference in effect between miracles and special providences is that the latter givesomewarrant, while the former givefullwarrant, for believing that they are wrought by God. He calls special providences“invisible miracles.”Bp. of Southampton, Place of Miracles, 12, 13—“The art of Bezaleel in constructing the tabernacle, and the plans of generals like Moses and Joshua, Gideon, Barak, and David, are in the Old Testament ascribed to the direct inspiration of God. A less religious writer would have ascribed them to the instinct of military skill. No miracle is necessarily involved, when, in devising the system of ceremonial law it is said:‘Jehovah spake unto Moses’(Num. 5:1). God is everywhere present in the history of Israel, but miracles are strikingly rare.”We prefer to say that the line between the natural and the supernatural, between special providence and miracle, is an arbitrary one, and that the same event may often be regarded either as special providence or as miracle, according as we look at it from the point of view of its relation to other events or from the point of view of its relation to God.E. G. Robinson:“If Vesuvius should send up ashes and lava, and a strong wind should scatter them, it could be said to rain fire and brimstone, as at Sodom and Gomorrha.”There is abundant evident of volcanic action at the Dead Sea. See article on the Physical Preparation for Israel in Palestine, by G. Frederick Wright, in Bib. Sac., April, 1901:364. The three great miracles—the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha, the parting of the waters of the Jordan, the falling down of the walls of Jericho—are described as effect of volcanic eruption, elevation of the bed of the river by a landslide, and earthquake-shock overthrowing the walls. Salt slime thrown up may have enveloped Lot's wife and turned her into“a mound of salt”(Gen. 19:26). In like manner, some of Jesus' works of healing, as for instance those wrought upon paralytics and epileptics, may be susceptible of natural explanation, while yet they show[pg 433]that Christ is absolute Lord of nature. For the naturalistic view, see Tyndall on Miracles and Special Providences, in Fragments of Science, 45, 418.Per contra, see Farrar, on Divine Providence and General Laws, in Science and Theology, 54-80; Row, Bampton Lect. on Christian Evidences, 109-115; Godet, Defence of Christian Faith, Chap. 2; Bowne, The Immanence of God, 56-65.2. To prayer and its answer.What has been said with regard to God's connection with nature suggests the question, how God can answer prayer consistently with the fixity of natural law.Tyndall (see reference above), while repelling the charge of denying that God can answer prayer at all, yet does deny that he can answer it without a miracle. He says expressly“that without a 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 deflect toward us a single beam of the sun.”In reply we would remark:A. Negatively, that the true solution is not to be reached:(a) By making the sole effect of prayer to be its reflex influence upon the petitioner.—Prayer presupposes a God who hears and answers. It will not be offered, unless it is believed to accomplish objective as well as subjective results.According to the first view mentioned above, prayer is a mere spiritual gymnastics—an effort to lift ourselves from the ground by tugging at our own boot-straps. David Hume said well, after hearing a sermon by Dr. Leechman:“We can make use of no expression or even thought in prayers and entreaties which does not imply that these prayers have an influence.”See Tyndall on Prayer and Natural Law, in Fragments of Science, 35. Will men pray to a God who is both deaf and dumb? Will the sailor on the bowsprit whistle to the wind for the sake of improving his voice? Horace Bushnell called this perversion of prayer a“mere dumb-bell exercise.”Baron Munchausen pulled himself out of the bog in China by tugging away at his own pigtail.Hyde, God's Education of Man, 154, 155—“Prayer is not the reflex action of my will upon itself, but rather the communion of two wills, in which the finite comes into connection with the Infinite, and, like the trolley, appropriates its purpose and power.”Harnack, Wesen des Christenthums, 42, apparently follows Schleiermacher in unduly limiting prayer to general petitions which receive only a subjective answer. He tells us that“Jesus taught his disciples the Lord's Prayer in response to a request for directions how to pray. Yet we look in vain therein for requests for special gifts of grace, or for particular good things, even though they are spiritual. The name, the will, the kingdom of God—these are the things which are the objects of petition.”Harnack forgets that the same Christ said also:“All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them”(Mark 11:24).(b) Nor by holding that God answers prayer simply by spiritual means, such as the action of the Holy Spirit upon the spirit of man.—The realm of spirit is no less subject to law than the realm of matter. Scripture and experience, moreover, alike testify that in answer to prayer events take place in the outward world which would not have taken place if prayer had not gone before.According to this second theory, God feeds the starving Elijah, not by a distinct message from heaven but by giving a compassionate disposition to the widow of Zarephath so that she is moved to help the prophet.1 K. 17:9—“behold, I have commanded a widow there to sustain thee.”But God could also feed Elijah by the ravens and the angel (1 K. 17:4; 19:15), and the pouring rain that followed Elijah's prayer (1 K. 18:42-45) cannot be explained as a subjective spiritual phenomenon. Diman, Theistic Argument, 268—“Our charts map out not only the solid shore but the windings of the ocean currents, and we look into the morning papers to ascertain the gathering of storms on the[pg 434]slopes of the Rocky Mountains.”But law rules in the realm of spirit as well as in the realm of nature. See Baden Powell, in Essays and Reviews, 106-162; Knight, Studies in Philosophy and Literature, 340-404; George I. Chace, discourse before the Porter Rhet. Soc. of Andover, August, 1854. Governor Rice in Washington is moved to send money to a starving family in New York, and to secure employment for them. Though he has had no information with regard to their need, they have knelt in prayer for help just before the coming of the aid.(c) Nor by maintaining that God suspends or breaks in upon the order of nature, in answering every prayer that is offered.—This view does not take account of natural laws as having objective existence, and as revealing the order of God's being. Omnipotence might thus suspend natural law, but wisdom, so far as we can see, would not.This third theory might well be held by those who see in nature no force but the all-working will of God. But the properties and powers of matter are revelations of the divine will, and the human will has only a relative independence in the universe. To desire that God would answer all our prayers is to desire omnipotence without omniscience. All true prayer is therefore an expression of the one petition:“Thy will be done”(Mat. 6:10). E. G. Robinson:“It takes much common sense to pray, and many prayers are destitute of this quality. Man needs to pray audibly even in his private prayers, to get the full benefit of them. One of the chief benefits of the English liturgy is that the individual minister is lost sight of. Protestantism makes you work; in Romanism the church will do it all for you.”(d) Nor by considering prayer as a physical force, linked in each case to its answer, as physical cause is linked to physical effect.—Prayer is not a force acting directly upon nature; else there would be no discretion as to its answer. It can accomplish results in nature, only as it influences God.We educate our children in two ways: first, by training them to do for themselves what they can do; and, secondly, by encouraging them to seek our help in matters beyond their power. So God educates us, first, by impersonal law, and, secondly, by personal dependence. He teaches us both to work and to ask. Notice the“perfect unwisdom of modern scientists who place themselves under the training of impersonal law, to the exclusion of that higher and better training which is under personality”(Hopkins, Sermon on Prayer-gauge, 16).It seems more in accordance with both Scripture and reason to say that:B. God may answer prayer, even when that answer involves changes in the sequences of nature,—(a) By new combinations of natural forces, in regions withdrawn from our observation, so that effects are produced which these same forces left to themselves would never have accomplished. As man combines the laws of chemical attraction and of combustion, to fire the gunpowder and split the rock asunder, so God may combine the laws of nature to bring about answers to prayer. In all this there may be no suspension or violation of law, but a use of law unknown to us.Hopkins, Sermon on the Prayer-gauge:“Nature is uniform in her processes but not in her results. Do you say that water cannot run uphill? Yes, it can and does. Whenever man constructs a milldam the water runs up the environing hills till it reaches the top of the milldam. Man can make a spark of electricity do his bidding; why cannot God use a bolt of electricity? Laws are not our masters, but our servants. They do our bidding all the better because they are uniform. And our servants are not God's masters.”Kendall Brooks:“The master of a musical instrument can vary without limit the combination of sounds and the melodies which these combinations can produce. The laws of the instrument are not changed, but in their unchanging steadfastness produce an infinite variety of tunes. It is necessary that they should be[pg 435]unchanging in order to secure a desired result. So nature, which exercises the infinite skill of the divine Master, is governed by unvarying laws; but he, by these laws, produces an infinite variety of results.”Hodge, Popular Lectures, 45, 99—“The system of natural laws is far more flexible in God's hands than it is in ours. We act on second causes externally; God acts on them internally. We act upon them at only a few isolated points; God acts upon every point of the system at the same time. The whole of nature may be as plastic to his will as the air in the organs of the great singer who articulates it into a fit expression of every thought and passion of his soaring soul.”Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 155—“If all the chemical elements of our solar system preëxisted in the fiery cosmic mist, there must have been a time when quite suddenly the attractions between these elements overcame the degree of caloric force which held them apart, and the rush of elements into chemical union must have been consummated with inconceivable rapidity. Uniformitarianism is not universal.”Shaler, Interpretation of Nature, chap. 2—“By a little increase of centrifugal force the elliptical orbit is changed into a parabola, and the planet becomes a comet. By a little reduction in temperature water becomes solid and loses many of its powers. So unexpected results are brought about and surprises as revolutionary as if a Supreme Power immediately intervened.”William James, Address before Soc. for Psych. Research:“Thought-transference may involve a critical point, as the physicists call it, which is passed only when certain psychic conditions are realized, and otherwise not reached at all—just as a big conflagration will break out at a certain temperature, below which no conflagration whatever, whether big or little, can occur.”Tennyson, Life, 1:324—“Prayer is like opening a sluice between the great ocean and our little channels, when the great sea gathers itself together and flows in at full tide.”Since prayer is nothing more nor less than appeal to a personal and present God, whose granting or withholding of the requested blessing is believed to be determined by the prayer itself, we must conclude that prayer moves God, or, in other words, induces the putting forth on his part of an imperative volition.The view that in answering prayer God combines natural forces is elaborated by Chalmers, Works, 2:314, and 7:234. See Diman, Theistic Argument, 111—“When laws are conceived of, not as single, but as combined, instead of being immutable in their operation, they are the agencies of ceaseless change. Phenomena are governed, not by invariable forces, but byendlessly varying combinations of invariable forces.”Diman seems to have followed Argyll, Reign of Law, 100.Janet, Final Causes, 219—“I kindle a fire in my grate. I only intervene to produce and combine together the different agents whose natural action behooves to produce the effect I have need of; but the first step once taken, all the phenomena constituting combustion engender each other, conformably to their laws, without a new intervention of the agent; so that an observer who should study the series of these phenomena, without perceiving the first hand that had prepared all, could not seize that hand in any especial act, and yet there is a preconceived plan and combination.”Hopkins, Sermon on Prayer-gauge: Man, by sprinkling plaster on his field, may cause the corn to grow more luxuriantly; by kindling great fires and by firing cannon, he may cause rain; and God can surely, in answer to prayer, do as much as man can. Lewes says that the fundamental character of all theological philosophy is conceiving of phenomena as subject to supernatural volition, and consequently as eminently and irregularly variable. This notion, he says, is refuted, first, by exact and rational prevision of phenomena, and, secondly, by the possibility of our modifying these phenomena so as to promote our own advantage. But we ask in reply: If we can modify them, cannot God? But, lest this should seem to imply mutability in God or inconsistency in nature, we remark, in addition, that:(b) God may have so preärranged the laws of the material universe and the events of history that, while the answer to prayer is an expression of his will, it is granted through the working of natural agencies, and in perfect accordance with the general principle that results, both temporal and spiritual, are to be attained by intelligent creatures through the use of the appropriate and appointed means.[pg 436]J. P. Cooke, Credentials of Science, 194—“The Jacquard loom of itself would weave a perfectly uniform plain fabric; the perforated cards determine a selection of the threads, and through a combination of these variable conditions, so complex that the observer cannot follow their intricate workings, the predesigned pattern appears.”E. G. Robinson:“The most formidable objection to this theory is the apparent countenance it lends to the doctrine of necessitarianism. But if it presupposes that free actions have been taken into account, it cannot easily be shown to be false.”The bishop who was asked by his curate to sanction prayers for rain was unduly sceptical when he replied:“First consult the barometer.”Phillips Brooks:“Prayer is not the conquering of God's reluctance, but the taking hold of God's willingness.”The Pilgrims at Plymouth, somewhere about 1628, prayed for rain. They met at 9 A. M., and continued in prayer for eight or nine hours. While they were assembled clouds gathered, and the next morning began rains which, with some intervals, lasted fourteen days. John Easter was many years ago an evangelist in Virginia. A large out-door meeting was being held. Many thousands had assembled, when heavy storm clouds began to gather. There was no shelter to which the multitudes could retreat. The rain had already reached the adjoining fields when John Easter cried:“Brethren, be still, while I call upon God to stay the storm till the gospel is preached to this multitude!”Then he knelt and prayed that the audience might be spared the rain, and that after they had gone to their homes there might be refreshing showers. Behold, the clouds parted as they came near, and passed to either side of the crowd and then closed again, leaving the place dry where the audience had assembled, and the next day the postponed showers came down upon the ground that had been the day before omitted.Since God is immanent in nature, an answer to prayer, coming about through the intervention of natural law, may be as real a revelation of God's personal care as if the laws of nature were suspended, and God interposed by an exercise of his creative power. Prayer and its answer, though having God's immediate volition as their connecting bond, may yet be provided for in the original plan of the universe.The universe does not exist for itself, but for moral ends and moral beings, to reveal God and to furnish facilities of intercourse between God and intelligent creatures. Bishop Berkeley:“The universe is God's ceaseless conversation with his creatures.”The universe certainly subserves moral ends—the discouragement of vice and the reward of virtue; why not spiritual ends also? When we remember that there is no true prayer which God does not inspire; that every true prayer is part of the plan of the universe linked in with all the rest and provided for at the beginning; that God is in nature and in mind, supervising all their movements and making all fulfill his will and reveal his personal care; that God can adjust the forces of nature to each other far more skilfully than can man when man produces effects which nature of herself could never accomplish; that God is not confined to nature or her forces, but can work by his creative and omnipotent will where other means are not sufficient,—we need have no fear, either that natural law will bar God's answers to prayer, or that these answers will cause a shock or jar in the system of the universe.Matheson, Messages of the Old Religions, 321, 322—“Hebrew poetry never deals with outward nature for its own sake. The eye never rests on beauty for itself alone. The heavens are the work of God's hands, the earth is God's footstool, the winds are God's ministers, the stars are God's host, the thunder is God's voice. What we call Nature the Jew called God.”Miss Heloise E. Hersey:“Plato in the Phædrus sets forth in a splendid myth the means by which the gods refresh themselves. Once a year, in a mighty host, they drive their chariots up the steep to the topmost vault of heaven. Thence they may behold all the wonders and the secrets of the universe; and, quickened by the sight of the great plain of truth, they return home replenished and made glad by the celestial vision.”Abp. Trench, Poems, 134—“Lord, what a change within us one short hour Spent in thy presence will prevail to make—What heavy burdens from our bosoms take, What parched grounds refresh as with a shower! We kneel, and all around us seems to lower; We rise, and all, the distant and the near, Stands forth in sunny outline, brave and clear; We kneel how weak, we rise how full of power! Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong, Or others—that we are not always strong; That we are ever overborne with care; That we should ever weak[pg 437]or heartless be, Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer, And joy and strength and courage are with thee?”See Calderwood, Science and Religion, 299-309; McCosh, Divine Government, 215; Liddon, Elements of Religion, 178-203; Hamilton, Autology, 690-694. See also Jellett, Donnellan Lectures on the Efficacy of Prayer; Butterworth, Story of Notable Prayers; Patton, Prayer and its Answers; Monrad, World of Prayer; Prime, Power of Prayer; Phelps, The Still Hour; Haven, and Bickersteth, on Prayer; Prayer for Colleges; Cox, in Expositor, 1877: chap. 3; Faunce, Prayer as a Theory and a Fact; Trumbull, Prayer, Its Nature and Scope.C. If asked whether this relation between prayer and its providential answer can be scientifically tested, we reply that it may be tested just as a father's love may be tested by a dutiful son.(a) There is a general proof of it in the past experience of the Christian and in the past history of the church.Ps. 116:1-8—“I love Jehovah because he heareth my voice and my supplications.”Luther prays for the dying Melanchthon, and he recovers. George Müller trusts to prayer, and builds his great orphan-houses. For a multitude of instances, see Prime, Answers to Prayer. Charles H. Spurgeon:“If there is any fact that is proved, it is that God hears prayer. If there is any scientific statement that is capable of mathematical proof, this is.”Mr. Spurgeon's language is rhetorical: he means simply that God's answers to prayer remove all reasonable doubt. Adoniram Judson:“I never was deeply interested in any object, I never prayed sincerely and earnestly for anything, but it came; at some time—no matter at how distant a day—somehow, in some shape, probably the last I should have devised—it came. And yet I have always had so little faith! May God forgive me, and while he condescends to use me as his instrument, wipe the sin of unbelief from my heart!”(b) In condescension to human blindness, God may sometimes submit to a formal test of his faithfulness and power,—as in the case of Elijah and the priests of Baal.Is. 7:10-13—Ahaz is rebuked for not asking a sign,—in him it indicated unbelief.1 K. 18:36-38—Elijah said,“let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel.... Then the fire of Jehovah fell, and consumed the burnt offering.”Romaine speaks of“a year famous for believing.”Mat 21:21, 22—“even if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou taken up and cast into the sea, it shall be done. And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.”“Impossible?”said Napoleon;“then it shall be done!”Arthur Hallam, quoted in Tennyson's Life, 1:44—“With respect to prayer, you ask how I am to distinguish the operations of God in me from the motions of my own heart. Why should you distinguish them, or how do you know that there is any distinction? Is God less God because he acts by general laws when he deals with the common elements of nature?”“Watch in prayer to see what cometh. Foolish boys that knock at a door in wantonness, will not stay till somebody open to them; but a man that hath business will knock, and knock again, till he gets his answer.”Martineau, Seat of Authority, 102, 103—“God is not beyond nature simply,—he is within it. In nature and in mind we must find the action of his power. There is no need of his being a third factor over and above the life of nature and the life of man.”Hartley Coleridge:“Be not afraid to pray,—to pray is right. Pray if thou canst with hope, but ever pray, Though hope be weak, or sick with long delay; Pray in the darkness, if there be no light. Far is the time, remote from human sight, When war and discord on the earth shall cease; Yet every prayer for universal peace Avails the blessed time to expedite. Whate'er is good to wish, ask that of heaven, Though it be what thou canst not hope to see; Pray to be perfect, though the material leaven Forbid the spirit so on earth to be; But if for any wish thou dar'st not pray, Then pray to God to cast that wish away.”(c) When proof sufficient to convince the candid inquirer has been already given, it may not consist with the divine majesty to abide a test imposed by mere curiosity or scepticism,—as in the case of the Jews who sought a sign from heaven.[pg 438]Mat. 12:39—“An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet.”Tyndall's prayer-gauge would ensure a conflict of prayers. Since our present life is a moral probation, delay in the answer to our prayers, and even the denial of specific things for which we pray, may be only signs of God's faithfulness and love. George Müller:“I myself have been bringing certain requests before God now for seventeen years and six months, and never a day has passed without my praying concerning them all this time; yet the full answer has not come up to the present. But I look for it; I confidently expect it.”Christ's prayer,“let this cup pass away from me”(Mat. 26:39), and Paul's prayer that the“thorn in the flesh”might depart from him (2 Cor. 12:7, 8), were not answered in the precise way requested. No more are our prayers always answered in the way we expect. Christ's prayer was not answered by the literal removing of the cup, because the drinking of the cup was really his glory; and Paul's prayer was not answered by the literal removal of the thorn, because the thorn was needful for his own perfecting. In the case of both Jesus and Paul, there were larger interests to be consulted than their own freedom from suffering.(d) Since God's will is the link between prayer and its answer, there can be no such thing as a physical demonstration of its efficacy in any proposed case. Physical tests have no application to things into which free will enters as a constitutive element. But there are moral tests, and moral tests are as scientific as physical tests can be.Diman, Theistic Argument, 576, alludes to Goldwin Smith's denial that any scientific method can be applied to history because it would make man a necessary link in a chain of cause and effect and so would deny his free will. But Diman says this is no more impossible than the development of the individual according to a fixed law of growth, while yet free will is sedulously respected. Froude says history is not a science, because no science could foretell Mohammedanism or Buddhism; and Goldwin Smith says that“prediction is the crown of all science.”But, as Diman remarks:“geometry, geology, physiology, are sciences, yet they do not predict.”Buckle brought history into contempt by asserting that it could be analyzed and referred solely to intellectual laws and forces. To all this we reply that there may be scientific tests which are not physical, or even intellectual, but only moral. Such a test God urges his people to use, inMal. 3:10—“Bring ye the whole tithe into the storehouse ... and prove me now herewith, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.”All such prayer is a reflection of Christ's words—some fragment of his teaching transformed into a supplication (John 15:7; see Westcott, Bib. Com.,in loco); all such prayer is moreover the work of the Spirit of God (Rom. 8:26, 27). It is therefore sure of an answer.But the test of prayer proposed by Tyndall is not applicable to the thing to be tested by it. Hopkins, Prayer and the Prayer-gauge, 22sq.—“We cannot measure wheat by the yard, or the weight of a discourse with a pair of scales.... God's wisdom might see that it was not best for the petitioners, nor for the objects of their petition, to grant their request. Christians therefore could not, without special divine authorization, rest their faith upon the results of such a test.... Why may we not ask for great changes in nature? For the same reason that a well-informed child does not ask for the moon as a plaything.... There are two limitations upon prayer. First, except by special direction of God, we cannot ask for a miracle, for the same reason that a child could not ask his father to burn the house down. Nature is the house we live in. Secondly, we cannot ask for anything under the laws of nature which would contravene the object of those laws. Whatever we can do for ourselves under these laws, God expects us to do. If the child is cold, let him go near the fire,—not beg his father to carry him.”Herbert Spencer's Sociology is only social physics. He denies freedom, and declares anyone who will affix D. V. to the announcement of the Mildmay Conference to be incapable of understanding sociology. Prevision excludes divine or human will. But Mr. Spencer intimates that the evils of natural selection may be modified by artificial selection. What is this but the interference of will? And if man can interfere, cannot God do the same? Yet the wise child will not expect the father to give everything he asks for. Nor will the father who loves his child give him the razor to play with, or stuff him with unwholesome sweets, simply because the child asks these things. If the engineer of the ocean steamer should give me permission to press the lever that sets all the machinery in motion, I should decline to use my power and should prefer to leave such matters to him, unless he first suggested it and showed me how. So the Holy Spirit“helpeth our infirmity; for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself[pg 439]maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered”(Rom. 8:26). And we ought not to talk of“submitting”to perfect Wisdom, or of“being resigned”to perfect Love. Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, 2:1—“What they [the gods] do delay, they do not deny.... We, ignorant of ourselves, Beg often our own harms, which the wise powers Deny us for our good; so find we profit By losing of our prayers.”See Thornton, Old-Fashioned Ethics, 286-297.Per contra, see Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty, 277-294.
IV. Relations of the Doctrine of Providence.1. To miracles and works of grace.Particular providence is the agency of God in what seem to us the minor affairs of nature and human life. Special providence is only an instance[pg 432]of God's particular providence which has special relation to us or makes peculiar impression upon us. It is special, not as respects the means which God makes use of, but as respects the effect produced upon us. In special providence we have only a more impressive manifestation of God's universal control.Miracles and works of grace like regeneration are not to be regarded as belonging to a different order of things from God's special providences. They too, like special providences, may have their natural connections and antecedents, although they more readily suggest their divine authorship. Nature and God are not mutually exclusive,—nature is rather God's method of working. Since nature is only the manifestation of God, special providence, miracle, and regeneration are simply different degrees of extraordinary nature. Certain of the wonders of Scripture, such as the destruction of Sennacherib's army and the dividing of the Red Sea, the plagues of Egypt, the flight of quails, and the draught of fishes, can be counted as exaggerations of natural forces, while at the same time they are operations of the wonder-working God.The falling of snow from a roof is an example of ordinary (or particular) providence. But if a man is killed by it, it becomes a special providence to him and to others who are thereby taught the insecurity of life. So the providing of coal for fuel in the geologic ages may be regarded by different persons in the light either of a general or of a special providence. In all the operations of nature and all the events of life God's providence is exhibited. That providence becomes special, when it manifestly suggests some care of God for us or some duty of ours to God. Savage, Life beyond Death, 285—“Mary A. Livermore's life was saved during her travels in the West by her hearing and instantly obeying what seemed to her a voice. She did not know where it came from; but she leaped, as the voice ordered, from one side of a car to the other, and instantly the side where she had been sitting was crushed in and utterly demolished.”In a similar way, the life of Dr. Oncken was saved in the railroad disaster at Norwalk.Trench gives the name of“providential miracles”to those Scripture wonders which may be explained as wrought through the agency of natural laws (see Trench, Miracles, 19). Mozley also (Miracles, 117-120) calls these wonders miracles, because of the predictive word of God which accompanied them. He says that the difference in effect between miracles and special providences is that the latter givesomewarrant, while the former givefullwarrant, for believing that they are wrought by God. He calls special providences“invisible miracles.”Bp. of Southampton, Place of Miracles, 12, 13—“The art of Bezaleel in constructing the tabernacle, and the plans of generals like Moses and Joshua, Gideon, Barak, and David, are in the Old Testament ascribed to the direct inspiration of God. A less religious writer would have ascribed them to the instinct of military skill. No miracle is necessarily involved, when, in devising the system of ceremonial law it is said:‘Jehovah spake unto Moses’(Num. 5:1). God is everywhere present in the history of Israel, but miracles are strikingly rare.”We prefer to say that the line between the natural and the supernatural, between special providence and miracle, is an arbitrary one, and that the same event may often be regarded either as special providence or as miracle, according as we look at it from the point of view of its relation to other events or from the point of view of its relation to God.E. G. Robinson:“If Vesuvius should send up ashes and lava, and a strong wind should scatter them, it could be said to rain fire and brimstone, as at Sodom and Gomorrha.”There is abundant evident of volcanic action at the Dead Sea. See article on the Physical Preparation for Israel in Palestine, by G. Frederick Wright, in Bib. Sac., April, 1901:364. The three great miracles—the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha, the parting of the waters of the Jordan, the falling down of the walls of Jericho—are described as effect of volcanic eruption, elevation of the bed of the river by a landslide, and earthquake-shock overthrowing the walls. Salt slime thrown up may have enveloped Lot's wife and turned her into“a mound of salt”(Gen. 19:26). In like manner, some of Jesus' works of healing, as for instance those wrought upon paralytics and epileptics, may be susceptible of natural explanation, while yet they show[pg 433]that Christ is absolute Lord of nature. For the naturalistic view, see Tyndall on Miracles and Special Providences, in Fragments of Science, 45, 418.Per contra, see Farrar, on Divine Providence and General Laws, in Science and Theology, 54-80; Row, Bampton Lect. on Christian Evidences, 109-115; Godet, Defence of Christian Faith, Chap. 2; Bowne, The Immanence of God, 56-65.2. To prayer and its answer.What has been said with regard to God's connection with nature suggests the question, how God can answer prayer consistently with the fixity of natural law.Tyndall (see reference above), while repelling the charge of denying that God can answer prayer at all, yet does deny that he can answer it without a miracle. He says expressly“that without a 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 deflect toward us a single beam of the sun.”In reply we would remark:A. Negatively, that the true solution is not to be reached:(a) By making the sole effect of prayer to be its reflex influence upon the petitioner.—Prayer presupposes a God who hears and answers. It will not be offered, unless it is believed to accomplish objective as well as subjective results.According to the first view mentioned above, prayer is a mere spiritual gymnastics—an effort to lift ourselves from the ground by tugging at our own boot-straps. David Hume said well, after hearing a sermon by Dr. Leechman:“We can make use of no expression or even thought in prayers and entreaties which does not imply that these prayers have an influence.”See Tyndall on Prayer and Natural Law, in Fragments of Science, 35. Will men pray to a God who is both deaf and dumb? Will the sailor on the bowsprit whistle to the wind for the sake of improving his voice? Horace Bushnell called this perversion of prayer a“mere dumb-bell exercise.”Baron Munchausen pulled himself out of the bog in China by tugging away at his own pigtail.Hyde, God's Education of Man, 154, 155—“Prayer is not the reflex action of my will upon itself, but rather the communion of two wills, in which the finite comes into connection with the Infinite, and, like the trolley, appropriates its purpose and power.”Harnack, Wesen des Christenthums, 42, apparently follows Schleiermacher in unduly limiting prayer to general petitions which receive only a subjective answer. He tells us that“Jesus taught his disciples the Lord's Prayer in response to a request for directions how to pray. Yet we look in vain therein for requests for special gifts of grace, or for particular good things, even though they are spiritual. The name, the will, the kingdom of God—these are the things which are the objects of petition.”Harnack forgets that the same Christ said also:“All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them”(Mark 11:24).(b) Nor by holding that God answers prayer simply by spiritual means, such as the action of the Holy Spirit upon the spirit of man.—The realm of spirit is no less subject to law than the realm of matter. Scripture and experience, moreover, alike testify that in answer to prayer events take place in the outward world which would not have taken place if prayer had not gone before.According to this second theory, God feeds the starving Elijah, not by a distinct message from heaven but by giving a compassionate disposition to the widow of Zarephath so that she is moved to help the prophet.1 K. 17:9—“behold, I have commanded a widow there to sustain thee.”But God could also feed Elijah by the ravens and the angel (1 K. 17:4; 19:15), and the pouring rain that followed Elijah's prayer (1 K. 18:42-45) cannot be explained as a subjective spiritual phenomenon. Diman, Theistic Argument, 268—“Our charts map out not only the solid shore but the windings of the ocean currents, and we look into the morning papers to ascertain the gathering of storms on the[pg 434]slopes of the Rocky Mountains.”But law rules in the realm of spirit as well as in the realm of nature. See Baden Powell, in Essays and Reviews, 106-162; Knight, Studies in Philosophy and Literature, 340-404; George I. Chace, discourse before the Porter Rhet. Soc. of Andover, August, 1854. Governor Rice in Washington is moved to send money to a starving family in New York, and to secure employment for them. Though he has had no information with regard to their need, they have knelt in prayer for help just before the coming of the aid.(c) Nor by maintaining that God suspends or breaks in upon the order of nature, in answering every prayer that is offered.—This view does not take account of natural laws as having objective existence, and as revealing the order of God's being. Omnipotence might thus suspend natural law, but wisdom, so far as we can see, would not.This third theory might well be held by those who see in nature no force but the all-working will of God. But the properties and powers of matter are revelations of the divine will, and the human will has only a relative independence in the universe. To desire that God would answer all our prayers is to desire omnipotence without omniscience. All true prayer is therefore an expression of the one petition:“Thy will be done”(Mat. 6:10). E. G. Robinson:“It takes much common sense to pray, and many prayers are destitute of this quality. Man needs to pray audibly even in his private prayers, to get the full benefit of them. One of the chief benefits of the English liturgy is that the individual minister is lost sight of. Protestantism makes you work; in Romanism the church will do it all for you.”(d) Nor by considering prayer as a physical force, linked in each case to its answer, as physical cause is linked to physical effect.—Prayer is not a force acting directly upon nature; else there would be no discretion as to its answer. It can accomplish results in nature, only as it influences God.We educate our children in two ways: first, by training them to do for themselves what they can do; and, secondly, by encouraging them to seek our help in matters beyond their power. So God educates us, first, by impersonal law, and, secondly, by personal dependence. He teaches us both to work and to ask. Notice the“perfect unwisdom of modern scientists who place themselves under the training of impersonal law, to the exclusion of that higher and better training which is under personality”(Hopkins, Sermon on Prayer-gauge, 16).It seems more in accordance with both Scripture and reason to say that:B. God may answer prayer, even when that answer involves changes in the sequences of nature,—(a) By new combinations of natural forces, in regions withdrawn from our observation, so that effects are produced which these same forces left to themselves would never have accomplished. As man combines the laws of chemical attraction and of combustion, to fire the gunpowder and split the rock asunder, so God may combine the laws of nature to bring about answers to prayer. In all this there may be no suspension or violation of law, but a use of law unknown to us.Hopkins, Sermon on the Prayer-gauge:“Nature is uniform in her processes but not in her results. Do you say that water cannot run uphill? Yes, it can and does. Whenever man constructs a milldam the water runs up the environing hills till it reaches the top of the milldam. Man can make a spark of electricity do his bidding; why cannot God use a bolt of electricity? Laws are not our masters, but our servants. They do our bidding all the better because they are uniform. And our servants are not God's masters.”Kendall Brooks:“The master of a musical instrument can vary without limit the combination of sounds and the melodies which these combinations can produce. The laws of the instrument are not changed, but in their unchanging steadfastness produce an infinite variety of tunes. It is necessary that they should be[pg 435]unchanging in order to secure a desired result. So nature, which exercises the infinite skill of the divine Master, is governed by unvarying laws; but he, by these laws, produces an infinite variety of results.”Hodge, Popular Lectures, 45, 99—“The system of natural laws is far more flexible in God's hands than it is in ours. We act on second causes externally; God acts on them internally. We act upon them at only a few isolated points; God acts upon every point of the system at the same time. The whole of nature may be as plastic to his will as the air in the organs of the great singer who articulates it into a fit expression of every thought and passion of his soaring soul.”Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 155—“If all the chemical elements of our solar system preëxisted in the fiery cosmic mist, there must have been a time when quite suddenly the attractions between these elements overcame the degree of caloric force which held them apart, and the rush of elements into chemical union must have been consummated with inconceivable rapidity. Uniformitarianism is not universal.”Shaler, Interpretation of Nature, chap. 2—“By a little increase of centrifugal force the elliptical orbit is changed into a parabola, and the planet becomes a comet. By a little reduction in temperature water becomes solid and loses many of its powers. So unexpected results are brought about and surprises as revolutionary as if a Supreme Power immediately intervened.”William James, Address before Soc. for Psych. Research:“Thought-transference may involve a critical point, as the physicists call it, which is passed only when certain psychic conditions are realized, and otherwise not reached at all—just as a big conflagration will break out at a certain temperature, below which no conflagration whatever, whether big or little, can occur.”Tennyson, Life, 1:324—“Prayer is like opening a sluice between the great ocean and our little channels, when the great sea gathers itself together and flows in at full tide.”Since prayer is nothing more nor less than appeal to a personal and present God, whose granting or withholding of the requested blessing is believed to be determined by the prayer itself, we must conclude that prayer moves God, or, in other words, induces the putting forth on his part of an imperative volition.The view that in answering prayer God combines natural forces is elaborated by Chalmers, Works, 2:314, and 7:234. See Diman, Theistic Argument, 111—“When laws are conceived of, not as single, but as combined, instead of being immutable in their operation, they are the agencies of ceaseless change. Phenomena are governed, not by invariable forces, but byendlessly varying combinations of invariable forces.”Diman seems to have followed Argyll, Reign of Law, 100.Janet, Final Causes, 219—“I kindle a fire in my grate. I only intervene to produce and combine together the different agents whose natural action behooves to produce the effect I have need of; but the first step once taken, all the phenomena constituting combustion engender each other, conformably to their laws, without a new intervention of the agent; so that an observer who should study the series of these phenomena, without perceiving the first hand that had prepared all, could not seize that hand in any especial act, and yet there is a preconceived plan and combination.”Hopkins, Sermon on Prayer-gauge: Man, by sprinkling plaster on his field, may cause the corn to grow more luxuriantly; by kindling great fires and by firing cannon, he may cause rain; and God can surely, in answer to prayer, do as much as man can. Lewes says that the fundamental character of all theological philosophy is conceiving of phenomena as subject to supernatural volition, and consequently as eminently and irregularly variable. This notion, he says, is refuted, first, by exact and rational prevision of phenomena, and, secondly, by the possibility of our modifying these phenomena so as to promote our own advantage. But we ask in reply: If we can modify them, cannot God? But, lest this should seem to imply mutability in God or inconsistency in nature, we remark, in addition, that:(b) God may have so preärranged the laws of the material universe and the events of history that, while the answer to prayer is an expression of his will, it is granted through the working of natural agencies, and in perfect accordance with the general principle that results, both temporal and spiritual, are to be attained by intelligent creatures through the use of the appropriate and appointed means.[pg 436]J. P. Cooke, Credentials of Science, 194—“The Jacquard loom of itself would weave a perfectly uniform plain fabric; the perforated cards determine a selection of the threads, and through a combination of these variable conditions, so complex that the observer cannot follow their intricate workings, the predesigned pattern appears.”E. G. Robinson:“The most formidable objection to this theory is the apparent countenance it lends to the doctrine of necessitarianism. But if it presupposes that free actions have been taken into account, it cannot easily be shown to be false.”The bishop who was asked by his curate to sanction prayers for rain was unduly sceptical when he replied:“First consult the barometer.”Phillips Brooks:“Prayer is not the conquering of God's reluctance, but the taking hold of God's willingness.”The Pilgrims at Plymouth, somewhere about 1628, prayed for rain. They met at 9 A. M., and continued in prayer for eight or nine hours. While they were assembled clouds gathered, and the next morning began rains which, with some intervals, lasted fourteen days. John Easter was many years ago an evangelist in Virginia. A large out-door meeting was being held. Many thousands had assembled, when heavy storm clouds began to gather. There was no shelter to which the multitudes could retreat. The rain had already reached the adjoining fields when John Easter cried:“Brethren, be still, while I call upon God to stay the storm till the gospel is preached to this multitude!”Then he knelt and prayed that the audience might be spared the rain, and that after they had gone to their homes there might be refreshing showers. Behold, the clouds parted as they came near, and passed to either side of the crowd and then closed again, leaving the place dry where the audience had assembled, and the next day the postponed showers came down upon the ground that had been the day before omitted.Since God is immanent in nature, an answer to prayer, coming about through the intervention of natural law, may be as real a revelation of God's personal care as if the laws of nature were suspended, and God interposed by an exercise of his creative power. Prayer and its answer, though having God's immediate volition as their connecting bond, may yet be provided for in the original plan of the universe.The universe does not exist for itself, but for moral ends and moral beings, to reveal God and to furnish facilities of intercourse between God and intelligent creatures. Bishop Berkeley:“The universe is God's ceaseless conversation with his creatures.”The universe certainly subserves moral ends—the discouragement of vice and the reward of virtue; why not spiritual ends also? When we remember that there is no true prayer which God does not inspire; that every true prayer is part of the plan of the universe linked in with all the rest and provided for at the beginning; that God is in nature and in mind, supervising all their movements and making all fulfill his will and reveal his personal care; that God can adjust the forces of nature to each other far more skilfully than can man when man produces effects which nature of herself could never accomplish; that God is not confined to nature or her forces, but can work by his creative and omnipotent will where other means are not sufficient,—we need have no fear, either that natural law will bar God's answers to prayer, or that these answers will cause a shock or jar in the system of the universe.Matheson, Messages of the Old Religions, 321, 322—“Hebrew poetry never deals with outward nature for its own sake. The eye never rests on beauty for itself alone. The heavens are the work of God's hands, the earth is God's footstool, the winds are God's ministers, the stars are God's host, the thunder is God's voice. What we call Nature the Jew called God.”Miss Heloise E. Hersey:“Plato in the Phædrus sets forth in a splendid myth the means by which the gods refresh themselves. Once a year, in a mighty host, they drive their chariots up the steep to the topmost vault of heaven. Thence they may behold all the wonders and the secrets of the universe; and, quickened by the sight of the great plain of truth, they return home replenished and made glad by the celestial vision.”Abp. Trench, Poems, 134—“Lord, what a change within us one short hour Spent in thy presence will prevail to make—What heavy burdens from our bosoms take, What parched grounds refresh as with a shower! We kneel, and all around us seems to lower; We rise, and all, the distant and the near, Stands forth in sunny outline, brave and clear; We kneel how weak, we rise how full of power! Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong, Or others—that we are not always strong; That we are ever overborne with care; That we should ever weak[pg 437]or heartless be, Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer, And joy and strength and courage are with thee?”See Calderwood, Science and Religion, 299-309; McCosh, Divine Government, 215; Liddon, Elements of Religion, 178-203; Hamilton, Autology, 690-694. See also Jellett, Donnellan Lectures on the Efficacy of Prayer; Butterworth, Story of Notable Prayers; Patton, Prayer and its Answers; Monrad, World of Prayer; Prime, Power of Prayer; Phelps, The Still Hour; Haven, and Bickersteth, on Prayer; Prayer for Colleges; Cox, in Expositor, 1877: chap. 3; Faunce, Prayer as a Theory and a Fact; Trumbull, Prayer, Its Nature and Scope.C. If asked whether this relation between prayer and its providential answer can be scientifically tested, we reply that it may be tested just as a father's love may be tested by a dutiful son.(a) There is a general proof of it in the past experience of the Christian and in the past history of the church.Ps. 116:1-8—“I love Jehovah because he heareth my voice and my supplications.”Luther prays for the dying Melanchthon, and he recovers. George Müller trusts to prayer, and builds his great orphan-houses. For a multitude of instances, see Prime, Answers to Prayer. Charles H. Spurgeon:“If there is any fact that is proved, it is that God hears prayer. If there is any scientific statement that is capable of mathematical proof, this is.”Mr. Spurgeon's language is rhetorical: he means simply that God's answers to prayer remove all reasonable doubt. Adoniram Judson:“I never was deeply interested in any object, I never prayed sincerely and earnestly for anything, but it came; at some time—no matter at how distant a day—somehow, in some shape, probably the last I should have devised—it came. And yet I have always had so little faith! May God forgive me, and while he condescends to use me as his instrument, wipe the sin of unbelief from my heart!”(b) In condescension to human blindness, God may sometimes submit to a formal test of his faithfulness and power,—as in the case of Elijah and the priests of Baal.Is. 7:10-13—Ahaz is rebuked for not asking a sign,—in him it indicated unbelief.1 K. 18:36-38—Elijah said,“let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel.... Then the fire of Jehovah fell, and consumed the burnt offering.”Romaine speaks of“a year famous for believing.”Mat 21:21, 22—“even if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou taken up and cast into the sea, it shall be done. And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.”“Impossible?”said Napoleon;“then it shall be done!”Arthur Hallam, quoted in Tennyson's Life, 1:44—“With respect to prayer, you ask how I am to distinguish the operations of God in me from the motions of my own heart. Why should you distinguish them, or how do you know that there is any distinction? Is God less God because he acts by general laws when he deals with the common elements of nature?”“Watch in prayer to see what cometh. Foolish boys that knock at a door in wantonness, will not stay till somebody open to them; but a man that hath business will knock, and knock again, till he gets his answer.”Martineau, Seat of Authority, 102, 103—“God is not beyond nature simply,—he is within it. In nature and in mind we must find the action of his power. There is no need of his being a third factor over and above the life of nature and the life of man.”Hartley Coleridge:“Be not afraid to pray,—to pray is right. Pray if thou canst with hope, but ever pray, Though hope be weak, or sick with long delay; Pray in the darkness, if there be no light. Far is the time, remote from human sight, When war and discord on the earth shall cease; Yet every prayer for universal peace Avails the blessed time to expedite. Whate'er is good to wish, ask that of heaven, Though it be what thou canst not hope to see; Pray to be perfect, though the material leaven Forbid the spirit so on earth to be; But if for any wish thou dar'st not pray, Then pray to God to cast that wish away.”(c) When proof sufficient to convince the candid inquirer has been already given, it may not consist with the divine majesty to abide a test imposed by mere curiosity or scepticism,—as in the case of the Jews who sought a sign from heaven.[pg 438]Mat. 12:39—“An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet.”Tyndall's prayer-gauge would ensure a conflict of prayers. Since our present life is a moral probation, delay in the answer to our prayers, and even the denial of specific things for which we pray, may be only signs of God's faithfulness and love. George Müller:“I myself have been bringing certain requests before God now for seventeen years and six months, and never a day has passed without my praying concerning them all this time; yet the full answer has not come up to the present. But I look for it; I confidently expect it.”Christ's prayer,“let this cup pass away from me”(Mat. 26:39), and Paul's prayer that the“thorn in the flesh”might depart from him (2 Cor. 12:7, 8), were not answered in the precise way requested. No more are our prayers always answered in the way we expect. Christ's prayer was not answered by the literal removing of the cup, because the drinking of the cup was really his glory; and Paul's prayer was not answered by the literal removal of the thorn, because the thorn was needful for his own perfecting. In the case of both Jesus and Paul, there were larger interests to be consulted than their own freedom from suffering.(d) Since God's will is the link between prayer and its answer, there can be no such thing as a physical demonstration of its efficacy in any proposed case. Physical tests have no application to things into which free will enters as a constitutive element. But there are moral tests, and moral tests are as scientific as physical tests can be.Diman, Theistic Argument, 576, alludes to Goldwin Smith's denial that any scientific method can be applied to history because it would make man a necessary link in a chain of cause and effect and so would deny his free will. But Diman says this is no more impossible than the development of the individual according to a fixed law of growth, while yet free will is sedulously respected. Froude says history is not a science, because no science could foretell Mohammedanism or Buddhism; and Goldwin Smith says that“prediction is the crown of all science.”But, as Diman remarks:“geometry, geology, physiology, are sciences, yet they do not predict.”Buckle brought history into contempt by asserting that it could be analyzed and referred solely to intellectual laws and forces. To all this we reply that there may be scientific tests which are not physical, or even intellectual, but only moral. Such a test God urges his people to use, inMal. 3:10—“Bring ye the whole tithe into the storehouse ... and prove me now herewith, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.”All such prayer is a reflection of Christ's words—some fragment of his teaching transformed into a supplication (John 15:7; see Westcott, Bib. Com.,in loco); all such prayer is moreover the work of the Spirit of God (Rom. 8:26, 27). It is therefore sure of an answer.But the test of prayer proposed by Tyndall is not applicable to the thing to be tested by it. Hopkins, Prayer and the Prayer-gauge, 22sq.—“We cannot measure wheat by the yard, or the weight of a discourse with a pair of scales.... God's wisdom might see that it was not best for the petitioners, nor for the objects of their petition, to grant their request. Christians therefore could not, without special divine authorization, rest their faith upon the results of such a test.... Why may we not ask for great changes in nature? For the same reason that a well-informed child does not ask for the moon as a plaything.... There are two limitations upon prayer. First, except by special direction of God, we cannot ask for a miracle, for the same reason that a child could not ask his father to burn the house down. Nature is the house we live in. Secondly, we cannot ask for anything under the laws of nature which would contravene the object of those laws. Whatever we can do for ourselves under these laws, God expects us to do. If the child is cold, let him go near the fire,—not beg his father to carry him.”Herbert Spencer's Sociology is only social physics. He denies freedom, and declares anyone who will affix D. V. to the announcement of the Mildmay Conference to be incapable of understanding sociology. Prevision excludes divine or human will. But Mr. Spencer intimates that the evils of natural selection may be modified by artificial selection. What is this but the interference of will? And if man can interfere, cannot God do the same? Yet the wise child will not expect the father to give everything he asks for. Nor will the father who loves his child give him the razor to play with, or stuff him with unwholesome sweets, simply because the child asks these things. If the engineer of the ocean steamer should give me permission to press the lever that sets all the machinery in motion, I should decline to use my power and should prefer to leave such matters to him, unless he first suggested it and showed me how. So the Holy Spirit“helpeth our infirmity; for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself[pg 439]maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered”(Rom. 8:26). And we ought not to talk of“submitting”to perfect Wisdom, or of“being resigned”to perfect Love. Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, 2:1—“What they [the gods] do delay, they do not deny.... We, ignorant of ourselves, Beg often our own harms, which the wise powers Deny us for our good; so find we profit By losing of our prayers.”See Thornton, Old-Fashioned Ethics, 286-297.Per contra, see Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty, 277-294.
IV. Relations of the Doctrine of Providence.1. To miracles and works of grace.Particular providence is the agency of God in what seem to us the minor affairs of nature and human life. Special providence is only an instance[pg 432]of God's particular providence which has special relation to us or makes peculiar impression upon us. It is special, not as respects the means which God makes use of, but as respects the effect produced upon us. In special providence we have only a more impressive manifestation of God's universal control.Miracles and works of grace like regeneration are not to be regarded as belonging to a different order of things from God's special providences. They too, like special providences, may have their natural connections and antecedents, although they more readily suggest their divine authorship. Nature and God are not mutually exclusive,—nature is rather God's method of working. Since nature is only the manifestation of God, special providence, miracle, and regeneration are simply different degrees of extraordinary nature. Certain of the wonders of Scripture, such as the destruction of Sennacherib's army and the dividing of the Red Sea, the plagues of Egypt, the flight of quails, and the draught of fishes, can be counted as exaggerations of natural forces, while at the same time they are operations of the wonder-working God.The falling of snow from a roof is an example of ordinary (or particular) providence. But if a man is killed by it, it becomes a special providence to him and to others who are thereby taught the insecurity of life. So the providing of coal for fuel in the geologic ages may be regarded by different persons in the light either of a general or of a special providence. In all the operations of nature and all the events of life God's providence is exhibited. That providence becomes special, when it manifestly suggests some care of God for us or some duty of ours to God. Savage, Life beyond Death, 285—“Mary A. Livermore's life was saved during her travels in the West by her hearing and instantly obeying what seemed to her a voice. She did not know where it came from; but she leaped, as the voice ordered, from one side of a car to the other, and instantly the side where she had been sitting was crushed in and utterly demolished.”In a similar way, the life of Dr. Oncken was saved in the railroad disaster at Norwalk.Trench gives the name of“providential miracles”to those Scripture wonders which may be explained as wrought through the agency of natural laws (see Trench, Miracles, 19). Mozley also (Miracles, 117-120) calls these wonders miracles, because of the predictive word of God which accompanied them. He says that the difference in effect between miracles and special providences is that the latter givesomewarrant, while the former givefullwarrant, for believing that they are wrought by God. He calls special providences“invisible miracles.”Bp. of Southampton, Place of Miracles, 12, 13—“The art of Bezaleel in constructing the tabernacle, and the plans of generals like Moses and Joshua, Gideon, Barak, and David, are in the Old Testament ascribed to the direct inspiration of God. A less religious writer would have ascribed them to the instinct of military skill. No miracle is necessarily involved, when, in devising the system of ceremonial law it is said:‘Jehovah spake unto Moses’(Num. 5:1). God is everywhere present in the history of Israel, but miracles are strikingly rare.”We prefer to say that the line between the natural and the supernatural, between special providence and miracle, is an arbitrary one, and that the same event may often be regarded either as special providence or as miracle, according as we look at it from the point of view of its relation to other events or from the point of view of its relation to God.E. G. Robinson:“If Vesuvius should send up ashes and lava, and a strong wind should scatter them, it could be said to rain fire and brimstone, as at Sodom and Gomorrha.”There is abundant evident of volcanic action at the Dead Sea. See article on the Physical Preparation for Israel in Palestine, by G. Frederick Wright, in Bib. Sac., April, 1901:364. The three great miracles—the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha, the parting of the waters of the Jordan, the falling down of the walls of Jericho—are described as effect of volcanic eruption, elevation of the bed of the river by a landslide, and earthquake-shock overthrowing the walls. Salt slime thrown up may have enveloped Lot's wife and turned her into“a mound of salt”(Gen. 19:26). In like manner, some of Jesus' works of healing, as for instance those wrought upon paralytics and epileptics, may be susceptible of natural explanation, while yet they show[pg 433]that Christ is absolute Lord of nature. For the naturalistic view, see Tyndall on Miracles and Special Providences, in Fragments of Science, 45, 418.Per contra, see Farrar, on Divine Providence and General Laws, in Science and Theology, 54-80; Row, Bampton Lect. on Christian Evidences, 109-115; Godet, Defence of Christian Faith, Chap. 2; Bowne, The Immanence of God, 56-65.2. To prayer and its answer.What has been said with regard to God's connection with nature suggests the question, how God can answer prayer consistently with the fixity of natural law.Tyndall (see reference above), while repelling the charge of denying that God can answer prayer at all, yet does deny that he can answer it without a miracle. He says expressly“that without a 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 deflect toward us a single beam of the sun.”In reply we would remark:A. Negatively, that the true solution is not to be reached:(a) By making the sole effect of prayer to be its reflex influence upon the petitioner.—Prayer presupposes a God who hears and answers. It will not be offered, unless it is believed to accomplish objective as well as subjective results.According to the first view mentioned above, prayer is a mere spiritual gymnastics—an effort to lift ourselves from the ground by tugging at our own boot-straps. David Hume said well, after hearing a sermon by Dr. Leechman:“We can make use of no expression or even thought in prayers and entreaties which does not imply that these prayers have an influence.”See Tyndall on Prayer and Natural Law, in Fragments of Science, 35. Will men pray to a God who is both deaf and dumb? Will the sailor on the bowsprit whistle to the wind for the sake of improving his voice? Horace Bushnell called this perversion of prayer a“mere dumb-bell exercise.”Baron Munchausen pulled himself out of the bog in China by tugging away at his own pigtail.Hyde, God's Education of Man, 154, 155—“Prayer is not the reflex action of my will upon itself, but rather the communion of two wills, in which the finite comes into connection with the Infinite, and, like the trolley, appropriates its purpose and power.”Harnack, Wesen des Christenthums, 42, apparently follows Schleiermacher in unduly limiting prayer to general petitions which receive only a subjective answer. He tells us that“Jesus taught his disciples the Lord's Prayer in response to a request for directions how to pray. Yet we look in vain therein for requests for special gifts of grace, or for particular good things, even though they are spiritual. The name, the will, the kingdom of God—these are the things which are the objects of petition.”Harnack forgets that the same Christ said also:“All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them”(Mark 11:24).(b) Nor by holding that God answers prayer simply by spiritual means, such as the action of the Holy Spirit upon the spirit of man.—The realm of spirit is no less subject to law than the realm of matter. Scripture and experience, moreover, alike testify that in answer to prayer events take place in the outward world which would not have taken place if prayer had not gone before.According to this second theory, God feeds the starving Elijah, not by a distinct message from heaven but by giving a compassionate disposition to the widow of Zarephath so that she is moved to help the prophet.1 K. 17:9—“behold, I have commanded a widow there to sustain thee.”But God could also feed Elijah by the ravens and the angel (1 K. 17:4; 19:15), and the pouring rain that followed Elijah's prayer (1 K. 18:42-45) cannot be explained as a subjective spiritual phenomenon. Diman, Theistic Argument, 268—“Our charts map out not only the solid shore but the windings of the ocean currents, and we look into the morning papers to ascertain the gathering of storms on the[pg 434]slopes of the Rocky Mountains.”But law rules in the realm of spirit as well as in the realm of nature. See Baden Powell, in Essays and Reviews, 106-162; Knight, Studies in Philosophy and Literature, 340-404; George I. Chace, discourse before the Porter Rhet. Soc. of Andover, August, 1854. Governor Rice in Washington is moved to send money to a starving family in New York, and to secure employment for them. Though he has had no information with regard to their need, they have knelt in prayer for help just before the coming of the aid.(c) Nor by maintaining that God suspends or breaks in upon the order of nature, in answering every prayer that is offered.—This view does not take account of natural laws as having objective existence, and as revealing the order of God's being. Omnipotence might thus suspend natural law, but wisdom, so far as we can see, would not.This third theory might well be held by those who see in nature no force but the all-working will of God. But the properties and powers of matter are revelations of the divine will, and the human will has only a relative independence in the universe. To desire that God would answer all our prayers is to desire omnipotence without omniscience. All true prayer is therefore an expression of the one petition:“Thy will be done”(Mat. 6:10). E. G. Robinson:“It takes much common sense to pray, and many prayers are destitute of this quality. Man needs to pray audibly even in his private prayers, to get the full benefit of them. One of the chief benefits of the English liturgy is that the individual minister is lost sight of. Protestantism makes you work; in Romanism the church will do it all for you.”(d) Nor by considering prayer as a physical force, linked in each case to its answer, as physical cause is linked to physical effect.—Prayer is not a force acting directly upon nature; else there would be no discretion as to its answer. It can accomplish results in nature, only as it influences God.We educate our children in two ways: first, by training them to do for themselves what they can do; and, secondly, by encouraging them to seek our help in matters beyond their power. So God educates us, first, by impersonal law, and, secondly, by personal dependence. He teaches us both to work and to ask. Notice the“perfect unwisdom of modern scientists who place themselves under the training of impersonal law, to the exclusion of that higher and better training which is under personality”(Hopkins, Sermon on Prayer-gauge, 16).It seems more in accordance with both Scripture and reason to say that:B. God may answer prayer, even when that answer involves changes in the sequences of nature,—(a) By new combinations of natural forces, in regions withdrawn from our observation, so that effects are produced which these same forces left to themselves would never have accomplished. As man combines the laws of chemical attraction and of combustion, to fire the gunpowder and split the rock asunder, so God may combine the laws of nature to bring about answers to prayer. In all this there may be no suspension or violation of law, but a use of law unknown to us.Hopkins, Sermon on the Prayer-gauge:“Nature is uniform in her processes but not in her results. Do you say that water cannot run uphill? Yes, it can and does. Whenever man constructs a milldam the water runs up the environing hills till it reaches the top of the milldam. Man can make a spark of electricity do his bidding; why cannot God use a bolt of electricity? Laws are not our masters, but our servants. They do our bidding all the better because they are uniform. And our servants are not God's masters.”Kendall Brooks:“The master of a musical instrument can vary without limit the combination of sounds and the melodies which these combinations can produce. The laws of the instrument are not changed, but in their unchanging steadfastness produce an infinite variety of tunes. It is necessary that they should be[pg 435]unchanging in order to secure a desired result. So nature, which exercises the infinite skill of the divine Master, is governed by unvarying laws; but he, by these laws, produces an infinite variety of results.”Hodge, Popular Lectures, 45, 99—“The system of natural laws is far more flexible in God's hands than it is in ours. We act on second causes externally; God acts on them internally. We act upon them at only a few isolated points; God acts upon every point of the system at the same time. The whole of nature may be as plastic to his will as the air in the organs of the great singer who articulates it into a fit expression of every thought and passion of his soaring soul.”Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 155—“If all the chemical elements of our solar system preëxisted in the fiery cosmic mist, there must have been a time when quite suddenly the attractions between these elements overcame the degree of caloric force which held them apart, and the rush of elements into chemical union must have been consummated with inconceivable rapidity. Uniformitarianism is not universal.”Shaler, Interpretation of Nature, chap. 2—“By a little increase of centrifugal force the elliptical orbit is changed into a parabola, and the planet becomes a comet. By a little reduction in temperature water becomes solid and loses many of its powers. So unexpected results are brought about and surprises as revolutionary as if a Supreme Power immediately intervened.”William James, Address before Soc. for Psych. Research:“Thought-transference may involve a critical point, as the physicists call it, which is passed only when certain psychic conditions are realized, and otherwise not reached at all—just as a big conflagration will break out at a certain temperature, below which no conflagration whatever, whether big or little, can occur.”Tennyson, Life, 1:324—“Prayer is like opening a sluice between the great ocean and our little channels, when the great sea gathers itself together and flows in at full tide.”Since prayer is nothing more nor less than appeal to a personal and present God, whose granting or withholding of the requested blessing is believed to be determined by the prayer itself, we must conclude that prayer moves God, or, in other words, induces the putting forth on his part of an imperative volition.The view that in answering prayer God combines natural forces is elaborated by Chalmers, Works, 2:314, and 7:234. See Diman, Theistic Argument, 111—“When laws are conceived of, not as single, but as combined, instead of being immutable in their operation, they are the agencies of ceaseless change. Phenomena are governed, not by invariable forces, but byendlessly varying combinations of invariable forces.”Diman seems to have followed Argyll, Reign of Law, 100.Janet, Final Causes, 219—“I kindle a fire in my grate. I only intervene to produce and combine together the different agents whose natural action behooves to produce the effect I have need of; but the first step once taken, all the phenomena constituting combustion engender each other, conformably to their laws, without a new intervention of the agent; so that an observer who should study the series of these phenomena, without perceiving the first hand that had prepared all, could not seize that hand in any especial act, and yet there is a preconceived plan and combination.”Hopkins, Sermon on Prayer-gauge: Man, by sprinkling plaster on his field, may cause the corn to grow more luxuriantly; by kindling great fires and by firing cannon, he may cause rain; and God can surely, in answer to prayer, do as much as man can. Lewes says that the fundamental character of all theological philosophy is conceiving of phenomena as subject to supernatural volition, and consequently as eminently and irregularly variable. This notion, he says, is refuted, first, by exact and rational prevision of phenomena, and, secondly, by the possibility of our modifying these phenomena so as to promote our own advantage. But we ask in reply: If we can modify them, cannot God? But, lest this should seem to imply mutability in God or inconsistency in nature, we remark, in addition, that:(b) God may have so preärranged the laws of the material universe and the events of history that, while the answer to prayer is an expression of his will, it is granted through the working of natural agencies, and in perfect accordance with the general principle that results, both temporal and spiritual, are to be attained by intelligent creatures through the use of the appropriate and appointed means.[pg 436]J. P. Cooke, Credentials of Science, 194—“The Jacquard loom of itself would weave a perfectly uniform plain fabric; the perforated cards determine a selection of the threads, and through a combination of these variable conditions, so complex that the observer cannot follow their intricate workings, the predesigned pattern appears.”E. G. Robinson:“The most formidable objection to this theory is the apparent countenance it lends to the doctrine of necessitarianism. But if it presupposes that free actions have been taken into account, it cannot easily be shown to be false.”The bishop who was asked by his curate to sanction prayers for rain was unduly sceptical when he replied:“First consult the barometer.”Phillips Brooks:“Prayer is not the conquering of God's reluctance, but the taking hold of God's willingness.”The Pilgrims at Plymouth, somewhere about 1628, prayed for rain. They met at 9 A. M., and continued in prayer for eight or nine hours. While they were assembled clouds gathered, and the next morning began rains which, with some intervals, lasted fourteen days. John Easter was many years ago an evangelist in Virginia. A large out-door meeting was being held. Many thousands had assembled, when heavy storm clouds began to gather. There was no shelter to which the multitudes could retreat. The rain had already reached the adjoining fields when John Easter cried:“Brethren, be still, while I call upon God to stay the storm till the gospel is preached to this multitude!”Then he knelt and prayed that the audience might be spared the rain, and that after they had gone to their homes there might be refreshing showers. Behold, the clouds parted as they came near, and passed to either side of the crowd and then closed again, leaving the place dry where the audience had assembled, and the next day the postponed showers came down upon the ground that had been the day before omitted.Since God is immanent in nature, an answer to prayer, coming about through the intervention of natural law, may be as real a revelation of God's personal care as if the laws of nature were suspended, and God interposed by an exercise of his creative power. Prayer and its answer, though having God's immediate volition as their connecting bond, may yet be provided for in the original plan of the universe.The universe does not exist for itself, but for moral ends and moral beings, to reveal God and to furnish facilities of intercourse between God and intelligent creatures. Bishop Berkeley:“The universe is God's ceaseless conversation with his creatures.”The universe certainly subserves moral ends—the discouragement of vice and the reward of virtue; why not spiritual ends also? When we remember that there is no true prayer which God does not inspire; that every true prayer is part of the plan of the universe linked in with all the rest and provided for at the beginning; that God is in nature and in mind, supervising all their movements and making all fulfill his will and reveal his personal care; that God can adjust the forces of nature to each other far more skilfully than can man when man produces effects which nature of herself could never accomplish; that God is not confined to nature or her forces, but can work by his creative and omnipotent will where other means are not sufficient,—we need have no fear, either that natural law will bar God's answers to prayer, or that these answers will cause a shock or jar in the system of the universe.Matheson, Messages of the Old Religions, 321, 322—“Hebrew poetry never deals with outward nature for its own sake. The eye never rests on beauty for itself alone. The heavens are the work of God's hands, the earth is God's footstool, the winds are God's ministers, the stars are God's host, the thunder is God's voice. What we call Nature the Jew called God.”Miss Heloise E. Hersey:“Plato in the Phædrus sets forth in a splendid myth the means by which the gods refresh themselves. Once a year, in a mighty host, they drive their chariots up the steep to the topmost vault of heaven. Thence they may behold all the wonders and the secrets of the universe; and, quickened by the sight of the great plain of truth, they return home replenished and made glad by the celestial vision.”Abp. Trench, Poems, 134—“Lord, what a change within us one short hour Spent in thy presence will prevail to make—What heavy burdens from our bosoms take, What parched grounds refresh as with a shower! We kneel, and all around us seems to lower; We rise, and all, the distant and the near, Stands forth in sunny outline, brave and clear; We kneel how weak, we rise how full of power! Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong, Or others—that we are not always strong; That we are ever overborne with care; That we should ever weak[pg 437]or heartless be, Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer, And joy and strength and courage are with thee?”See Calderwood, Science and Religion, 299-309; McCosh, Divine Government, 215; Liddon, Elements of Religion, 178-203; Hamilton, Autology, 690-694. See also Jellett, Donnellan Lectures on the Efficacy of Prayer; Butterworth, Story of Notable Prayers; Patton, Prayer and its Answers; Monrad, World of Prayer; Prime, Power of Prayer; Phelps, The Still Hour; Haven, and Bickersteth, on Prayer; Prayer for Colleges; Cox, in Expositor, 1877: chap. 3; Faunce, Prayer as a Theory and a Fact; Trumbull, Prayer, Its Nature and Scope.C. If asked whether this relation between prayer and its providential answer can be scientifically tested, we reply that it may be tested just as a father's love may be tested by a dutiful son.(a) There is a general proof of it in the past experience of the Christian and in the past history of the church.Ps. 116:1-8—“I love Jehovah because he heareth my voice and my supplications.”Luther prays for the dying Melanchthon, and he recovers. George Müller trusts to prayer, and builds his great orphan-houses. For a multitude of instances, see Prime, Answers to Prayer. Charles H. Spurgeon:“If there is any fact that is proved, it is that God hears prayer. If there is any scientific statement that is capable of mathematical proof, this is.”Mr. Spurgeon's language is rhetorical: he means simply that God's answers to prayer remove all reasonable doubt. Adoniram Judson:“I never was deeply interested in any object, I never prayed sincerely and earnestly for anything, but it came; at some time—no matter at how distant a day—somehow, in some shape, probably the last I should have devised—it came. And yet I have always had so little faith! May God forgive me, and while he condescends to use me as his instrument, wipe the sin of unbelief from my heart!”(b) In condescension to human blindness, God may sometimes submit to a formal test of his faithfulness and power,—as in the case of Elijah and the priests of Baal.Is. 7:10-13—Ahaz is rebuked for not asking a sign,—in him it indicated unbelief.1 K. 18:36-38—Elijah said,“let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel.... Then the fire of Jehovah fell, and consumed the burnt offering.”Romaine speaks of“a year famous for believing.”Mat 21:21, 22—“even if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou taken up and cast into the sea, it shall be done. And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.”“Impossible?”said Napoleon;“then it shall be done!”Arthur Hallam, quoted in Tennyson's Life, 1:44—“With respect to prayer, you ask how I am to distinguish the operations of God in me from the motions of my own heart. Why should you distinguish them, or how do you know that there is any distinction? Is God less God because he acts by general laws when he deals with the common elements of nature?”“Watch in prayer to see what cometh. Foolish boys that knock at a door in wantonness, will not stay till somebody open to them; but a man that hath business will knock, and knock again, till he gets his answer.”Martineau, Seat of Authority, 102, 103—“God is not beyond nature simply,—he is within it. In nature and in mind we must find the action of his power. There is no need of his being a third factor over and above the life of nature and the life of man.”Hartley Coleridge:“Be not afraid to pray,—to pray is right. Pray if thou canst with hope, but ever pray, Though hope be weak, or sick with long delay; Pray in the darkness, if there be no light. Far is the time, remote from human sight, When war and discord on the earth shall cease; Yet every prayer for universal peace Avails the blessed time to expedite. Whate'er is good to wish, ask that of heaven, Though it be what thou canst not hope to see; Pray to be perfect, though the material leaven Forbid the spirit so on earth to be; But if for any wish thou dar'st not pray, Then pray to God to cast that wish away.”(c) When proof sufficient to convince the candid inquirer has been already given, it may not consist with the divine majesty to abide a test imposed by mere curiosity or scepticism,—as in the case of the Jews who sought a sign from heaven.[pg 438]Mat. 12:39—“An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet.”Tyndall's prayer-gauge would ensure a conflict of prayers. Since our present life is a moral probation, delay in the answer to our prayers, and even the denial of specific things for which we pray, may be only signs of God's faithfulness and love. George Müller:“I myself have been bringing certain requests before God now for seventeen years and six months, and never a day has passed without my praying concerning them all this time; yet the full answer has not come up to the present. But I look for it; I confidently expect it.”Christ's prayer,“let this cup pass away from me”(Mat. 26:39), and Paul's prayer that the“thorn in the flesh”might depart from him (2 Cor. 12:7, 8), were not answered in the precise way requested. No more are our prayers always answered in the way we expect. Christ's prayer was not answered by the literal removing of the cup, because the drinking of the cup was really his glory; and Paul's prayer was not answered by the literal removal of the thorn, because the thorn was needful for his own perfecting. In the case of both Jesus and Paul, there were larger interests to be consulted than their own freedom from suffering.(d) Since God's will is the link between prayer and its answer, there can be no such thing as a physical demonstration of its efficacy in any proposed case. Physical tests have no application to things into which free will enters as a constitutive element. But there are moral tests, and moral tests are as scientific as physical tests can be.Diman, Theistic Argument, 576, alludes to Goldwin Smith's denial that any scientific method can be applied to history because it would make man a necessary link in a chain of cause and effect and so would deny his free will. But Diman says this is no more impossible than the development of the individual according to a fixed law of growth, while yet free will is sedulously respected. Froude says history is not a science, because no science could foretell Mohammedanism or Buddhism; and Goldwin Smith says that“prediction is the crown of all science.”But, as Diman remarks:“geometry, geology, physiology, are sciences, yet they do not predict.”Buckle brought history into contempt by asserting that it could be analyzed and referred solely to intellectual laws and forces. To all this we reply that there may be scientific tests which are not physical, or even intellectual, but only moral. Such a test God urges his people to use, inMal. 3:10—“Bring ye the whole tithe into the storehouse ... and prove me now herewith, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.”All such prayer is a reflection of Christ's words—some fragment of his teaching transformed into a supplication (John 15:7; see Westcott, Bib. Com.,in loco); all such prayer is moreover the work of the Spirit of God (Rom. 8:26, 27). It is therefore sure of an answer.But the test of prayer proposed by Tyndall is not applicable to the thing to be tested by it. Hopkins, Prayer and the Prayer-gauge, 22sq.—“We cannot measure wheat by the yard, or the weight of a discourse with a pair of scales.... God's wisdom might see that it was not best for the petitioners, nor for the objects of their petition, to grant their request. Christians therefore could not, without special divine authorization, rest their faith upon the results of such a test.... Why may we not ask for great changes in nature? For the same reason that a well-informed child does not ask for the moon as a plaything.... There are two limitations upon prayer. First, except by special direction of God, we cannot ask for a miracle, for the same reason that a child could not ask his father to burn the house down. Nature is the house we live in. Secondly, we cannot ask for anything under the laws of nature which would contravene the object of those laws. Whatever we can do for ourselves under these laws, God expects us to do. If the child is cold, let him go near the fire,—not beg his father to carry him.”Herbert Spencer's Sociology is only social physics. He denies freedom, and declares anyone who will affix D. V. to the announcement of the Mildmay Conference to be incapable of understanding sociology. Prevision excludes divine or human will. But Mr. Spencer intimates that the evils of natural selection may be modified by artificial selection. What is this but the interference of will? And if man can interfere, cannot God do the same? Yet the wise child will not expect the father to give everything he asks for. Nor will the father who loves his child give him the razor to play with, or stuff him with unwholesome sweets, simply because the child asks these things. If the engineer of the ocean steamer should give me permission to press the lever that sets all the machinery in motion, I should decline to use my power and should prefer to leave such matters to him, unless he first suggested it and showed me how. So the Holy Spirit“helpeth our infirmity; for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself[pg 439]maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered”(Rom. 8:26). And we ought not to talk of“submitting”to perfect Wisdom, or of“being resigned”to perfect Love. Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, 2:1—“What they [the gods] do delay, they do not deny.... We, ignorant of ourselves, Beg often our own harms, which the wise powers Deny us for our good; so find we profit By losing of our prayers.”See Thornton, Old-Fashioned Ethics, 286-297.Per contra, see Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty, 277-294.
IV. Relations of the Doctrine of Providence.1. To miracles and works of grace.Particular providence is the agency of God in what seem to us the minor affairs of nature and human life. Special providence is only an instance[pg 432]of God's particular providence which has special relation to us or makes peculiar impression upon us. It is special, not as respects the means which God makes use of, but as respects the effect produced upon us. In special providence we have only a more impressive manifestation of God's universal control.Miracles and works of grace like regeneration are not to be regarded as belonging to a different order of things from God's special providences. They too, like special providences, may have their natural connections and antecedents, although they more readily suggest their divine authorship. Nature and God are not mutually exclusive,—nature is rather God's method of working. Since nature is only the manifestation of God, special providence, miracle, and regeneration are simply different degrees of extraordinary nature. Certain of the wonders of Scripture, such as the destruction of Sennacherib's army and the dividing of the Red Sea, the plagues of Egypt, the flight of quails, and the draught of fishes, can be counted as exaggerations of natural forces, while at the same time they are operations of the wonder-working God.The falling of snow from a roof is an example of ordinary (or particular) providence. But if a man is killed by it, it becomes a special providence to him and to others who are thereby taught the insecurity of life. So the providing of coal for fuel in the geologic ages may be regarded by different persons in the light either of a general or of a special providence. In all the operations of nature and all the events of life God's providence is exhibited. That providence becomes special, when it manifestly suggests some care of God for us or some duty of ours to God. Savage, Life beyond Death, 285—“Mary A. Livermore's life was saved during her travels in the West by her hearing and instantly obeying what seemed to her a voice. She did not know where it came from; but she leaped, as the voice ordered, from one side of a car to the other, and instantly the side where she had been sitting was crushed in and utterly demolished.”In a similar way, the life of Dr. Oncken was saved in the railroad disaster at Norwalk.Trench gives the name of“providential miracles”to those Scripture wonders which may be explained as wrought through the agency of natural laws (see Trench, Miracles, 19). Mozley also (Miracles, 117-120) calls these wonders miracles, because of the predictive word of God which accompanied them. He says that the difference in effect between miracles and special providences is that the latter givesomewarrant, while the former givefullwarrant, for believing that they are wrought by God. He calls special providences“invisible miracles.”Bp. of Southampton, Place of Miracles, 12, 13—“The art of Bezaleel in constructing the tabernacle, and the plans of generals like Moses and Joshua, Gideon, Barak, and David, are in the Old Testament ascribed to the direct inspiration of God. A less religious writer would have ascribed them to the instinct of military skill. No miracle is necessarily involved, when, in devising the system of ceremonial law it is said:‘Jehovah spake unto Moses’(Num. 5:1). God is everywhere present in the history of Israel, but miracles are strikingly rare.”We prefer to say that the line between the natural and the supernatural, between special providence and miracle, is an arbitrary one, and that the same event may often be regarded either as special providence or as miracle, according as we look at it from the point of view of its relation to other events or from the point of view of its relation to God.E. G. Robinson:“If Vesuvius should send up ashes and lava, and a strong wind should scatter them, it could be said to rain fire and brimstone, as at Sodom and Gomorrha.”There is abundant evident of volcanic action at the Dead Sea. See article on the Physical Preparation for Israel in Palestine, by G. Frederick Wright, in Bib. Sac., April, 1901:364. The three great miracles—the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha, the parting of the waters of the Jordan, the falling down of the walls of Jericho—are described as effect of volcanic eruption, elevation of the bed of the river by a landslide, and earthquake-shock overthrowing the walls. Salt slime thrown up may have enveloped Lot's wife and turned her into“a mound of salt”(Gen. 19:26). In like manner, some of Jesus' works of healing, as for instance those wrought upon paralytics and epileptics, may be susceptible of natural explanation, while yet they show[pg 433]that Christ is absolute Lord of nature. For the naturalistic view, see Tyndall on Miracles and Special Providences, in Fragments of Science, 45, 418.Per contra, see Farrar, on Divine Providence and General Laws, in Science and Theology, 54-80; Row, Bampton Lect. on Christian Evidences, 109-115; Godet, Defence of Christian Faith, Chap. 2; Bowne, The Immanence of God, 56-65.2. To prayer and its answer.What has been said with regard to God's connection with nature suggests the question, how God can answer prayer consistently with the fixity of natural law.Tyndall (see reference above), while repelling the charge of denying that God can answer prayer at all, yet does deny that he can answer it without a miracle. He says expressly“that without a 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 deflect toward us a single beam of the sun.”In reply we would remark:A. Negatively, that the true solution is not to be reached:(a) By making the sole effect of prayer to be its reflex influence upon the petitioner.—Prayer presupposes a God who hears and answers. It will not be offered, unless it is believed to accomplish objective as well as subjective results.According to the first view mentioned above, prayer is a mere spiritual gymnastics—an effort to lift ourselves from the ground by tugging at our own boot-straps. David Hume said well, after hearing a sermon by Dr. Leechman:“We can make use of no expression or even thought in prayers and entreaties which does not imply that these prayers have an influence.”See Tyndall on Prayer and Natural Law, in Fragments of Science, 35. Will men pray to a God who is both deaf and dumb? Will the sailor on the bowsprit whistle to the wind for the sake of improving his voice? Horace Bushnell called this perversion of prayer a“mere dumb-bell exercise.”Baron Munchausen pulled himself out of the bog in China by tugging away at his own pigtail.Hyde, God's Education of Man, 154, 155—“Prayer is not the reflex action of my will upon itself, but rather the communion of two wills, in which the finite comes into connection with the Infinite, and, like the trolley, appropriates its purpose and power.”Harnack, Wesen des Christenthums, 42, apparently follows Schleiermacher in unduly limiting prayer to general petitions which receive only a subjective answer. He tells us that“Jesus taught his disciples the Lord's Prayer in response to a request for directions how to pray. Yet we look in vain therein for requests for special gifts of grace, or for particular good things, even though they are spiritual. The name, the will, the kingdom of God—these are the things which are the objects of petition.”Harnack forgets that the same Christ said also:“All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them”(Mark 11:24).(b) Nor by holding that God answers prayer simply by spiritual means, such as the action of the Holy Spirit upon the spirit of man.—The realm of spirit is no less subject to law than the realm of matter. Scripture and experience, moreover, alike testify that in answer to prayer events take place in the outward world which would not have taken place if prayer had not gone before.According to this second theory, God feeds the starving Elijah, not by a distinct message from heaven but by giving a compassionate disposition to the widow of Zarephath so that she is moved to help the prophet.1 K. 17:9—“behold, I have commanded a widow there to sustain thee.”But God could also feed Elijah by the ravens and the angel (1 K. 17:4; 19:15), and the pouring rain that followed Elijah's prayer (1 K. 18:42-45) cannot be explained as a subjective spiritual phenomenon. Diman, Theistic Argument, 268—“Our charts map out not only the solid shore but the windings of the ocean currents, and we look into the morning papers to ascertain the gathering of storms on the[pg 434]slopes of the Rocky Mountains.”But law rules in the realm of spirit as well as in the realm of nature. See Baden Powell, in Essays and Reviews, 106-162; Knight, Studies in Philosophy and Literature, 340-404; George I. Chace, discourse before the Porter Rhet. Soc. of Andover, August, 1854. Governor Rice in Washington is moved to send money to a starving family in New York, and to secure employment for them. Though he has had no information with regard to their need, they have knelt in prayer for help just before the coming of the aid.(c) Nor by maintaining that God suspends or breaks in upon the order of nature, in answering every prayer that is offered.—This view does not take account of natural laws as having objective existence, and as revealing the order of God's being. Omnipotence might thus suspend natural law, but wisdom, so far as we can see, would not.This third theory might well be held by those who see in nature no force but the all-working will of God. But the properties and powers of matter are revelations of the divine will, and the human will has only a relative independence in the universe. To desire that God would answer all our prayers is to desire omnipotence without omniscience. All true prayer is therefore an expression of the one petition:“Thy will be done”(Mat. 6:10). E. G. Robinson:“It takes much common sense to pray, and many prayers are destitute of this quality. Man needs to pray audibly even in his private prayers, to get the full benefit of them. One of the chief benefits of the English liturgy is that the individual minister is lost sight of. Protestantism makes you work; in Romanism the church will do it all for you.”(d) Nor by considering prayer as a physical force, linked in each case to its answer, as physical cause is linked to physical effect.—Prayer is not a force acting directly upon nature; else there would be no discretion as to its answer. It can accomplish results in nature, only as it influences God.We educate our children in two ways: first, by training them to do for themselves what they can do; and, secondly, by encouraging them to seek our help in matters beyond their power. So God educates us, first, by impersonal law, and, secondly, by personal dependence. He teaches us both to work and to ask. Notice the“perfect unwisdom of modern scientists who place themselves under the training of impersonal law, to the exclusion of that higher and better training which is under personality”(Hopkins, Sermon on Prayer-gauge, 16).It seems more in accordance with both Scripture and reason to say that:B. God may answer prayer, even when that answer involves changes in the sequences of nature,—(a) By new combinations of natural forces, in regions withdrawn from our observation, so that effects are produced which these same forces left to themselves would never have accomplished. As man combines the laws of chemical attraction and of combustion, to fire the gunpowder and split the rock asunder, so God may combine the laws of nature to bring about answers to prayer. In all this there may be no suspension or violation of law, but a use of law unknown to us.Hopkins, Sermon on the Prayer-gauge:“Nature is uniform in her processes but not in her results. Do you say that water cannot run uphill? Yes, it can and does. Whenever man constructs a milldam the water runs up the environing hills till it reaches the top of the milldam. Man can make a spark of electricity do his bidding; why cannot God use a bolt of electricity? Laws are not our masters, but our servants. They do our bidding all the better because they are uniform. And our servants are not God's masters.”Kendall Brooks:“The master of a musical instrument can vary without limit the combination of sounds and the melodies which these combinations can produce. The laws of the instrument are not changed, but in their unchanging steadfastness produce an infinite variety of tunes. It is necessary that they should be[pg 435]unchanging in order to secure a desired result. So nature, which exercises the infinite skill of the divine Master, is governed by unvarying laws; but he, by these laws, produces an infinite variety of results.”Hodge, Popular Lectures, 45, 99—“The system of natural laws is far more flexible in God's hands than it is in ours. We act on second causes externally; God acts on them internally. We act upon them at only a few isolated points; God acts upon every point of the system at the same time. The whole of nature may be as plastic to his will as the air in the organs of the great singer who articulates it into a fit expression of every thought and passion of his soaring soul.”Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 155—“If all the chemical elements of our solar system preëxisted in the fiery cosmic mist, there must have been a time when quite suddenly the attractions between these elements overcame the degree of caloric force which held them apart, and the rush of elements into chemical union must have been consummated with inconceivable rapidity. Uniformitarianism is not universal.”Shaler, Interpretation of Nature, chap. 2—“By a little increase of centrifugal force the elliptical orbit is changed into a parabola, and the planet becomes a comet. By a little reduction in temperature water becomes solid and loses many of its powers. So unexpected results are brought about and surprises as revolutionary as if a Supreme Power immediately intervened.”William James, Address before Soc. for Psych. Research:“Thought-transference may involve a critical point, as the physicists call it, which is passed only when certain psychic conditions are realized, and otherwise not reached at all—just as a big conflagration will break out at a certain temperature, below which no conflagration whatever, whether big or little, can occur.”Tennyson, Life, 1:324—“Prayer is like opening a sluice between the great ocean and our little channels, when the great sea gathers itself together and flows in at full tide.”Since prayer is nothing more nor less than appeal to a personal and present God, whose granting or withholding of the requested blessing is believed to be determined by the prayer itself, we must conclude that prayer moves God, or, in other words, induces the putting forth on his part of an imperative volition.The view that in answering prayer God combines natural forces is elaborated by Chalmers, Works, 2:314, and 7:234. See Diman, Theistic Argument, 111—“When laws are conceived of, not as single, but as combined, instead of being immutable in their operation, they are the agencies of ceaseless change. Phenomena are governed, not by invariable forces, but byendlessly varying combinations of invariable forces.”Diman seems to have followed Argyll, Reign of Law, 100.Janet, Final Causes, 219—“I kindle a fire in my grate. I only intervene to produce and combine together the different agents whose natural action behooves to produce the effect I have need of; but the first step once taken, all the phenomena constituting combustion engender each other, conformably to their laws, without a new intervention of the agent; so that an observer who should study the series of these phenomena, without perceiving the first hand that had prepared all, could not seize that hand in any especial act, and yet there is a preconceived plan and combination.”Hopkins, Sermon on Prayer-gauge: Man, by sprinkling plaster on his field, may cause the corn to grow more luxuriantly; by kindling great fires and by firing cannon, he may cause rain; and God can surely, in answer to prayer, do as much as man can. Lewes says that the fundamental character of all theological philosophy is conceiving of phenomena as subject to supernatural volition, and consequently as eminently and irregularly variable. This notion, he says, is refuted, first, by exact and rational prevision of phenomena, and, secondly, by the possibility of our modifying these phenomena so as to promote our own advantage. But we ask in reply: If we can modify them, cannot God? But, lest this should seem to imply mutability in God or inconsistency in nature, we remark, in addition, that:(b) God may have so preärranged the laws of the material universe and the events of history that, while the answer to prayer is an expression of his will, it is granted through the working of natural agencies, and in perfect accordance with the general principle that results, both temporal and spiritual, are to be attained by intelligent creatures through the use of the appropriate and appointed means.[pg 436]J. P. Cooke, Credentials of Science, 194—“The Jacquard loom of itself would weave a perfectly uniform plain fabric; the perforated cards determine a selection of the threads, and through a combination of these variable conditions, so complex that the observer cannot follow their intricate workings, the predesigned pattern appears.”E. G. Robinson:“The most formidable objection to this theory is the apparent countenance it lends to the doctrine of necessitarianism. But if it presupposes that free actions have been taken into account, it cannot easily be shown to be false.”The bishop who was asked by his curate to sanction prayers for rain was unduly sceptical when he replied:“First consult the barometer.”Phillips Brooks:“Prayer is not the conquering of God's reluctance, but the taking hold of God's willingness.”The Pilgrims at Plymouth, somewhere about 1628, prayed for rain. They met at 9 A. M., and continued in prayer for eight or nine hours. While they were assembled clouds gathered, and the next morning began rains which, with some intervals, lasted fourteen days. John Easter was many years ago an evangelist in Virginia. A large out-door meeting was being held. Many thousands had assembled, when heavy storm clouds began to gather. There was no shelter to which the multitudes could retreat. The rain had already reached the adjoining fields when John Easter cried:“Brethren, be still, while I call upon God to stay the storm till the gospel is preached to this multitude!”Then he knelt and prayed that the audience might be spared the rain, and that after they had gone to their homes there might be refreshing showers. Behold, the clouds parted as they came near, and passed to either side of the crowd and then closed again, leaving the place dry where the audience had assembled, and the next day the postponed showers came down upon the ground that had been the day before omitted.Since God is immanent in nature, an answer to prayer, coming about through the intervention of natural law, may be as real a revelation of God's personal care as if the laws of nature were suspended, and God interposed by an exercise of his creative power. Prayer and its answer, though having God's immediate volition as their connecting bond, may yet be provided for in the original plan of the universe.The universe does not exist for itself, but for moral ends and moral beings, to reveal God and to furnish facilities of intercourse between God and intelligent creatures. Bishop Berkeley:“The universe is God's ceaseless conversation with his creatures.”The universe certainly subserves moral ends—the discouragement of vice and the reward of virtue; why not spiritual ends also? When we remember that there is no true prayer which God does not inspire; that every true prayer is part of the plan of the universe linked in with all the rest and provided for at the beginning; that God is in nature and in mind, supervising all their movements and making all fulfill his will and reveal his personal care; that God can adjust the forces of nature to each other far more skilfully than can man when man produces effects which nature of herself could never accomplish; that God is not confined to nature or her forces, but can work by his creative and omnipotent will where other means are not sufficient,—we need have no fear, either that natural law will bar God's answers to prayer, or that these answers will cause a shock or jar in the system of the universe.Matheson, Messages of the Old Religions, 321, 322—“Hebrew poetry never deals with outward nature for its own sake. The eye never rests on beauty for itself alone. The heavens are the work of God's hands, the earth is God's footstool, the winds are God's ministers, the stars are God's host, the thunder is God's voice. What we call Nature the Jew called God.”Miss Heloise E. Hersey:“Plato in the Phædrus sets forth in a splendid myth the means by which the gods refresh themselves. Once a year, in a mighty host, they drive their chariots up the steep to the topmost vault of heaven. Thence they may behold all the wonders and the secrets of the universe; and, quickened by the sight of the great plain of truth, they return home replenished and made glad by the celestial vision.”Abp. Trench, Poems, 134—“Lord, what a change within us one short hour Spent in thy presence will prevail to make—What heavy burdens from our bosoms take, What parched grounds refresh as with a shower! We kneel, and all around us seems to lower; We rise, and all, the distant and the near, Stands forth in sunny outline, brave and clear; We kneel how weak, we rise how full of power! Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong, Or others—that we are not always strong; That we are ever overborne with care; That we should ever weak[pg 437]or heartless be, Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer, And joy and strength and courage are with thee?”See Calderwood, Science and Religion, 299-309; McCosh, Divine Government, 215; Liddon, Elements of Religion, 178-203; Hamilton, Autology, 690-694. See also Jellett, Donnellan Lectures on the Efficacy of Prayer; Butterworth, Story of Notable Prayers; Patton, Prayer and its Answers; Monrad, World of Prayer; Prime, Power of Prayer; Phelps, The Still Hour; Haven, and Bickersteth, on Prayer; Prayer for Colleges; Cox, in Expositor, 1877: chap. 3; Faunce, Prayer as a Theory and a Fact; Trumbull, Prayer, Its Nature and Scope.C. If asked whether this relation between prayer and its providential answer can be scientifically tested, we reply that it may be tested just as a father's love may be tested by a dutiful son.(a) There is a general proof of it in the past experience of the Christian and in the past history of the church.Ps. 116:1-8—“I love Jehovah because he heareth my voice and my supplications.”Luther prays for the dying Melanchthon, and he recovers. George Müller trusts to prayer, and builds his great orphan-houses. For a multitude of instances, see Prime, Answers to Prayer. Charles H. Spurgeon:“If there is any fact that is proved, it is that God hears prayer. If there is any scientific statement that is capable of mathematical proof, this is.”Mr. Spurgeon's language is rhetorical: he means simply that God's answers to prayer remove all reasonable doubt. Adoniram Judson:“I never was deeply interested in any object, I never prayed sincerely and earnestly for anything, but it came; at some time—no matter at how distant a day—somehow, in some shape, probably the last I should have devised—it came. And yet I have always had so little faith! May God forgive me, and while he condescends to use me as his instrument, wipe the sin of unbelief from my heart!”(b) In condescension to human blindness, God may sometimes submit to a formal test of his faithfulness and power,—as in the case of Elijah and the priests of Baal.Is. 7:10-13—Ahaz is rebuked for not asking a sign,—in him it indicated unbelief.1 K. 18:36-38—Elijah said,“let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel.... Then the fire of Jehovah fell, and consumed the burnt offering.”Romaine speaks of“a year famous for believing.”Mat 21:21, 22—“even if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou taken up and cast into the sea, it shall be done. And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.”“Impossible?”said Napoleon;“then it shall be done!”Arthur Hallam, quoted in Tennyson's Life, 1:44—“With respect to prayer, you ask how I am to distinguish the operations of God in me from the motions of my own heart. Why should you distinguish them, or how do you know that there is any distinction? Is God less God because he acts by general laws when he deals with the common elements of nature?”“Watch in prayer to see what cometh. Foolish boys that knock at a door in wantonness, will not stay till somebody open to them; but a man that hath business will knock, and knock again, till he gets his answer.”Martineau, Seat of Authority, 102, 103—“God is not beyond nature simply,—he is within it. In nature and in mind we must find the action of his power. There is no need of his being a third factor over and above the life of nature and the life of man.”Hartley Coleridge:“Be not afraid to pray,—to pray is right. Pray if thou canst with hope, but ever pray, Though hope be weak, or sick with long delay; Pray in the darkness, if there be no light. Far is the time, remote from human sight, When war and discord on the earth shall cease; Yet every prayer for universal peace Avails the blessed time to expedite. Whate'er is good to wish, ask that of heaven, Though it be what thou canst not hope to see; Pray to be perfect, though the material leaven Forbid the spirit so on earth to be; But if for any wish thou dar'st not pray, Then pray to God to cast that wish away.”(c) When proof sufficient to convince the candid inquirer has been already given, it may not consist with the divine majesty to abide a test imposed by mere curiosity or scepticism,—as in the case of the Jews who sought a sign from heaven.[pg 438]Mat. 12:39—“An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet.”Tyndall's prayer-gauge would ensure a conflict of prayers. Since our present life is a moral probation, delay in the answer to our prayers, and even the denial of specific things for which we pray, may be only signs of God's faithfulness and love. George Müller:“I myself have been bringing certain requests before God now for seventeen years and six months, and never a day has passed without my praying concerning them all this time; yet the full answer has not come up to the present. But I look for it; I confidently expect it.”Christ's prayer,“let this cup pass away from me”(Mat. 26:39), and Paul's prayer that the“thorn in the flesh”might depart from him (2 Cor. 12:7, 8), were not answered in the precise way requested. No more are our prayers always answered in the way we expect. Christ's prayer was not answered by the literal removing of the cup, because the drinking of the cup was really his glory; and Paul's prayer was not answered by the literal removal of the thorn, because the thorn was needful for his own perfecting. In the case of both Jesus and Paul, there were larger interests to be consulted than their own freedom from suffering.(d) Since God's will is the link between prayer and its answer, there can be no such thing as a physical demonstration of its efficacy in any proposed case. Physical tests have no application to things into which free will enters as a constitutive element. But there are moral tests, and moral tests are as scientific as physical tests can be.Diman, Theistic Argument, 576, alludes to Goldwin Smith's denial that any scientific method can be applied to history because it would make man a necessary link in a chain of cause and effect and so would deny his free will. But Diman says this is no more impossible than the development of the individual according to a fixed law of growth, while yet free will is sedulously respected. Froude says history is not a science, because no science could foretell Mohammedanism or Buddhism; and Goldwin Smith says that“prediction is the crown of all science.”But, as Diman remarks:“geometry, geology, physiology, are sciences, yet they do not predict.”Buckle brought history into contempt by asserting that it could be analyzed and referred solely to intellectual laws and forces. To all this we reply that there may be scientific tests which are not physical, or even intellectual, but only moral. Such a test God urges his people to use, inMal. 3:10—“Bring ye the whole tithe into the storehouse ... and prove me now herewith, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.”All such prayer is a reflection of Christ's words—some fragment of his teaching transformed into a supplication (John 15:7; see Westcott, Bib. Com.,in loco); all such prayer is moreover the work of the Spirit of God (Rom. 8:26, 27). It is therefore sure of an answer.But the test of prayer proposed by Tyndall is not applicable to the thing to be tested by it. Hopkins, Prayer and the Prayer-gauge, 22sq.—“We cannot measure wheat by the yard, or the weight of a discourse with a pair of scales.... God's wisdom might see that it was not best for the petitioners, nor for the objects of their petition, to grant their request. Christians therefore could not, without special divine authorization, rest their faith upon the results of such a test.... Why may we not ask for great changes in nature? For the same reason that a well-informed child does not ask for the moon as a plaything.... There are two limitations upon prayer. First, except by special direction of God, we cannot ask for a miracle, for the same reason that a child could not ask his father to burn the house down. Nature is the house we live in. Secondly, we cannot ask for anything under the laws of nature which would contravene the object of those laws. Whatever we can do for ourselves under these laws, God expects us to do. If the child is cold, let him go near the fire,—not beg his father to carry him.”Herbert Spencer's Sociology is only social physics. He denies freedom, and declares anyone who will affix D. V. to the announcement of the Mildmay Conference to be incapable of understanding sociology. Prevision excludes divine or human will. But Mr. Spencer intimates that the evils of natural selection may be modified by artificial selection. What is this but the interference of will? And if man can interfere, cannot God do the same? Yet the wise child will not expect the father to give everything he asks for. Nor will the father who loves his child give him the razor to play with, or stuff him with unwholesome sweets, simply because the child asks these things. If the engineer of the ocean steamer should give me permission to press the lever that sets all the machinery in motion, I should decline to use my power and should prefer to leave such matters to him, unless he first suggested it and showed me how. So the Holy Spirit“helpeth our infirmity; for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself[pg 439]maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered”(Rom. 8:26). And we ought not to talk of“submitting”to perfect Wisdom, or of“being resigned”to perfect Love. Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, 2:1—“What they [the gods] do delay, they do not deny.... We, ignorant of ourselves, Beg often our own harms, which the wise powers Deny us for our good; so find we profit By losing of our prayers.”See Thornton, Old-Fashioned Ethics, 286-297.Per contra, see Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty, 277-294.
IV. Relations of the Doctrine of Providence.1. To miracles and works of grace.Particular providence is the agency of God in what seem to us the minor affairs of nature and human life. Special providence is only an instance[pg 432]of God's particular providence which has special relation to us or makes peculiar impression upon us. It is special, not as respects the means which God makes use of, but as respects the effect produced upon us. In special providence we have only a more impressive manifestation of God's universal control.Miracles and works of grace like regeneration are not to be regarded as belonging to a different order of things from God's special providences. They too, like special providences, may have their natural connections and antecedents, although they more readily suggest their divine authorship. Nature and God are not mutually exclusive,—nature is rather God's method of working. Since nature is only the manifestation of God, special providence, miracle, and regeneration are simply different degrees of extraordinary nature. Certain of the wonders of Scripture, such as the destruction of Sennacherib's army and the dividing of the Red Sea, the plagues of Egypt, the flight of quails, and the draught of fishes, can be counted as exaggerations of natural forces, while at the same time they are operations of the wonder-working God.The falling of snow from a roof is an example of ordinary (or particular) providence. But if a man is killed by it, it becomes a special providence to him and to others who are thereby taught the insecurity of life. So the providing of coal for fuel in the geologic ages may be regarded by different persons in the light either of a general or of a special providence. In all the operations of nature and all the events of life God's providence is exhibited. That providence becomes special, when it manifestly suggests some care of God for us or some duty of ours to God. Savage, Life beyond Death, 285—“Mary A. Livermore's life was saved during her travels in the West by her hearing and instantly obeying what seemed to her a voice. She did not know where it came from; but she leaped, as the voice ordered, from one side of a car to the other, and instantly the side where she had been sitting was crushed in and utterly demolished.”In a similar way, the life of Dr. Oncken was saved in the railroad disaster at Norwalk.Trench gives the name of“providential miracles”to those Scripture wonders which may be explained as wrought through the agency of natural laws (see Trench, Miracles, 19). Mozley also (Miracles, 117-120) calls these wonders miracles, because of the predictive word of God which accompanied them. He says that the difference in effect between miracles and special providences is that the latter givesomewarrant, while the former givefullwarrant, for believing that they are wrought by God. He calls special providences“invisible miracles.”Bp. of Southampton, Place of Miracles, 12, 13—“The art of Bezaleel in constructing the tabernacle, and the plans of generals like Moses and Joshua, Gideon, Barak, and David, are in the Old Testament ascribed to the direct inspiration of God. A less religious writer would have ascribed them to the instinct of military skill. No miracle is necessarily involved, when, in devising the system of ceremonial law it is said:‘Jehovah spake unto Moses’(Num. 5:1). God is everywhere present in the history of Israel, but miracles are strikingly rare.”We prefer to say that the line between the natural and the supernatural, between special providence and miracle, is an arbitrary one, and that the same event may often be regarded either as special providence or as miracle, according as we look at it from the point of view of its relation to other events or from the point of view of its relation to God.E. G. Robinson:“If Vesuvius should send up ashes and lava, and a strong wind should scatter them, it could be said to rain fire and brimstone, as at Sodom and Gomorrha.”There is abundant evident of volcanic action at the Dead Sea. See article on the Physical Preparation for Israel in Palestine, by G. Frederick Wright, in Bib. Sac., April, 1901:364. The three great miracles—the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha, the parting of the waters of the Jordan, the falling down of the walls of Jericho—are described as effect of volcanic eruption, elevation of the bed of the river by a landslide, and earthquake-shock overthrowing the walls. Salt slime thrown up may have enveloped Lot's wife and turned her into“a mound of salt”(Gen. 19:26). In like manner, some of Jesus' works of healing, as for instance those wrought upon paralytics and epileptics, may be susceptible of natural explanation, while yet they show[pg 433]that Christ is absolute Lord of nature. For the naturalistic view, see Tyndall on Miracles and Special Providences, in Fragments of Science, 45, 418.Per contra, see Farrar, on Divine Providence and General Laws, in Science and Theology, 54-80; Row, Bampton Lect. on Christian Evidences, 109-115; Godet, Defence of Christian Faith, Chap. 2; Bowne, The Immanence of God, 56-65.2. To prayer and its answer.What has been said with regard to God's connection with nature suggests the question, how God can answer prayer consistently with the fixity of natural law.Tyndall (see reference above), while repelling the charge of denying that God can answer prayer at all, yet does deny that he can answer it without a miracle. He says expressly“that without a 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 deflect toward us a single beam of the sun.”In reply we would remark:A. Negatively, that the true solution is not to be reached:(a) By making the sole effect of prayer to be its reflex influence upon the petitioner.—Prayer presupposes a God who hears and answers. It will not be offered, unless it is believed to accomplish objective as well as subjective results.According to the first view mentioned above, prayer is a mere spiritual gymnastics—an effort to lift ourselves from the ground by tugging at our own boot-straps. David Hume said well, after hearing a sermon by Dr. Leechman:“We can make use of no expression or even thought in prayers and entreaties which does not imply that these prayers have an influence.”See Tyndall on Prayer and Natural Law, in Fragments of Science, 35. Will men pray to a God who is both deaf and dumb? Will the sailor on the bowsprit whistle to the wind for the sake of improving his voice? Horace Bushnell called this perversion of prayer a“mere dumb-bell exercise.”Baron Munchausen pulled himself out of the bog in China by tugging away at his own pigtail.Hyde, God's Education of Man, 154, 155—“Prayer is not the reflex action of my will upon itself, but rather the communion of two wills, in which the finite comes into connection with the Infinite, and, like the trolley, appropriates its purpose and power.”Harnack, Wesen des Christenthums, 42, apparently follows Schleiermacher in unduly limiting prayer to general petitions which receive only a subjective answer. He tells us that“Jesus taught his disciples the Lord's Prayer in response to a request for directions how to pray. Yet we look in vain therein for requests for special gifts of grace, or for particular good things, even though they are spiritual. The name, the will, the kingdom of God—these are the things which are the objects of petition.”Harnack forgets that the same Christ said also:“All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them”(Mark 11:24).(b) Nor by holding that God answers prayer simply by spiritual means, such as the action of the Holy Spirit upon the spirit of man.—The realm of spirit is no less subject to law than the realm of matter. Scripture and experience, moreover, alike testify that in answer to prayer events take place in the outward world which would not have taken place if prayer had not gone before.According to this second theory, God feeds the starving Elijah, not by a distinct message from heaven but by giving a compassionate disposition to the widow of Zarephath so that she is moved to help the prophet.1 K. 17:9—“behold, I have commanded a widow there to sustain thee.”But God could also feed Elijah by the ravens and the angel (1 K. 17:4; 19:15), and the pouring rain that followed Elijah's prayer (1 K. 18:42-45) cannot be explained as a subjective spiritual phenomenon. Diman, Theistic Argument, 268—“Our charts map out not only the solid shore but the windings of the ocean currents, and we look into the morning papers to ascertain the gathering of storms on the[pg 434]slopes of the Rocky Mountains.”But law rules in the realm of spirit as well as in the realm of nature. See Baden Powell, in Essays and Reviews, 106-162; Knight, Studies in Philosophy and Literature, 340-404; George I. Chace, discourse before the Porter Rhet. Soc. of Andover, August, 1854. Governor Rice in Washington is moved to send money to a starving family in New York, and to secure employment for them. Though he has had no information with regard to their need, they have knelt in prayer for help just before the coming of the aid.(c) Nor by maintaining that God suspends or breaks in upon the order of nature, in answering every prayer that is offered.—This view does not take account of natural laws as having objective existence, and as revealing the order of God's being. Omnipotence might thus suspend natural law, but wisdom, so far as we can see, would not.This third theory might well be held by those who see in nature no force but the all-working will of God. But the properties and powers of matter are revelations of the divine will, and the human will has only a relative independence in the universe. To desire that God would answer all our prayers is to desire omnipotence without omniscience. All true prayer is therefore an expression of the one petition:“Thy will be done”(Mat. 6:10). E. G. Robinson:“It takes much common sense to pray, and many prayers are destitute of this quality. Man needs to pray audibly even in his private prayers, to get the full benefit of them. One of the chief benefits of the English liturgy is that the individual minister is lost sight of. Protestantism makes you work; in Romanism the church will do it all for you.”(d) Nor by considering prayer as a physical force, linked in each case to its answer, as physical cause is linked to physical effect.—Prayer is not a force acting directly upon nature; else there would be no discretion as to its answer. It can accomplish results in nature, only as it influences God.We educate our children in two ways: first, by training them to do for themselves what they can do; and, secondly, by encouraging them to seek our help in matters beyond their power. So God educates us, first, by impersonal law, and, secondly, by personal dependence. He teaches us both to work and to ask. Notice the“perfect unwisdom of modern scientists who place themselves under the training of impersonal law, to the exclusion of that higher and better training which is under personality”(Hopkins, Sermon on Prayer-gauge, 16).It seems more in accordance with both Scripture and reason to say that:B. God may answer prayer, even when that answer involves changes in the sequences of nature,—(a) By new combinations of natural forces, in regions withdrawn from our observation, so that effects are produced which these same forces left to themselves would never have accomplished. As man combines the laws of chemical attraction and of combustion, to fire the gunpowder and split the rock asunder, so God may combine the laws of nature to bring about answers to prayer. In all this there may be no suspension or violation of law, but a use of law unknown to us.Hopkins, Sermon on the Prayer-gauge:“Nature is uniform in her processes but not in her results. Do you say that water cannot run uphill? Yes, it can and does. Whenever man constructs a milldam the water runs up the environing hills till it reaches the top of the milldam. Man can make a spark of electricity do his bidding; why cannot God use a bolt of electricity? Laws are not our masters, but our servants. They do our bidding all the better because they are uniform. And our servants are not God's masters.”Kendall Brooks:“The master of a musical instrument can vary without limit the combination of sounds and the melodies which these combinations can produce. The laws of the instrument are not changed, but in their unchanging steadfastness produce an infinite variety of tunes. It is necessary that they should be[pg 435]unchanging in order to secure a desired result. So nature, which exercises the infinite skill of the divine Master, is governed by unvarying laws; but he, by these laws, produces an infinite variety of results.”Hodge, Popular Lectures, 45, 99—“The system of natural laws is far more flexible in God's hands than it is in ours. We act on second causes externally; God acts on them internally. We act upon them at only a few isolated points; God acts upon every point of the system at the same time. The whole of nature may be as plastic to his will as the air in the organs of the great singer who articulates it into a fit expression of every thought and passion of his soaring soul.”Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 155—“If all the chemical elements of our solar system preëxisted in the fiery cosmic mist, there must have been a time when quite suddenly the attractions between these elements overcame the degree of caloric force which held them apart, and the rush of elements into chemical union must have been consummated with inconceivable rapidity. Uniformitarianism is not universal.”Shaler, Interpretation of Nature, chap. 2—“By a little increase of centrifugal force the elliptical orbit is changed into a parabola, and the planet becomes a comet. By a little reduction in temperature water becomes solid and loses many of its powers. So unexpected results are brought about and surprises as revolutionary as if a Supreme Power immediately intervened.”William James, Address before Soc. for Psych. Research:“Thought-transference may involve a critical point, as the physicists call it, which is passed only when certain psychic conditions are realized, and otherwise not reached at all—just as a big conflagration will break out at a certain temperature, below which no conflagration whatever, whether big or little, can occur.”Tennyson, Life, 1:324—“Prayer is like opening a sluice between the great ocean and our little channels, when the great sea gathers itself together and flows in at full tide.”Since prayer is nothing more nor less than appeal to a personal and present God, whose granting or withholding of the requested blessing is believed to be determined by the prayer itself, we must conclude that prayer moves God, or, in other words, induces the putting forth on his part of an imperative volition.The view that in answering prayer God combines natural forces is elaborated by Chalmers, Works, 2:314, and 7:234. See Diman, Theistic Argument, 111—“When laws are conceived of, not as single, but as combined, instead of being immutable in their operation, they are the agencies of ceaseless change. Phenomena are governed, not by invariable forces, but byendlessly varying combinations of invariable forces.”Diman seems to have followed Argyll, Reign of Law, 100.Janet, Final Causes, 219—“I kindle a fire in my grate. I only intervene to produce and combine together the different agents whose natural action behooves to produce the effect I have need of; but the first step once taken, all the phenomena constituting combustion engender each other, conformably to their laws, without a new intervention of the agent; so that an observer who should study the series of these phenomena, without perceiving the first hand that had prepared all, could not seize that hand in any especial act, and yet there is a preconceived plan and combination.”Hopkins, Sermon on Prayer-gauge: Man, by sprinkling plaster on his field, may cause the corn to grow more luxuriantly; by kindling great fires and by firing cannon, he may cause rain; and God can surely, in answer to prayer, do as much as man can. Lewes says that the fundamental character of all theological philosophy is conceiving of phenomena as subject to supernatural volition, and consequently as eminently and irregularly variable. This notion, he says, is refuted, first, by exact and rational prevision of phenomena, and, secondly, by the possibility of our modifying these phenomena so as to promote our own advantage. But we ask in reply: If we can modify them, cannot God? But, lest this should seem to imply mutability in God or inconsistency in nature, we remark, in addition, that:(b) God may have so preärranged the laws of the material universe and the events of history that, while the answer to prayer is an expression of his will, it is granted through the working of natural agencies, and in perfect accordance with the general principle that results, both temporal and spiritual, are to be attained by intelligent creatures through the use of the appropriate and appointed means.[pg 436]J. P. Cooke, Credentials of Science, 194—“The Jacquard loom of itself would weave a perfectly uniform plain fabric; the perforated cards determine a selection of the threads, and through a combination of these variable conditions, so complex that the observer cannot follow their intricate workings, the predesigned pattern appears.”E. G. Robinson:“The most formidable objection to this theory is the apparent countenance it lends to the doctrine of necessitarianism. But if it presupposes that free actions have been taken into account, it cannot easily be shown to be false.”The bishop who was asked by his curate to sanction prayers for rain was unduly sceptical when he replied:“First consult the barometer.”Phillips Brooks:“Prayer is not the conquering of God's reluctance, but the taking hold of God's willingness.”The Pilgrims at Plymouth, somewhere about 1628, prayed for rain. They met at 9 A. M., and continued in prayer for eight or nine hours. While they were assembled clouds gathered, and the next morning began rains which, with some intervals, lasted fourteen days. John Easter was many years ago an evangelist in Virginia. A large out-door meeting was being held. Many thousands had assembled, when heavy storm clouds began to gather. There was no shelter to which the multitudes could retreat. The rain had already reached the adjoining fields when John Easter cried:“Brethren, be still, while I call upon God to stay the storm till the gospel is preached to this multitude!”Then he knelt and prayed that the audience might be spared the rain, and that after they had gone to their homes there might be refreshing showers. Behold, the clouds parted as they came near, and passed to either side of the crowd and then closed again, leaving the place dry where the audience had assembled, and the next day the postponed showers came down upon the ground that had been the day before omitted.Since God is immanent in nature, an answer to prayer, coming about through the intervention of natural law, may be as real a revelation of God's personal care as if the laws of nature were suspended, and God interposed by an exercise of his creative power. Prayer and its answer, though having God's immediate volition as their connecting bond, may yet be provided for in the original plan of the universe.The universe does not exist for itself, but for moral ends and moral beings, to reveal God and to furnish facilities of intercourse between God and intelligent creatures. Bishop Berkeley:“The universe is God's ceaseless conversation with his creatures.”The universe certainly subserves moral ends—the discouragement of vice and the reward of virtue; why not spiritual ends also? When we remember that there is no true prayer which God does not inspire; that every true prayer is part of the plan of the universe linked in with all the rest and provided for at the beginning; that God is in nature and in mind, supervising all their movements and making all fulfill his will and reveal his personal care; that God can adjust the forces of nature to each other far more skilfully than can man when man produces effects which nature of herself could never accomplish; that God is not confined to nature or her forces, but can work by his creative and omnipotent will where other means are not sufficient,—we need have no fear, either that natural law will bar God's answers to prayer, or that these answers will cause a shock or jar in the system of the universe.Matheson, Messages of the Old Religions, 321, 322—“Hebrew poetry never deals with outward nature for its own sake. The eye never rests on beauty for itself alone. The heavens are the work of God's hands, the earth is God's footstool, the winds are God's ministers, the stars are God's host, the thunder is God's voice. What we call Nature the Jew called God.”Miss Heloise E. Hersey:“Plato in the Phædrus sets forth in a splendid myth the means by which the gods refresh themselves. Once a year, in a mighty host, they drive their chariots up the steep to the topmost vault of heaven. Thence they may behold all the wonders and the secrets of the universe; and, quickened by the sight of the great plain of truth, they return home replenished and made glad by the celestial vision.”Abp. Trench, Poems, 134—“Lord, what a change within us one short hour Spent in thy presence will prevail to make—What heavy burdens from our bosoms take, What parched grounds refresh as with a shower! We kneel, and all around us seems to lower; We rise, and all, the distant and the near, Stands forth in sunny outline, brave and clear; We kneel how weak, we rise how full of power! Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong, Or others—that we are not always strong; That we are ever overborne with care; That we should ever weak[pg 437]or heartless be, Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer, And joy and strength and courage are with thee?”See Calderwood, Science and Religion, 299-309; McCosh, Divine Government, 215; Liddon, Elements of Religion, 178-203; Hamilton, Autology, 690-694. See also Jellett, Donnellan Lectures on the Efficacy of Prayer; Butterworth, Story of Notable Prayers; Patton, Prayer and its Answers; Monrad, World of Prayer; Prime, Power of Prayer; Phelps, The Still Hour; Haven, and Bickersteth, on Prayer; Prayer for Colleges; Cox, in Expositor, 1877: chap. 3; Faunce, Prayer as a Theory and a Fact; Trumbull, Prayer, Its Nature and Scope.C. If asked whether this relation between prayer and its providential answer can be scientifically tested, we reply that it may be tested just as a father's love may be tested by a dutiful son.(a) There is a general proof of it in the past experience of the Christian and in the past history of the church.Ps. 116:1-8—“I love Jehovah because he heareth my voice and my supplications.”Luther prays for the dying Melanchthon, and he recovers. George Müller trusts to prayer, and builds his great orphan-houses. For a multitude of instances, see Prime, Answers to Prayer. Charles H. Spurgeon:“If there is any fact that is proved, it is that God hears prayer. If there is any scientific statement that is capable of mathematical proof, this is.”Mr. Spurgeon's language is rhetorical: he means simply that God's answers to prayer remove all reasonable doubt. Adoniram Judson:“I never was deeply interested in any object, I never prayed sincerely and earnestly for anything, but it came; at some time—no matter at how distant a day—somehow, in some shape, probably the last I should have devised—it came. And yet I have always had so little faith! May God forgive me, and while he condescends to use me as his instrument, wipe the sin of unbelief from my heart!”(b) In condescension to human blindness, God may sometimes submit to a formal test of his faithfulness and power,—as in the case of Elijah and the priests of Baal.Is. 7:10-13—Ahaz is rebuked for not asking a sign,—in him it indicated unbelief.1 K. 18:36-38—Elijah said,“let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel.... Then the fire of Jehovah fell, and consumed the burnt offering.”Romaine speaks of“a year famous for believing.”Mat 21:21, 22—“even if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou taken up and cast into the sea, it shall be done. And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.”“Impossible?”said Napoleon;“then it shall be done!”Arthur Hallam, quoted in Tennyson's Life, 1:44—“With respect to prayer, you ask how I am to distinguish the operations of God in me from the motions of my own heart. Why should you distinguish them, or how do you know that there is any distinction? Is God less God because he acts by general laws when he deals with the common elements of nature?”“Watch in prayer to see what cometh. Foolish boys that knock at a door in wantonness, will not stay till somebody open to them; but a man that hath business will knock, and knock again, till he gets his answer.”Martineau, Seat of Authority, 102, 103—“God is not beyond nature simply,—he is within it. In nature and in mind we must find the action of his power. There is no need of his being a third factor over and above the life of nature and the life of man.”Hartley Coleridge:“Be not afraid to pray,—to pray is right. Pray if thou canst with hope, but ever pray, Though hope be weak, or sick with long delay; Pray in the darkness, if there be no light. Far is the time, remote from human sight, When war and discord on the earth shall cease; Yet every prayer for universal peace Avails the blessed time to expedite. Whate'er is good to wish, ask that of heaven, Though it be what thou canst not hope to see; Pray to be perfect, though the material leaven Forbid the spirit so on earth to be; But if for any wish thou dar'st not pray, Then pray to God to cast that wish away.”(c) When proof sufficient to convince the candid inquirer has been already given, it may not consist with the divine majesty to abide a test imposed by mere curiosity or scepticism,—as in the case of the Jews who sought a sign from heaven.[pg 438]Mat. 12:39—“An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet.”Tyndall's prayer-gauge would ensure a conflict of prayers. Since our present life is a moral probation, delay in the answer to our prayers, and even the denial of specific things for which we pray, may be only signs of God's faithfulness and love. George Müller:“I myself have been bringing certain requests before God now for seventeen years and six months, and never a day has passed without my praying concerning them all this time; yet the full answer has not come up to the present. But I look for it; I confidently expect it.”Christ's prayer,“let this cup pass away from me”(Mat. 26:39), and Paul's prayer that the“thorn in the flesh”might depart from him (2 Cor. 12:7, 8), were not answered in the precise way requested. No more are our prayers always answered in the way we expect. Christ's prayer was not answered by the literal removing of the cup, because the drinking of the cup was really his glory; and Paul's prayer was not answered by the literal removal of the thorn, because the thorn was needful for his own perfecting. In the case of both Jesus and Paul, there were larger interests to be consulted than their own freedom from suffering.(d) Since God's will is the link between prayer and its answer, there can be no such thing as a physical demonstration of its efficacy in any proposed case. Physical tests have no application to things into which free will enters as a constitutive element. But there are moral tests, and moral tests are as scientific as physical tests can be.Diman, Theistic Argument, 576, alludes to Goldwin Smith's denial that any scientific method can be applied to history because it would make man a necessary link in a chain of cause and effect and so would deny his free will. But Diman says this is no more impossible than the development of the individual according to a fixed law of growth, while yet free will is sedulously respected. Froude says history is not a science, because no science could foretell Mohammedanism or Buddhism; and Goldwin Smith says that“prediction is the crown of all science.”But, as Diman remarks:“geometry, geology, physiology, are sciences, yet they do not predict.”Buckle brought history into contempt by asserting that it could be analyzed and referred solely to intellectual laws and forces. To all this we reply that there may be scientific tests which are not physical, or even intellectual, but only moral. Such a test God urges his people to use, inMal. 3:10—“Bring ye the whole tithe into the storehouse ... and prove me now herewith, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.”All such prayer is a reflection of Christ's words—some fragment of his teaching transformed into a supplication (John 15:7; see Westcott, Bib. Com.,in loco); all such prayer is moreover the work of the Spirit of God (Rom. 8:26, 27). It is therefore sure of an answer.But the test of prayer proposed by Tyndall is not applicable to the thing to be tested by it. Hopkins, Prayer and the Prayer-gauge, 22sq.—“We cannot measure wheat by the yard, or the weight of a discourse with a pair of scales.... God's wisdom might see that it was not best for the petitioners, nor for the objects of their petition, to grant their request. Christians therefore could not, without special divine authorization, rest their faith upon the results of such a test.... Why may we not ask for great changes in nature? For the same reason that a well-informed child does not ask for the moon as a plaything.... There are two limitations upon prayer. First, except by special direction of God, we cannot ask for a miracle, for the same reason that a child could not ask his father to burn the house down. Nature is the house we live in. Secondly, we cannot ask for anything under the laws of nature which would contravene the object of those laws. Whatever we can do for ourselves under these laws, God expects us to do. If the child is cold, let him go near the fire,—not beg his father to carry him.”Herbert Spencer's Sociology is only social physics. He denies freedom, and declares anyone who will affix D. V. to the announcement of the Mildmay Conference to be incapable of understanding sociology. Prevision excludes divine or human will. But Mr. Spencer intimates that the evils of natural selection may be modified by artificial selection. What is this but the interference of will? And if man can interfere, cannot God do the same? Yet the wise child will not expect the father to give everything he asks for. Nor will the father who loves his child give him the razor to play with, or stuff him with unwholesome sweets, simply because the child asks these things. If the engineer of the ocean steamer should give me permission to press the lever that sets all the machinery in motion, I should decline to use my power and should prefer to leave such matters to him, unless he first suggested it and showed me how. So the Holy Spirit“helpeth our infirmity; for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself[pg 439]maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered”(Rom. 8:26). And we ought not to talk of“submitting”to perfect Wisdom, or of“being resigned”to perfect Love. Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, 2:1—“What they [the gods] do delay, they do not deny.... We, ignorant of ourselves, Beg often our own harms, which the wise powers Deny us for our good; so find we profit By losing of our prayers.”See Thornton, Old-Fashioned Ethics, 286-297.Per contra, see Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty, 277-294.
1. To miracles and works of grace.Particular providence is the agency of God in what seem to us the minor affairs of nature and human life. Special providence is only an instance[pg 432]of God's particular providence which has special relation to us or makes peculiar impression upon us. It is special, not as respects the means which God makes use of, but as respects the effect produced upon us. In special providence we have only a more impressive manifestation of God's universal control.Miracles and works of grace like regeneration are not to be regarded as belonging to a different order of things from God's special providences. They too, like special providences, may have their natural connections and antecedents, although they more readily suggest their divine authorship. Nature and God are not mutually exclusive,—nature is rather God's method of working. Since nature is only the manifestation of God, special providence, miracle, and regeneration are simply different degrees of extraordinary nature. Certain of the wonders of Scripture, such as the destruction of Sennacherib's army and the dividing of the Red Sea, the plagues of Egypt, the flight of quails, and the draught of fishes, can be counted as exaggerations of natural forces, while at the same time they are operations of the wonder-working God.The falling of snow from a roof is an example of ordinary (or particular) providence. But if a man is killed by it, it becomes a special providence to him and to others who are thereby taught the insecurity of life. So the providing of coal for fuel in the geologic ages may be regarded by different persons in the light either of a general or of a special providence. In all the operations of nature and all the events of life God's providence is exhibited. That providence becomes special, when it manifestly suggests some care of God for us or some duty of ours to God. Savage, Life beyond Death, 285—“Mary A. Livermore's life was saved during her travels in the West by her hearing and instantly obeying what seemed to her a voice. She did not know where it came from; but she leaped, as the voice ordered, from one side of a car to the other, and instantly the side where she had been sitting was crushed in and utterly demolished.”In a similar way, the life of Dr. Oncken was saved in the railroad disaster at Norwalk.Trench gives the name of“providential miracles”to those Scripture wonders which may be explained as wrought through the agency of natural laws (see Trench, Miracles, 19). Mozley also (Miracles, 117-120) calls these wonders miracles, because of the predictive word of God which accompanied them. He says that the difference in effect between miracles and special providences is that the latter givesomewarrant, while the former givefullwarrant, for believing that they are wrought by God. He calls special providences“invisible miracles.”Bp. of Southampton, Place of Miracles, 12, 13—“The art of Bezaleel in constructing the tabernacle, and the plans of generals like Moses and Joshua, Gideon, Barak, and David, are in the Old Testament ascribed to the direct inspiration of God. A less religious writer would have ascribed them to the instinct of military skill. No miracle is necessarily involved, when, in devising the system of ceremonial law it is said:‘Jehovah spake unto Moses’(Num. 5:1). God is everywhere present in the history of Israel, but miracles are strikingly rare.”We prefer to say that the line between the natural and the supernatural, between special providence and miracle, is an arbitrary one, and that the same event may often be regarded either as special providence or as miracle, according as we look at it from the point of view of its relation to other events or from the point of view of its relation to God.E. G. Robinson:“If Vesuvius should send up ashes and lava, and a strong wind should scatter them, it could be said to rain fire and brimstone, as at Sodom and Gomorrha.”There is abundant evident of volcanic action at the Dead Sea. See article on the Physical Preparation for Israel in Palestine, by G. Frederick Wright, in Bib. Sac., April, 1901:364. The three great miracles—the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha, the parting of the waters of the Jordan, the falling down of the walls of Jericho—are described as effect of volcanic eruption, elevation of the bed of the river by a landslide, and earthquake-shock overthrowing the walls. Salt slime thrown up may have enveloped Lot's wife and turned her into“a mound of salt”(Gen. 19:26). In like manner, some of Jesus' works of healing, as for instance those wrought upon paralytics and epileptics, may be susceptible of natural explanation, while yet they show[pg 433]that Christ is absolute Lord of nature. For the naturalistic view, see Tyndall on Miracles and Special Providences, in Fragments of Science, 45, 418.Per contra, see Farrar, on Divine Providence and General Laws, in Science and Theology, 54-80; Row, Bampton Lect. on Christian Evidences, 109-115; Godet, Defence of Christian Faith, Chap. 2; Bowne, The Immanence of God, 56-65.
Particular providence is the agency of God in what seem to us the minor affairs of nature and human life. Special providence is only an instance[pg 432]of God's particular providence which has special relation to us or makes peculiar impression upon us. It is special, not as respects the means which God makes use of, but as respects the effect produced upon us. In special providence we have only a more impressive manifestation of God's universal control.
Miracles and works of grace like regeneration are not to be regarded as belonging to a different order of things from God's special providences. They too, like special providences, may have their natural connections and antecedents, although they more readily suggest their divine authorship. Nature and God are not mutually exclusive,—nature is rather God's method of working. Since nature is only the manifestation of God, special providence, miracle, and regeneration are simply different degrees of extraordinary nature. Certain of the wonders of Scripture, such as the destruction of Sennacherib's army and the dividing of the Red Sea, the plagues of Egypt, the flight of quails, and the draught of fishes, can be counted as exaggerations of natural forces, while at the same time they are operations of the wonder-working God.
The falling of snow from a roof is an example of ordinary (or particular) providence. But if a man is killed by it, it becomes a special providence to him and to others who are thereby taught the insecurity of life. So the providing of coal for fuel in the geologic ages may be regarded by different persons in the light either of a general or of a special providence. In all the operations of nature and all the events of life God's providence is exhibited. That providence becomes special, when it manifestly suggests some care of God for us or some duty of ours to God. Savage, Life beyond Death, 285—“Mary A. Livermore's life was saved during her travels in the West by her hearing and instantly obeying what seemed to her a voice. She did not know where it came from; but she leaped, as the voice ordered, from one side of a car to the other, and instantly the side where she had been sitting was crushed in and utterly demolished.”In a similar way, the life of Dr. Oncken was saved in the railroad disaster at Norwalk.Trench gives the name of“providential miracles”to those Scripture wonders which may be explained as wrought through the agency of natural laws (see Trench, Miracles, 19). Mozley also (Miracles, 117-120) calls these wonders miracles, because of the predictive word of God which accompanied them. He says that the difference in effect between miracles and special providences is that the latter givesomewarrant, while the former givefullwarrant, for believing that they are wrought by God. He calls special providences“invisible miracles.”Bp. of Southampton, Place of Miracles, 12, 13—“The art of Bezaleel in constructing the tabernacle, and the plans of generals like Moses and Joshua, Gideon, Barak, and David, are in the Old Testament ascribed to the direct inspiration of God. A less religious writer would have ascribed them to the instinct of military skill. No miracle is necessarily involved, when, in devising the system of ceremonial law it is said:‘Jehovah spake unto Moses’(Num. 5:1). God is everywhere present in the history of Israel, but miracles are strikingly rare.”We prefer to say that the line between the natural and the supernatural, between special providence and miracle, is an arbitrary one, and that the same event may often be regarded either as special providence or as miracle, according as we look at it from the point of view of its relation to other events or from the point of view of its relation to God.E. G. Robinson:“If Vesuvius should send up ashes and lava, and a strong wind should scatter them, it could be said to rain fire and brimstone, as at Sodom and Gomorrha.”There is abundant evident of volcanic action at the Dead Sea. See article on the Physical Preparation for Israel in Palestine, by G. Frederick Wright, in Bib. Sac., April, 1901:364. The three great miracles—the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha, the parting of the waters of the Jordan, the falling down of the walls of Jericho—are described as effect of volcanic eruption, elevation of the bed of the river by a landslide, and earthquake-shock overthrowing the walls. Salt slime thrown up may have enveloped Lot's wife and turned her into“a mound of salt”(Gen. 19:26). In like manner, some of Jesus' works of healing, as for instance those wrought upon paralytics and epileptics, may be susceptible of natural explanation, while yet they show[pg 433]that Christ is absolute Lord of nature. For the naturalistic view, see Tyndall on Miracles and Special Providences, in Fragments of Science, 45, 418.Per contra, see Farrar, on Divine Providence and General Laws, in Science and Theology, 54-80; Row, Bampton Lect. on Christian Evidences, 109-115; Godet, Defence of Christian Faith, Chap. 2; Bowne, The Immanence of God, 56-65.
The falling of snow from a roof is an example of ordinary (or particular) providence. But if a man is killed by it, it becomes a special providence to him and to others who are thereby taught the insecurity of life. So the providing of coal for fuel in the geologic ages may be regarded by different persons in the light either of a general or of a special providence. In all the operations of nature and all the events of life God's providence is exhibited. That providence becomes special, when it manifestly suggests some care of God for us or some duty of ours to God. Savage, Life beyond Death, 285—“Mary A. Livermore's life was saved during her travels in the West by her hearing and instantly obeying what seemed to her a voice. She did not know where it came from; but she leaped, as the voice ordered, from one side of a car to the other, and instantly the side where she had been sitting was crushed in and utterly demolished.”In a similar way, the life of Dr. Oncken was saved in the railroad disaster at Norwalk.
Trench gives the name of“providential miracles”to those Scripture wonders which may be explained as wrought through the agency of natural laws (see Trench, Miracles, 19). Mozley also (Miracles, 117-120) calls these wonders miracles, because of the predictive word of God which accompanied them. He says that the difference in effect between miracles and special providences is that the latter givesomewarrant, while the former givefullwarrant, for believing that they are wrought by God. He calls special providences“invisible miracles.”Bp. of Southampton, Place of Miracles, 12, 13—“The art of Bezaleel in constructing the tabernacle, and the plans of generals like Moses and Joshua, Gideon, Barak, and David, are in the Old Testament ascribed to the direct inspiration of God. A less religious writer would have ascribed them to the instinct of military skill. No miracle is necessarily involved, when, in devising the system of ceremonial law it is said:‘Jehovah spake unto Moses’(Num. 5:1). God is everywhere present in the history of Israel, but miracles are strikingly rare.”We prefer to say that the line between the natural and the supernatural, between special providence and miracle, is an arbitrary one, and that the same event may often be regarded either as special providence or as miracle, according as we look at it from the point of view of its relation to other events or from the point of view of its relation to God.
E. G. Robinson:“If Vesuvius should send up ashes and lava, and a strong wind should scatter them, it could be said to rain fire and brimstone, as at Sodom and Gomorrha.”There is abundant evident of volcanic action at the Dead Sea. See article on the Physical Preparation for Israel in Palestine, by G. Frederick Wright, in Bib. Sac., April, 1901:364. The three great miracles—the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha, the parting of the waters of the Jordan, the falling down of the walls of Jericho—are described as effect of volcanic eruption, elevation of the bed of the river by a landslide, and earthquake-shock overthrowing the walls. Salt slime thrown up may have enveloped Lot's wife and turned her into“a mound of salt”(Gen. 19:26). In like manner, some of Jesus' works of healing, as for instance those wrought upon paralytics and epileptics, may be susceptible of natural explanation, while yet they show[pg 433]that Christ is absolute Lord of nature. For the naturalistic view, see Tyndall on Miracles and Special Providences, in Fragments of Science, 45, 418.Per contra, see Farrar, on Divine Providence and General Laws, in Science and Theology, 54-80; Row, Bampton Lect. on Christian Evidences, 109-115; Godet, Defence of Christian Faith, Chap. 2; Bowne, The Immanence of God, 56-65.
2. To prayer and its answer.What has been said with regard to God's connection with nature suggests the question, how God can answer prayer consistently with the fixity of natural law.Tyndall (see reference above), while repelling the charge of denying that God can answer prayer at all, yet does deny that he can answer it without a miracle. He says expressly“that without a 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 deflect toward us a single beam of the sun.”In reply we would remark:A. Negatively, that the true solution is not to be reached:(a) By making the sole effect of prayer to be its reflex influence upon the petitioner.—Prayer presupposes a God who hears and answers. It will not be offered, unless it is believed to accomplish objective as well as subjective results.According to the first view mentioned above, prayer is a mere spiritual gymnastics—an effort to lift ourselves from the ground by tugging at our own boot-straps. David Hume said well, after hearing a sermon by Dr. Leechman:“We can make use of no expression or even thought in prayers and entreaties which does not imply that these prayers have an influence.”See Tyndall on Prayer and Natural Law, in Fragments of Science, 35. Will men pray to a God who is both deaf and dumb? Will the sailor on the bowsprit whistle to the wind for the sake of improving his voice? Horace Bushnell called this perversion of prayer a“mere dumb-bell exercise.”Baron Munchausen pulled himself out of the bog in China by tugging away at his own pigtail.Hyde, God's Education of Man, 154, 155—“Prayer is not the reflex action of my will upon itself, but rather the communion of two wills, in which the finite comes into connection with the Infinite, and, like the trolley, appropriates its purpose and power.”Harnack, Wesen des Christenthums, 42, apparently follows Schleiermacher in unduly limiting prayer to general petitions which receive only a subjective answer. He tells us that“Jesus taught his disciples the Lord's Prayer in response to a request for directions how to pray. Yet we look in vain therein for requests for special gifts of grace, or for particular good things, even though they are spiritual. The name, the will, the kingdom of God—these are the things which are the objects of petition.”Harnack forgets that the same Christ said also:“All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them”(Mark 11:24).(b) Nor by holding that God answers prayer simply by spiritual means, such as the action of the Holy Spirit upon the spirit of man.—The realm of spirit is no less subject to law than the realm of matter. Scripture and experience, moreover, alike testify that in answer to prayer events take place in the outward world which would not have taken place if prayer had not gone before.According to this second theory, God feeds the starving Elijah, not by a distinct message from heaven but by giving a compassionate disposition to the widow of Zarephath so that she is moved to help the prophet.1 K. 17:9—“behold, I have commanded a widow there to sustain thee.”But God could also feed Elijah by the ravens and the angel (1 K. 17:4; 19:15), and the pouring rain that followed Elijah's prayer (1 K. 18:42-45) cannot be explained as a subjective spiritual phenomenon. Diman, Theistic Argument, 268—“Our charts map out not only the solid shore but the windings of the ocean currents, and we look into the morning papers to ascertain the gathering of storms on the[pg 434]slopes of the Rocky Mountains.”But law rules in the realm of spirit as well as in the realm of nature. See Baden Powell, in Essays and Reviews, 106-162; Knight, Studies in Philosophy and Literature, 340-404; George I. Chace, discourse before the Porter Rhet. Soc. of Andover, August, 1854. Governor Rice in Washington is moved to send money to a starving family in New York, and to secure employment for them. Though he has had no information with regard to their need, they have knelt in prayer for help just before the coming of the aid.(c) Nor by maintaining that God suspends or breaks in upon the order of nature, in answering every prayer that is offered.—This view does not take account of natural laws as having objective existence, and as revealing the order of God's being. Omnipotence might thus suspend natural law, but wisdom, so far as we can see, would not.This third theory might well be held by those who see in nature no force but the all-working will of God. But the properties and powers of matter are revelations of the divine will, and the human will has only a relative independence in the universe. To desire that God would answer all our prayers is to desire omnipotence without omniscience. All true prayer is therefore an expression of the one petition:“Thy will be done”(Mat. 6:10). E. G. Robinson:“It takes much common sense to pray, and many prayers are destitute of this quality. Man needs to pray audibly even in his private prayers, to get the full benefit of them. One of the chief benefits of the English liturgy is that the individual minister is lost sight of. Protestantism makes you work; in Romanism the church will do it all for you.”(d) Nor by considering prayer as a physical force, linked in each case to its answer, as physical cause is linked to physical effect.—Prayer is not a force acting directly upon nature; else there would be no discretion as to its answer. It can accomplish results in nature, only as it influences God.We educate our children in two ways: first, by training them to do for themselves what they can do; and, secondly, by encouraging them to seek our help in matters beyond their power. So God educates us, first, by impersonal law, and, secondly, by personal dependence. He teaches us both to work and to ask. Notice the“perfect unwisdom of modern scientists who place themselves under the training of impersonal law, to the exclusion of that higher and better training which is under personality”(Hopkins, Sermon on Prayer-gauge, 16).It seems more in accordance with both Scripture and reason to say that:B. God may answer prayer, even when that answer involves changes in the sequences of nature,—(a) By new combinations of natural forces, in regions withdrawn from our observation, so that effects are produced which these same forces left to themselves would never have accomplished. As man combines the laws of chemical attraction and of combustion, to fire the gunpowder and split the rock asunder, so God may combine the laws of nature to bring about answers to prayer. In all this there may be no suspension or violation of law, but a use of law unknown to us.Hopkins, Sermon on the Prayer-gauge:“Nature is uniform in her processes but not in her results. Do you say that water cannot run uphill? Yes, it can and does. Whenever man constructs a milldam the water runs up the environing hills till it reaches the top of the milldam. Man can make a spark of electricity do his bidding; why cannot God use a bolt of electricity? Laws are not our masters, but our servants. They do our bidding all the better because they are uniform. And our servants are not God's masters.”Kendall Brooks:“The master of a musical instrument can vary without limit the combination of sounds and the melodies which these combinations can produce. The laws of the instrument are not changed, but in their unchanging steadfastness produce an infinite variety of tunes. It is necessary that they should be[pg 435]unchanging in order to secure a desired result. So nature, which exercises the infinite skill of the divine Master, is governed by unvarying laws; but he, by these laws, produces an infinite variety of results.”Hodge, Popular Lectures, 45, 99—“The system of natural laws is far more flexible in God's hands than it is in ours. We act on second causes externally; God acts on them internally. We act upon them at only a few isolated points; God acts upon every point of the system at the same time. The whole of nature may be as plastic to his will as the air in the organs of the great singer who articulates it into a fit expression of every thought and passion of his soaring soul.”Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 155—“If all the chemical elements of our solar system preëxisted in the fiery cosmic mist, there must have been a time when quite suddenly the attractions between these elements overcame the degree of caloric force which held them apart, and the rush of elements into chemical union must have been consummated with inconceivable rapidity. Uniformitarianism is not universal.”Shaler, Interpretation of Nature, chap. 2—“By a little increase of centrifugal force the elliptical orbit is changed into a parabola, and the planet becomes a comet. By a little reduction in temperature water becomes solid and loses many of its powers. So unexpected results are brought about and surprises as revolutionary as if a Supreme Power immediately intervened.”William James, Address before Soc. for Psych. Research:“Thought-transference may involve a critical point, as the physicists call it, which is passed only when certain psychic conditions are realized, and otherwise not reached at all—just as a big conflagration will break out at a certain temperature, below which no conflagration whatever, whether big or little, can occur.”Tennyson, Life, 1:324—“Prayer is like opening a sluice between the great ocean and our little channels, when the great sea gathers itself together and flows in at full tide.”Since prayer is nothing more nor less than appeal to a personal and present God, whose granting or withholding of the requested blessing is believed to be determined by the prayer itself, we must conclude that prayer moves God, or, in other words, induces the putting forth on his part of an imperative volition.The view that in answering prayer God combines natural forces is elaborated by Chalmers, Works, 2:314, and 7:234. See Diman, Theistic Argument, 111—“When laws are conceived of, not as single, but as combined, instead of being immutable in their operation, they are the agencies of ceaseless change. Phenomena are governed, not by invariable forces, but byendlessly varying combinations of invariable forces.”Diman seems to have followed Argyll, Reign of Law, 100.Janet, Final Causes, 219—“I kindle a fire in my grate. I only intervene to produce and combine together the different agents whose natural action behooves to produce the effect I have need of; but the first step once taken, all the phenomena constituting combustion engender each other, conformably to their laws, without a new intervention of the agent; so that an observer who should study the series of these phenomena, without perceiving the first hand that had prepared all, could not seize that hand in any especial act, and yet there is a preconceived plan and combination.”Hopkins, Sermon on Prayer-gauge: Man, by sprinkling plaster on his field, may cause the corn to grow more luxuriantly; by kindling great fires and by firing cannon, he may cause rain; and God can surely, in answer to prayer, do as much as man can. Lewes says that the fundamental character of all theological philosophy is conceiving of phenomena as subject to supernatural volition, and consequently as eminently and irregularly variable. This notion, he says, is refuted, first, by exact and rational prevision of phenomena, and, secondly, by the possibility of our modifying these phenomena so as to promote our own advantage. But we ask in reply: If we can modify them, cannot God? But, lest this should seem to imply mutability in God or inconsistency in nature, we remark, in addition, that:(b) God may have so preärranged the laws of the material universe and the events of history that, while the answer to prayer is an expression of his will, it is granted through the working of natural agencies, and in perfect accordance with the general principle that results, both temporal and spiritual, are to be attained by intelligent creatures through the use of the appropriate and appointed means.[pg 436]J. P. Cooke, Credentials of Science, 194—“The Jacquard loom of itself would weave a perfectly uniform plain fabric; the perforated cards determine a selection of the threads, and through a combination of these variable conditions, so complex that the observer cannot follow their intricate workings, the predesigned pattern appears.”E. G. Robinson:“The most formidable objection to this theory is the apparent countenance it lends to the doctrine of necessitarianism. But if it presupposes that free actions have been taken into account, it cannot easily be shown to be false.”The bishop who was asked by his curate to sanction prayers for rain was unduly sceptical when he replied:“First consult the barometer.”Phillips Brooks:“Prayer is not the conquering of God's reluctance, but the taking hold of God's willingness.”The Pilgrims at Plymouth, somewhere about 1628, prayed for rain. They met at 9 A. M., and continued in prayer for eight or nine hours. While they were assembled clouds gathered, and the next morning began rains which, with some intervals, lasted fourteen days. John Easter was many years ago an evangelist in Virginia. A large out-door meeting was being held. Many thousands had assembled, when heavy storm clouds began to gather. There was no shelter to which the multitudes could retreat. The rain had already reached the adjoining fields when John Easter cried:“Brethren, be still, while I call upon God to stay the storm till the gospel is preached to this multitude!”Then he knelt and prayed that the audience might be spared the rain, and that after they had gone to their homes there might be refreshing showers. Behold, the clouds parted as they came near, and passed to either side of the crowd and then closed again, leaving the place dry where the audience had assembled, and the next day the postponed showers came down upon the ground that had been the day before omitted.Since God is immanent in nature, an answer to prayer, coming about through the intervention of natural law, may be as real a revelation of God's personal care as if the laws of nature were suspended, and God interposed by an exercise of his creative power. Prayer and its answer, though having God's immediate volition as their connecting bond, may yet be provided for in the original plan of the universe.The universe does not exist for itself, but for moral ends and moral beings, to reveal God and to furnish facilities of intercourse between God and intelligent creatures. Bishop Berkeley:“The universe is God's ceaseless conversation with his creatures.”The universe certainly subserves moral ends—the discouragement of vice and the reward of virtue; why not spiritual ends also? When we remember that there is no true prayer which God does not inspire; that every true prayer is part of the plan of the universe linked in with all the rest and provided for at the beginning; that God is in nature and in mind, supervising all their movements and making all fulfill his will and reveal his personal care; that God can adjust the forces of nature to each other far more skilfully than can man when man produces effects which nature of herself could never accomplish; that God is not confined to nature or her forces, but can work by his creative and omnipotent will where other means are not sufficient,—we need have no fear, either that natural law will bar God's answers to prayer, or that these answers will cause a shock or jar in the system of the universe.Matheson, Messages of the Old Religions, 321, 322—“Hebrew poetry never deals with outward nature for its own sake. The eye never rests on beauty for itself alone. The heavens are the work of God's hands, the earth is God's footstool, the winds are God's ministers, the stars are God's host, the thunder is God's voice. What we call Nature the Jew called God.”Miss Heloise E. Hersey:“Plato in the Phædrus sets forth in a splendid myth the means by which the gods refresh themselves. Once a year, in a mighty host, they drive their chariots up the steep to the topmost vault of heaven. Thence they may behold all the wonders and the secrets of the universe; and, quickened by the sight of the great plain of truth, they return home replenished and made glad by the celestial vision.”Abp. Trench, Poems, 134—“Lord, what a change within us one short hour Spent in thy presence will prevail to make—What heavy burdens from our bosoms take, What parched grounds refresh as with a shower! We kneel, and all around us seems to lower; We rise, and all, the distant and the near, Stands forth in sunny outline, brave and clear; We kneel how weak, we rise how full of power! Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong, Or others—that we are not always strong; That we are ever overborne with care; That we should ever weak[pg 437]or heartless be, Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer, And joy and strength and courage are with thee?”See Calderwood, Science and Religion, 299-309; McCosh, Divine Government, 215; Liddon, Elements of Religion, 178-203; Hamilton, Autology, 690-694. See also Jellett, Donnellan Lectures on the Efficacy of Prayer; Butterworth, Story of Notable Prayers; Patton, Prayer and its Answers; Monrad, World of Prayer; Prime, Power of Prayer; Phelps, The Still Hour; Haven, and Bickersteth, on Prayer; Prayer for Colleges; Cox, in Expositor, 1877: chap. 3; Faunce, Prayer as a Theory and a Fact; Trumbull, Prayer, Its Nature and Scope.C. If asked whether this relation between prayer and its providential answer can be scientifically tested, we reply that it may be tested just as a father's love may be tested by a dutiful son.(a) There is a general proof of it in the past experience of the Christian and in the past history of the church.Ps. 116:1-8—“I love Jehovah because he heareth my voice and my supplications.”Luther prays for the dying Melanchthon, and he recovers. George Müller trusts to prayer, and builds his great orphan-houses. For a multitude of instances, see Prime, Answers to Prayer. Charles H. Spurgeon:“If there is any fact that is proved, it is that God hears prayer. If there is any scientific statement that is capable of mathematical proof, this is.”Mr. Spurgeon's language is rhetorical: he means simply that God's answers to prayer remove all reasonable doubt. Adoniram Judson:“I never was deeply interested in any object, I never prayed sincerely and earnestly for anything, but it came; at some time—no matter at how distant a day—somehow, in some shape, probably the last I should have devised—it came. And yet I have always had so little faith! May God forgive me, and while he condescends to use me as his instrument, wipe the sin of unbelief from my heart!”(b) In condescension to human blindness, God may sometimes submit to a formal test of his faithfulness and power,—as in the case of Elijah and the priests of Baal.Is. 7:10-13—Ahaz is rebuked for not asking a sign,—in him it indicated unbelief.1 K. 18:36-38—Elijah said,“let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel.... Then the fire of Jehovah fell, and consumed the burnt offering.”Romaine speaks of“a year famous for believing.”Mat 21:21, 22—“even if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou taken up and cast into the sea, it shall be done. And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.”“Impossible?”said Napoleon;“then it shall be done!”Arthur Hallam, quoted in Tennyson's Life, 1:44—“With respect to prayer, you ask how I am to distinguish the operations of God in me from the motions of my own heart. Why should you distinguish them, or how do you know that there is any distinction? Is God less God because he acts by general laws when he deals with the common elements of nature?”“Watch in prayer to see what cometh. Foolish boys that knock at a door in wantonness, will not stay till somebody open to them; but a man that hath business will knock, and knock again, till he gets his answer.”Martineau, Seat of Authority, 102, 103—“God is not beyond nature simply,—he is within it. In nature and in mind we must find the action of his power. There is no need of his being a third factor over and above the life of nature and the life of man.”Hartley Coleridge:“Be not afraid to pray,—to pray is right. Pray if thou canst with hope, but ever pray, Though hope be weak, or sick with long delay; Pray in the darkness, if there be no light. Far is the time, remote from human sight, When war and discord on the earth shall cease; Yet every prayer for universal peace Avails the blessed time to expedite. Whate'er is good to wish, ask that of heaven, Though it be what thou canst not hope to see; Pray to be perfect, though the material leaven Forbid the spirit so on earth to be; But if for any wish thou dar'st not pray, Then pray to God to cast that wish away.”(c) When proof sufficient to convince the candid inquirer has been already given, it may not consist with the divine majesty to abide a test imposed by mere curiosity or scepticism,—as in the case of the Jews who sought a sign from heaven.[pg 438]Mat. 12:39—“An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet.”Tyndall's prayer-gauge would ensure a conflict of prayers. Since our present life is a moral probation, delay in the answer to our prayers, and even the denial of specific things for which we pray, may be only signs of God's faithfulness and love. George Müller:“I myself have been bringing certain requests before God now for seventeen years and six months, and never a day has passed without my praying concerning them all this time; yet the full answer has not come up to the present. But I look for it; I confidently expect it.”Christ's prayer,“let this cup pass away from me”(Mat. 26:39), and Paul's prayer that the“thorn in the flesh”might depart from him (2 Cor. 12:7, 8), were not answered in the precise way requested. No more are our prayers always answered in the way we expect. Christ's prayer was not answered by the literal removing of the cup, because the drinking of the cup was really his glory; and Paul's prayer was not answered by the literal removal of the thorn, because the thorn was needful for his own perfecting. In the case of both Jesus and Paul, there were larger interests to be consulted than their own freedom from suffering.(d) Since God's will is the link between prayer and its answer, there can be no such thing as a physical demonstration of its efficacy in any proposed case. Physical tests have no application to things into which free will enters as a constitutive element. But there are moral tests, and moral tests are as scientific as physical tests can be.Diman, Theistic Argument, 576, alludes to Goldwin Smith's denial that any scientific method can be applied to history because it would make man a necessary link in a chain of cause and effect and so would deny his free will. But Diman says this is no more impossible than the development of the individual according to a fixed law of growth, while yet free will is sedulously respected. Froude says history is not a science, because no science could foretell Mohammedanism or Buddhism; and Goldwin Smith says that“prediction is the crown of all science.”But, as Diman remarks:“geometry, geology, physiology, are sciences, yet they do not predict.”Buckle brought history into contempt by asserting that it could be analyzed and referred solely to intellectual laws and forces. To all this we reply that there may be scientific tests which are not physical, or even intellectual, but only moral. Such a test God urges his people to use, inMal. 3:10—“Bring ye the whole tithe into the storehouse ... and prove me now herewith, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.”All such prayer is a reflection of Christ's words—some fragment of his teaching transformed into a supplication (John 15:7; see Westcott, Bib. Com.,in loco); all such prayer is moreover the work of the Spirit of God (Rom. 8:26, 27). It is therefore sure of an answer.But the test of prayer proposed by Tyndall is not applicable to the thing to be tested by it. Hopkins, Prayer and the Prayer-gauge, 22sq.—“We cannot measure wheat by the yard, or the weight of a discourse with a pair of scales.... God's wisdom might see that it was not best for the petitioners, nor for the objects of their petition, to grant their request. Christians therefore could not, without special divine authorization, rest their faith upon the results of such a test.... Why may we not ask for great changes in nature? For the same reason that a well-informed child does not ask for the moon as a plaything.... There are two limitations upon prayer. First, except by special direction of God, we cannot ask for a miracle, for the same reason that a child could not ask his father to burn the house down. Nature is the house we live in. Secondly, we cannot ask for anything under the laws of nature which would contravene the object of those laws. Whatever we can do for ourselves under these laws, God expects us to do. If the child is cold, let him go near the fire,—not beg his father to carry him.”Herbert Spencer's Sociology is only social physics. He denies freedom, and declares anyone who will affix D. V. to the announcement of the Mildmay Conference to be incapable of understanding sociology. Prevision excludes divine or human will. But Mr. Spencer intimates that the evils of natural selection may be modified by artificial selection. What is this but the interference of will? And if man can interfere, cannot God do the same? Yet the wise child will not expect the father to give everything he asks for. Nor will the father who loves his child give him the razor to play with, or stuff him with unwholesome sweets, simply because the child asks these things. If the engineer of the ocean steamer should give me permission to press the lever that sets all the machinery in motion, I should decline to use my power and should prefer to leave such matters to him, unless he first suggested it and showed me how. So the Holy Spirit“helpeth our infirmity; for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself[pg 439]maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered”(Rom. 8:26). And we ought not to talk of“submitting”to perfect Wisdom, or of“being resigned”to perfect Love. Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, 2:1—“What they [the gods] do delay, they do not deny.... We, ignorant of ourselves, Beg often our own harms, which the wise powers Deny us for our good; so find we profit By losing of our prayers.”See Thornton, Old-Fashioned Ethics, 286-297.Per contra, see Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty, 277-294.
What has been said with regard to God's connection with nature suggests the question, how God can answer prayer consistently with the fixity of natural law.
Tyndall (see reference above), while repelling the charge of denying that God can answer prayer at all, yet does deny that he can answer it without a miracle. He says expressly“that without a 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 deflect toward us a single beam of the sun.”In reply we would remark:
Tyndall (see reference above), while repelling the charge of denying that God can answer prayer at all, yet does deny that he can answer it without a miracle. He says expressly“that without a 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 deflect toward us a single beam of the sun.”In reply we would remark:
A. Negatively, that the true solution is not to be reached:
(a) By making the sole effect of prayer to be its reflex influence upon the petitioner.—Prayer presupposes a God who hears and answers. It will not be offered, unless it is believed to accomplish objective as well as subjective results.
According to the first view mentioned above, prayer is a mere spiritual gymnastics—an effort to lift ourselves from the ground by tugging at our own boot-straps. David Hume said well, after hearing a sermon by Dr. Leechman:“We can make use of no expression or even thought in prayers and entreaties which does not imply that these prayers have an influence.”See Tyndall on Prayer and Natural Law, in Fragments of Science, 35. Will men pray to a God who is both deaf and dumb? Will the sailor on the bowsprit whistle to the wind for the sake of improving his voice? Horace Bushnell called this perversion of prayer a“mere dumb-bell exercise.”Baron Munchausen pulled himself out of the bog in China by tugging away at his own pigtail.Hyde, God's Education of Man, 154, 155—“Prayer is not the reflex action of my will upon itself, but rather the communion of two wills, in which the finite comes into connection with the Infinite, and, like the trolley, appropriates its purpose and power.”Harnack, Wesen des Christenthums, 42, apparently follows Schleiermacher in unduly limiting prayer to general petitions which receive only a subjective answer. He tells us that“Jesus taught his disciples the Lord's Prayer in response to a request for directions how to pray. Yet we look in vain therein for requests for special gifts of grace, or for particular good things, even though they are spiritual. The name, the will, the kingdom of God—these are the things which are the objects of petition.”Harnack forgets that the same Christ said also:“All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them”(Mark 11:24).
According to the first view mentioned above, prayer is a mere spiritual gymnastics—an effort to lift ourselves from the ground by tugging at our own boot-straps. David Hume said well, after hearing a sermon by Dr. Leechman:“We can make use of no expression or even thought in prayers and entreaties which does not imply that these prayers have an influence.”See Tyndall on Prayer and Natural Law, in Fragments of Science, 35. Will men pray to a God who is both deaf and dumb? Will the sailor on the bowsprit whistle to the wind for the sake of improving his voice? Horace Bushnell called this perversion of prayer a“mere dumb-bell exercise.”Baron Munchausen pulled himself out of the bog in China by tugging away at his own pigtail.
Hyde, God's Education of Man, 154, 155—“Prayer is not the reflex action of my will upon itself, but rather the communion of two wills, in which the finite comes into connection with the Infinite, and, like the trolley, appropriates its purpose and power.”Harnack, Wesen des Christenthums, 42, apparently follows Schleiermacher in unduly limiting prayer to general petitions which receive only a subjective answer. He tells us that“Jesus taught his disciples the Lord's Prayer in response to a request for directions how to pray. Yet we look in vain therein for requests for special gifts of grace, or for particular good things, even though they are spiritual. The name, the will, the kingdom of God—these are the things which are the objects of petition.”Harnack forgets that the same Christ said also:“All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them”(Mark 11:24).
(b) Nor by holding that God answers prayer simply by spiritual means, such as the action of the Holy Spirit upon the spirit of man.—The realm of spirit is no less subject to law than the realm of matter. Scripture and experience, moreover, alike testify that in answer to prayer events take place in the outward world which would not have taken place if prayer had not gone before.
According to this second theory, God feeds the starving Elijah, not by a distinct message from heaven but by giving a compassionate disposition to the widow of Zarephath so that she is moved to help the prophet.1 K. 17:9—“behold, I have commanded a widow there to sustain thee.”But God could also feed Elijah by the ravens and the angel (1 K. 17:4; 19:15), and the pouring rain that followed Elijah's prayer (1 K. 18:42-45) cannot be explained as a subjective spiritual phenomenon. Diman, Theistic Argument, 268—“Our charts map out not only the solid shore but the windings of the ocean currents, and we look into the morning papers to ascertain the gathering of storms on the[pg 434]slopes of the Rocky Mountains.”But law rules in the realm of spirit as well as in the realm of nature. See Baden Powell, in Essays and Reviews, 106-162; Knight, Studies in Philosophy and Literature, 340-404; George I. Chace, discourse before the Porter Rhet. Soc. of Andover, August, 1854. Governor Rice in Washington is moved to send money to a starving family in New York, and to secure employment for them. Though he has had no information with regard to their need, they have knelt in prayer for help just before the coming of the aid.
According to this second theory, God feeds the starving Elijah, not by a distinct message from heaven but by giving a compassionate disposition to the widow of Zarephath so that she is moved to help the prophet.1 K. 17:9—“behold, I have commanded a widow there to sustain thee.”But God could also feed Elijah by the ravens and the angel (1 K. 17:4; 19:15), and the pouring rain that followed Elijah's prayer (1 K. 18:42-45) cannot be explained as a subjective spiritual phenomenon. Diman, Theistic Argument, 268—“Our charts map out not only the solid shore but the windings of the ocean currents, and we look into the morning papers to ascertain the gathering of storms on the[pg 434]slopes of the Rocky Mountains.”But law rules in the realm of spirit as well as in the realm of nature. See Baden Powell, in Essays and Reviews, 106-162; Knight, Studies in Philosophy and Literature, 340-404; George I. Chace, discourse before the Porter Rhet. Soc. of Andover, August, 1854. Governor Rice in Washington is moved to send money to a starving family in New York, and to secure employment for them. Though he has had no information with regard to their need, they have knelt in prayer for help just before the coming of the aid.
(c) Nor by maintaining that God suspends or breaks in upon the order of nature, in answering every prayer that is offered.—This view does not take account of natural laws as having objective existence, and as revealing the order of God's being. Omnipotence might thus suspend natural law, but wisdom, so far as we can see, would not.
This third theory might well be held by those who see in nature no force but the all-working will of God. But the properties and powers of matter are revelations of the divine will, and the human will has only a relative independence in the universe. To desire that God would answer all our prayers is to desire omnipotence without omniscience. All true prayer is therefore an expression of the one petition:“Thy will be done”(Mat. 6:10). E. G. Robinson:“It takes much common sense to pray, and many prayers are destitute of this quality. Man needs to pray audibly even in his private prayers, to get the full benefit of them. One of the chief benefits of the English liturgy is that the individual minister is lost sight of. Protestantism makes you work; in Romanism the church will do it all for you.”
This third theory might well be held by those who see in nature no force but the all-working will of God. But the properties and powers of matter are revelations of the divine will, and the human will has only a relative independence in the universe. To desire that God would answer all our prayers is to desire omnipotence without omniscience. All true prayer is therefore an expression of the one petition:“Thy will be done”(Mat. 6:10). E. G. Robinson:“It takes much common sense to pray, and many prayers are destitute of this quality. Man needs to pray audibly even in his private prayers, to get the full benefit of them. One of the chief benefits of the English liturgy is that the individual minister is lost sight of. Protestantism makes you work; in Romanism the church will do it all for you.”
(d) Nor by considering prayer as a physical force, linked in each case to its answer, as physical cause is linked to physical effect.—Prayer is not a force acting directly upon nature; else there would be no discretion as to its answer. It can accomplish results in nature, only as it influences God.
We educate our children in two ways: first, by training them to do for themselves what they can do; and, secondly, by encouraging them to seek our help in matters beyond their power. So God educates us, first, by impersonal law, and, secondly, by personal dependence. He teaches us both to work and to ask. Notice the“perfect unwisdom of modern scientists who place themselves under the training of impersonal law, to the exclusion of that higher and better training which is under personality”(Hopkins, Sermon on Prayer-gauge, 16).
We educate our children in two ways: first, by training them to do for themselves what they can do; and, secondly, by encouraging them to seek our help in matters beyond their power. So God educates us, first, by impersonal law, and, secondly, by personal dependence. He teaches us both to work and to ask. Notice the“perfect unwisdom of modern scientists who place themselves under the training of impersonal law, to the exclusion of that higher and better training which is under personality”(Hopkins, Sermon on Prayer-gauge, 16).
It seems more in accordance with both Scripture and reason to say that:
B. God may answer prayer, even when that answer involves changes in the sequences of nature,—
(a) By new combinations of natural forces, in regions withdrawn from our observation, so that effects are produced which these same forces left to themselves would never have accomplished. As man combines the laws of chemical attraction and of combustion, to fire the gunpowder and split the rock asunder, so God may combine the laws of nature to bring about answers to prayer. In all this there may be no suspension or violation of law, but a use of law unknown to us.
Hopkins, Sermon on the Prayer-gauge:“Nature is uniform in her processes but not in her results. Do you say that water cannot run uphill? Yes, it can and does. Whenever man constructs a milldam the water runs up the environing hills till it reaches the top of the milldam. Man can make a spark of electricity do his bidding; why cannot God use a bolt of electricity? Laws are not our masters, but our servants. They do our bidding all the better because they are uniform. And our servants are not God's masters.”Kendall Brooks:“The master of a musical instrument can vary without limit the combination of sounds and the melodies which these combinations can produce. The laws of the instrument are not changed, but in their unchanging steadfastness produce an infinite variety of tunes. It is necessary that they should be[pg 435]unchanging in order to secure a desired result. So nature, which exercises the infinite skill of the divine Master, is governed by unvarying laws; but he, by these laws, produces an infinite variety of results.”Hodge, Popular Lectures, 45, 99—“The system of natural laws is far more flexible in God's hands than it is in ours. We act on second causes externally; God acts on them internally. We act upon them at only a few isolated points; God acts upon every point of the system at the same time. The whole of nature may be as plastic to his will as the air in the organs of the great singer who articulates it into a fit expression of every thought and passion of his soaring soul.”Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 155—“If all the chemical elements of our solar system preëxisted in the fiery cosmic mist, there must have been a time when quite suddenly the attractions between these elements overcame the degree of caloric force which held them apart, and the rush of elements into chemical union must have been consummated with inconceivable rapidity. Uniformitarianism is not universal.”Shaler, Interpretation of Nature, chap. 2—“By a little increase of centrifugal force the elliptical orbit is changed into a parabola, and the planet becomes a comet. By a little reduction in temperature water becomes solid and loses many of its powers. So unexpected results are brought about and surprises as revolutionary as if a Supreme Power immediately intervened.”William James, Address before Soc. for Psych. Research:“Thought-transference may involve a critical point, as the physicists call it, which is passed only when certain psychic conditions are realized, and otherwise not reached at all—just as a big conflagration will break out at a certain temperature, below which no conflagration whatever, whether big or little, can occur.”Tennyson, Life, 1:324—“Prayer is like opening a sluice between the great ocean and our little channels, when the great sea gathers itself together and flows in at full tide.”
Hopkins, Sermon on the Prayer-gauge:“Nature is uniform in her processes but not in her results. Do you say that water cannot run uphill? Yes, it can and does. Whenever man constructs a milldam the water runs up the environing hills till it reaches the top of the milldam. Man can make a spark of electricity do his bidding; why cannot God use a bolt of electricity? Laws are not our masters, but our servants. They do our bidding all the better because they are uniform. And our servants are not God's masters.”Kendall Brooks:“The master of a musical instrument can vary without limit the combination of sounds and the melodies which these combinations can produce. The laws of the instrument are not changed, but in their unchanging steadfastness produce an infinite variety of tunes. It is necessary that they should be[pg 435]unchanging in order to secure a desired result. So nature, which exercises the infinite skill of the divine Master, is governed by unvarying laws; but he, by these laws, produces an infinite variety of results.”
Hodge, Popular Lectures, 45, 99—“The system of natural laws is far more flexible in God's hands than it is in ours. We act on second causes externally; God acts on them internally. We act upon them at only a few isolated points; God acts upon every point of the system at the same time. The whole of nature may be as plastic to his will as the air in the organs of the great singer who articulates it into a fit expression of every thought and passion of his soaring soul.”Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 155—“If all the chemical elements of our solar system preëxisted in the fiery cosmic mist, there must have been a time when quite suddenly the attractions between these elements overcame the degree of caloric force which held them apart, and the rush of elements into chemical union must have been consummated with inconceivable rapidity. Uniformitarianism is not universal.”
Shaler, Interpretation of Nature, chap. 2—“By a little increase of centrifugal force the elliptical orbit is changed into a parabola, and the planet becomes a comet. By a little reduction in temperature water becomes solid and loses many of its powers. So unexpected results are brought about and surprises as revolutionary as if a Supreme Power immediately intervened.”William James, Address before Soc. for Psych. Research:“Thought-transference may involve a critical point, as the physicists call it, which is passed only when certain psychic conditions are realized, and otherwise not reached at all—just as a big conflagration will break out at a certain temperature, below which no conflagration whatever, whether big or little, can occur.”Tennyson, Life, 1:324—“Prayer is like opening a sluice between the great ocean and our little channels, when the great sea gathers itself together and flows in at full tide.”
Since prayer is nothing more nor less than appeal to a personal and present God, whose granting or withholding of the requested blessing is believed to be determined by the prayer itself, we must conclude that prayer moves God, or, in other words, induces the putting forth on his part of an imperative volition.
The view that in answering prayer God combines natural forces is elaborated by Chalmers, Works, 2:314, and 7:234. See Diman, Theistic Argument, 111—“When laws are conceived of, not as single, but as combined, instead of being immutable in their operation, they are the agencies of ceaseless change. Phenomena are governed, not by invariable forces, but byendlessly varying combinations of invariable forces.”Diman seems to have followed Argyll, Reign of Law, 100.Janet, Final Causes, 219—“I kindle a fire in my grate. I only intervene to produce and combine together the different agents whose natural action behooves to produce the effect I have need of; but the first step once taken, all the phenomena constituting combustion engender each other, conformably to their laws, without a new intervention of the agent; so that an observer who should study the series of these phenomena, without perceiving the first hand that had prepared all, could not seize that hand in any especial act, and yet there is a preconceived plan and combination.”Hopkins, Sermon on Prayer-gauge: Man, by sprinkling plaster on his field, may cause the corn to grow more luxuriantly; by kindling great fires and by firing cannon, he may cause rain; and God can surely, in answer to prayer, do as much as man can. Lewes says that the fundamental character of all theological philosophy is conceiving of phenomena as subject to supernatural volition, and consequently as eminently and irregularly variable. This notion, he says, is refuted, first, by exact and rational prevision of phenomena, and, secondly, by the possibility of our modifying these phenomena so as to promote our own advantage. But we ask in reply: If we can modify them, cannot God? But, lest this should seem to imply mutability in God or inconsistency in nature, we remark, in addition, that:
The view that in answering prayer God combines natural forces is elaborated by Chalmers, Works, 2:314, and 7:234. See Diman, Theistic Argument, 111—“When laws are conceived of, not as single, but as combined, instead of being immutable in their operation, they are the agencies of ceaseless change. Phenomena are governed, not by invariable forces, but byendlessly varying combinations of invariable forces.”Diman seems to have followed Argyll, Reign of Law, 100.
Janet, Final Causes, 219—“I kindle a fire in my grate. I only intervene to produce and combine together the different agents whose natural action behooves to produce the effect I have need of; but the first step once taken, all the phenomena constituting combustion engender each other, conformably to their laws, without a new intervention of the agent; so that an observer who should study the series of these phenomena, without perceiving the first hand that had prepared all, could not seize that hand in any especial act, and yet there is a preconceived plan and combination.”
Hopkins, Sermon on Prayer-gauge: Man, by sprinkling plaster on his field, may cause the corn to grow more luxuriantly; by kindling great fires and by firing cannon, he may cause rain; and God can surely, in answer to prayer, do as much as man can. Lewes says that the fundamental character of all theological philosophy is conceiving of phenomena as subject to supernatural volition, and consequently as eminently and irregularly variable. This notion, he says, is refuted, first, by exact and rational prevision of phenomena, and, secondly, by the possibility of our modifying these phenomena so as to promote our own advantage. But we ask in reply: If we can modify them, cannot God? But, lest this should seem to imply mutability in God or inconsistency in nature, we remark, in addition, that:
(b) God may have so preärranged the laws of the material universe and the events of history that, while the answer to prayer is an expression of his will, it is granted through the working of natural agencies, and in perfect accordance with the general principle that results, both temporal and spiritual, are to be attained by intelligent creatures through the use of the appropriate and appointed means.
J. P. Cooke, Credentials of Science, 194—“The Jacquard loom of itself would weave a perfectly uniform plain fabric; the perforated cards determine a selection of the threads, and through a combination of these variable conditions, so complex that the observer cannot follow their intricate workings, the predesigned pattern appears.”E. G. Robinson:“The most formidable objection to this theory is the apparent countenance it lends to the doctrine of necessitarianism. But if it presupposes that free actions have been taken into account, it cannot easily be shown to be false.”The bishop who was asked by his curate to sanction prayers for rain was unduly sceptical when he replied:“First consult the barometer.”Phillips Brooks:“Prayer is not the conquering of God's reluctance, but the taking hold of God's willingness.”The Pilgrims at Plymouth, somewhere about 1628, prayed for rain. They met at 9 A. M., and continued in prayer for eight or nine hours. While they were assembled clouds gathered, and the next morning began rains which, with some intervals, lasted fourteen days. John Easter was many years ago an evangelist in Virginia. A large out-door meeting was being held. Many thousands had assembled, when heavy storm clouds began to gather. There was no shelter to which the multitudes could retreat. The rain had already reached the adjoining fields when John Easter cried:“Brethren, be still, while I call upon God to stay the storm till the gospel is preached to this multitude!”Then he knelt and prayed that the audience might be spared the rain, and that after they had gone to their homes there might be refreshing showers. Behold, the clouds parted as they came near, and passed to either side of the crowd and then closed again, leaving the place dry where the audience had assembled, and the next day the postponed showers came down upon the ground that had been the day before omitted.
J. P. Cooke, Credentials of Science, 194—“The Jacquard loom of itself would weave a perfectly uniform plain fabric; the perforated cards determine a selection of the threads, and through a combination of these variable conditions, so complex that the observer cannot follow their intricate workings, the predesigned pattern appears.”E. G. Robinson:“The most formidable objection to this theory is the apparent countenance it lends to the doctrine of necessitarianism. But if it presupposes that free actions have been taken into account, it cannot easily be shown to be false.”The bishop who was asked by his curate to sanction prayers for rain was unduly sceptical when he replied:“First consult the barometer.”Phillips Brooks:“Prayer is not the conquering of God's reluctance, but the taking hold of God's willingness.”
The Pilgrims at Plymouth, somewhere about 1628, prayed for rain. They met at 9 A. M., and continued in prayer for eight or nine hours. While they were assembled clouds gathered, and the next morning began rains which, with some intervals, lasted fourteen days. John Easter was many years ago an evangelist in Virginia. A large out-door meeting was being held. Many thousands had assembled, when heavy storm clouds began to gather. There was no shelter to which the multitudes could retreat. The rain had already reached the adjoining fields when John Easter cried:“Brethren, be still, while I call upon God to stay the storm till the gospel is preached to this multitude!”Then he knelt and prayed that the audience might be spared the rain, and that after they had gone to their homes there might be refreshing showers. Behold, the clouds parted as they came near, and passed to either side of the crowd and then closed again, leaving the place dry where the audience had assembled, and the next day the postponed showers came down upon the ground that had been the day before omitted.
Since God is immanent in nature, an answer to prayer, coming about through the intervention of natural law, may be as real a revelation of God's personal care as if the laws of nature were suspended, and God interposed by an exercise of his creative power. Prayer and its answer, though having God's immediate volition as their connecting bond, may yet be provided for in the original plan of the universe.
The universe does not exist for itself, but for moral ends and moral beings, to reveal God and to furnish facilities of intercourse between God and intelligent creatures. Bishop Berkeley:“The universe is God's ceaseless conversation with his creatures.”The universe certainly subserves moral ends—the discouragement of vice and the reward of virtue; why not spiritual ends also? When we remember that there is no true prayer which God does not inspire; that every true prayer is part of the plan of the universe linked in with all the rest and provided for at the beginning; that God is in nature and in mind, supervising all their movements and making all fulfill his will and reveal his personal care; that God can adjust the forces of nature to each other far more skilfully than can man when man produces effects which nature of herself could never accomplish; that God is not confined to nature or her forces, but can work by his creative and omnipotent will where other means are not sufficient,—we need have no fear, either that natural law will bar God's answers to prayer, or that these answers will cause a shock or jar in the system of the universe.Matheson, Messages of the Old Religions, 321, 322—“Hebrew poetry never deals with outward nature for its own sake. The eye never rests on beauty for itself alone. The heavens are the work of God's hands, the earth is God's footstool, the winds are God's ministers, the stars are God's host, the thunder is God's voice. What we call Nature the Jew called God.”Miss Heloise E. Hersey:“Plato in the Phædrus sets forth in a splendid myth the means by which the gods refresh themselves. Once a year, in a mighty host, they drive their chariots up the steep to the topmost vault of heaven. Thence they may behold all the wonders and the secrets of the universe; and, quickened by the sight of the great plain of truth, they return home replenished and made glad by the celestial vision.”Abp. Trench, Poems, 134—“Lord, what a change within us one short hour Spent in thy presence will prevail to make—What heavy burdens from our bosoms take, What parched grounds refresh as with a shower! We kneel, and all around us seems to lower; We rise, and all, the distant and the near, Stands forth in sunny outline, brave and clear; We kneel how weak, we rise how full of power! Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong, Or others—that we are not always strong; That we are ever overborne with care; That we should ever weak[pg 437]or heartless be, Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer, And joy and strength and courage are with thee?”See Calderwood, Science and Religion, 299-309; McCosh, Divine Government, 215; Liddon, Elements of Religion, 178-203; Hamilton, Autology, 690-694. See also Jellett, Donnellan Lectures on the Efficacy of Prayer; Butterworth, Story of Notable Prayers; Patton, Prayer and its Answers; Monrad, World of Prayer; Prime, Power of Prayer; Phelps, The Still Hour; Haven, and Bickersteth, on Prayer; Prayer for Colleges; Cox, in Expositor, 1877: chap. 3; Faunce, Prayer as a Theory and a Fact; Trumbull, Prayer, Its Nature and Scope.
The universe does not exist for itself, but for moral ends and moral beings, to reveal God and to furnish facilities of intercourse between God and intelligent creatures. Bishop Berkeley:“The universe is God's ceaseless conversation with his creatures.”The universe certainly subserves moral ends—the discouragement of vice and the reward of virtue; why not spiritual ends also? When we remember that there is no true prayer which God does not inspire; that every true prayer is part of the plan of the universe linked in with all the rest and provided for at the beginning; that God is in nature and in mind, supervising all their movements and making all fulfill his will and reveal his personal care; that God can adjust the forces of nature to each other far more skilfully than can man when man produces effects which nature of herself could never accomplish; that God is not confined to nature or her forces, but can work by his creative and omnipotent will where other means are not sufficient,—we need have no fear, either that natural law will bar God's answers to prayer, or that these answers will cause a shock or jar in the system of the universe.
Matheson, Messages of the Old Religions, 321, 322—“Hebrew poetry never deals with outward nature for its own sake. The eye never rests on beauty for itself alone. The heavens are the work of God's hands, the earth is God's footstool, the winds are God's ministers, the stars are God's host, the thunder is God's voice. What we call Nature the Jew called God.”Miss Heloise E. Hersey:“Plato in the Phædrus sets forth in a splendid myth the means by which the gods refresh themselves. Once a year, in a mighty host, they drive their chariots up the steep to the topmost vault of heaven. Thence they may behold all the wonders and the secrets of the universe; and, quickened by the sight of the great plain of truth, they return home replenished and made glad by the celestial vision.”Abp. Trench, Poems, 134—“Lord, what a change within us one short hour Spent in thy presence will prevail to make—What heavy burdens from our bosoms take, What parched grounds refresh as with a shower! We kneel, and all around us seems to lower; We rise, and all, the distant and the near, Stands forth in sunny outline, brave and clear; We kneel how weak, we rise how full of power! Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong, Or others—that we are not always strong; That we are ever overborne with care; That we should ever weak[pg 437]or heartless be, Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer, And joy and strength and courage are with thee?”See Calderwood, Science and Religion, 299-309; McCosh, Divine Government, 215; Liddon, Elements of Religion, 178-203; Hamilton, Autology, 690-694. See also Jellett, Donnellan Lectures on the Efficacy of Prayer; Butterworth, Story of Notable Prayers; Patton, Prayer and its Answers; Monrad, World of Prayer; Prime, Power of Prayer; Phelps, The Still Hour; Haven, and Bickersteth, on Prayer; Prayer for Colleges; Cox, in Expositor, 1877: chap. 3; Faunce, Prayer as a Theory and a Fact; Trumbull, Prayer, Its Nature and Scope.
C. If asked whether this relation between prayer and its providential answer can be scientifically tested, we reply that it may be tested just as a father's love may be tested by a dutiful son.
(a) There is a general proof of it in the past experience of the Christian and in the past history of the church.
Ps. 116:1-8—“I love Jehovah because he heareth my voice and my supplications.”Luther prays for the dying Melanchthon, and he recovers. George Müller trusts to prayer, and builds his great orphan-houses. For a multitude of instances, see Prime, Answers to Prayer. Charles H. Spurgeon:“If there is any fact that is proved, it is that God hears prayer. If there is any scientific statement that is capable of mathematical proof, this is.”Mr. Spurgeon's language is rhetorical: he means simply that God's answers to prayer remove all reasonable doubt. Adoniram Judson:“I never was deeply interested in any object, I never prayed sincerely and earnestly for anything, but it came; at some time—no matter at how distant a day—somehow, in some shape, probably the last I should have devised—it came. And yet I have always had so little faith! May God forgive me, and while he condescends to use me as his instrument, wipe the sin of unbelief from my heart!”
(b) In condescension to human blindness, God may sometimes submit to a formal test of his faithfulness and power,—as in the case of Elijah and the priests of Baal.
Is. 7:10-13—Ahaz is rebuked for not asking a sign,—in him it indicated unbelief.1 K. 18:36-38—Elijah said,“let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel.... Then the fire of Jehovah fell, and consumed the burnt offering.”Romaine speaks of“a year famous for believing.”Mat 21:21, 22—“even if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou taken up and cast into the sea, it shall be done. And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.”“Impossible?”said Napoleon;“then it shall be done!”Arthur Hallam, quoted in Tennyson's Life, 1:44—“With respect to prayer, you ask how I am to distinguish the operations of God in me from the motions of my own heart. Why should you distinguish them, or how do you know that there is any distinction? Is God less God because he acts by general laws when he deals with the common elements of nature?”“Watch in prayer to see what cometh. Foolish boys that knock at a door in wantonness, will not stay till somebody open to them; but a man that hath business will knock, and knock again, till he gets his answer.”Martineau, Seat of Authority, 102, 103—“God is not beyond nature simply,—he is within it. In nature and in mind we must find the action of his power. There is no need of his being a third factor over and above the life of nature and the life of man.”Hartley Coleridge:“Be not afraid to pray,—to pray is right. Pray if thou canst with hope, but ever pray, Though hope be weak, or sick with long delay; Pray in the darkness, if there be no light. Far is the time, remote from human sight, When war and discord on the earth shall cease; Yet every prayer for universal peace Avails the blessed time to expedite. Whate'er is good to wish, ask that of heaven, Though it be what thou canst not hope to see; Pray to be perfect, though the material leaven Forbid the spirit so on earth to be; But if for any wish thou dar'st not pray, Then pray to God to cast that wish away.”
Is. 7:10-13—Ahaz is rebuked for not asking a sign,—in him it indicated unbelief.1 K. 18:36-38—Elijah said,“let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel.... Then the fire of Jehovah fell, and consumed the burnt offering.”Romaine speaks of“a year famous for believing.”Mat 21:21, 22—“even if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou taken up and cast into the sea, it shall be done. And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.”“Impossible?”said Napoleon;“then it shall be done!”Arthur Hallam, quoted in Tennyson's Life, 1:44—“With respect to prayer, you ask how I am to distinguish the operations of God in me from the motions of my own heart. Why should you distinguish them, or how do you know that there is any distinction? Is God less God because he acts by general laws when he deals with the common elements of nature?”“Watch in prayer to see what cometh. Foolish boys that knock at a door in wantonness, will not stay till somebody open to them; but a man that hath business will knock, and knock again, till he gets his answer.”
Martineau, Seat of Authority, 102, 103—“God is not beyond nature simply,—he is within it. In nature and in mind we must find the action of his power. There is no need of his being a third factor over and above the life of nature and the life of man.”Hartley Coleridge:“Be not afraid to pray,—to pray is right. Pray if thou canst with hope, but ever pray, Though hope be weak, or sick with long delay; Pray in the darkness, if there be no light. Far is the time, remote from human sight, When war and discord on the earth shall cease; Yet every prayer for universal peace Avails the blessed time to expedite. Whate'er is good to wish, ask that of heaven, Though it be what thou canst not hope to see; Pray to be perfect, though the material leaven Forbid the spirit so on earth to be; But if for any wish thou dar'st not pray, Then pray to God to cast that wish away.”
(c) When proof sufficient to convince the candid inquirer has been already given, it may not consist with the divine majesty to abide a test imposed by mere curiosity or scepticism,—as in the case of the Jews who sought a sign from heaven.
Mat. 12:39—“An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet.”Tyndall's prayer-gauge would ensure a conflict of prayers. Since our present life is a moral probation, delay in the answer to our prayers, and even the denial of specific things for which we pray, may be only signs of God's faithfulness and love. George Müller:“I myself have been bringing certain requests before God now for seventeen years and six months, and never a day has passed without my praying concerning them all this time; yet the full answer has not come up to the present. But I look for it; I confidently expect it.”Christ's prayer,“let this cup pass away from me”(Mat. 26:39), and Paul's prayer that the“thorn in the flesh”might depart from him (2 Cor. 12:7, 8), were not answered in the precise way requested. No more are our prayers always answered in the way we expect. Christ's prayer was not answered by the literal removing of the cup, because the drinking of the cup was really his glory; and Paul's prayer was not answered by the literal removal of the thorn, because the thorn was needful for his own perfecting. In the case of both Jesus and Paul, there were larger interests to be consulted than their own freedom from suffering.
Mat. 12:39—“An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet.”Tyndall's prayer-gauge would ensure a conflict of prayers. Since our present life is a moral probation, delay in the answer to our prayers, and even the denial of specific things for which we pray, may be only signs of God's faithfulness and love. George Müller:“I myself have been bringing certain requests before God now for seventeen years and six months, and never a day has passed without my praying concerning them all this time; yet the full answer has not come up to the present. But I look for it; I confidently expect it.”Christ's prayer,“let this cup pass away from me”(Mat. 26:39), and Paul's prayer that the“thorn in the flesh”might depart from him (2 Cor. 12:7, 8), were not answered in the precise way requested. No more are our prayers always answered in the way we expect. Christ's prayer was not answered by the literal removing of the cup, because the drinking of the cup was really his glory; and Paul's prayer was not answered by the literal removal of the thorn, because the thorn was needful for his own perfecting. In the case of both Jesus and Paul, there were larger interests to be consulted than their own freedom from suffering.
(d) Since God's will is the link between prayer and its answer, there can be no such thing as a physical demonstration of its efficacy in any proposed case. Physical tests have no application to things into which free will enters as a constitutive element. But there are moral tests, and moral tests are as scientific as physical tests can be.
Diman, Theistic Argument, 576, alludes to Goldwin Smith's denial that any scientific method can be applied to history because it would make man a necessary link in a chain of cause and effect and so would deny his free will. But Diman says this is no more impossible than the development of the individual according to a fixed law of growth, while yet free will is sedulously respected. Froude says history is not a science, because no science could foretell Mohammedanism or Buddhism; and Goldwin Smith says that“prediction is the crown of all science.”But, as Diman remarks:“geometry, geology, physiology, are sciences, yet they do not predict.”Buckle brought history into contempt by asserting that it could be analyzed and referred solely to intellectual laws and forces. To all this we reply that there may be scientific tests which are not physical, or even intellectual, but only moral. Such a test God urges his people to use, inMal. 3:10—“Bring ye the whole tithe into the storehouse ... and prove me now herewith, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.”All such prayer is a reflection of Christ's words—some fragment of his teaching transformed into a supplication (John 15:7; see Westcott, Bib. Com.,in loco); all such prayer is moreover the work of the Spirit of God (Rom. 8:26, 27). It is therefore sure of an answer.But the test of prayer proposed by Tyndall is not applicable to the thing to be tested by it. Hopkins, Prayer and the Prayer-gauge, 22sq.—“We cannot measure wheat by the yard, or the weight of a discourse with a pair of scales.... God's wisdom might see that it was not best for the petitioners, nor for the objects of their petition, to grant their request. Christians therefore could not, without special divine authorization, rest their faith upon the results of such a test.... Why may we not ask for great changes in nature? For the same reason that a well-informed child does not ask for the moon as a plaything.... There are two limitations upon prayer. First, except by special direction of God, we cannot ask for a miracle, for the same reason that a child could not ask his father to burn the house down. Nature is the house we live in. Secondly, we cannot ask for anything under the laws of nature which would contravene the object of those laws. Whatever we can do for ourselves under these laws, God expects us to do. If the child is cold, let him go near the fire,—not beg his father to carry him.”Herbert Spencer's Sociology is only social physics. He denies freedom, and declares anyone who will affix D. V. to the announcement of the Mildmay Conference to be incapable of understanding sociology. Prevision excludes divine or human will. But Mr. Spencer intimates that the evils of natural selection may be modified by artificial selection. What is this but the interference of will? And if man can interfere, cannot God do the same? Yet the wise child will not expect the father to give everything he asks for. Nor will the father who loves his child give him the razor to play with, or stuff him with unwholesome sweets, simply because the child asks these things. If the engineer of the ocean steamer should give me permission to press the lever that sets all the machinery in motion, I should decline to use my power and should prefer to leave such matters to him, unless he first suggested it and showed me how. So the Holy Spirit“helpeth our infirmity; for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself[pg 439]maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered”(Rom. 8:26). And we ought not to talk of“submitting”to perfect Wisdom, or of“being resigned”to perfect Love. Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, 2:1—“What they [the gods] do delay, they do not deny.... We, ignorant of ourselves, Beg often our own harms, which the wise powers Deny us for our good; so find we profit By losing of our prayers.”See Thornton, Old-Fashioned Ethics, 286-297.Per contra, see Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty, 277-294.
Diman, Theistic Argument, 576, alludes to Goldwin Smith's denial that any scientific method can be applied to history because it would make man a necessary link in a chain of cause and effect and so would deny his free will. But Diman says this is no more impossible than the development of the individual according to a fixed law of growth, while yet free will is sedulously respected. Froude says history is not a science, because no science could foretell Mohammedanism or Buddhism; and Goldwin Smith says that“prediction is the crown of all science.”But, as Diman remarks:“geometry, geology, physiology, are sciences, yet they do not predict.”Buckle brought history into contempt by asserting that it could be analyzed and referred solely to intellectual laws and forces. To all this we reply that there may be scientific tests which are not physical, or even intellectual, but only moral. Such a test God urges his people to use, inMal. 3:10—“Bring ye the whole tithe into the storehouse ... and prove me now herewith, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.”All such prayer is a reflection of Christ's words—some fragment of his teaching transformed into a supplication (John 15:7; see Westcott, Bib. Com.,in loco); all such prayer is moreover the work of the Spirit of God (Rom. 8:26, 27). It is therefore sure of an answer.
But the test of prayer proposed by Tyndall is not applicable to the thing to be tested by it. Hopkins, Prayer and the Prayer-gauge, 22sq.—“We cannot measure wheat by the yard, or the weight of a discourse with a pair of scales.... God's wisdom might see that it was not best for the petitioners, nor for the objects of their petition, to grant their request. Christians therefore could not, without special divine authorization, rest their faith upon the results of such a test.... Why may we not ask for great changes in nature? For the same reason that a well-informed child does not ask for the moon as a plaything.... There are two limitations upon prayer. First, except by special direction of God, we cannot ask for a miracle, for the same reason that a child could not ask his father to burn the house down. Nature is the house we live in. Secondly, we cannot ask for anything under the laws of nature which would contravene the object of those laws. Whatever we can do for ourselves under these laws, God expects us to do. If the child is cold, let him go near the fire,—not beg his father to carry him.”
Herbert Spencer's Sociology is only social physics. He denies freedom, and declares anyone who will affix D. V. to the announcement of the Mildmay Conference to be incapable of understanding sociology. Prevision excludes divine or human will. But Mr. Spencer intimates that the evils of natural selection may be modified by artificial selection. What is this but the interference of will? And if man can interfere, cannot God do the same? Yet the wise child will not expect the father to give everything he asks for. Nor will the father who loves his child give him the razor to play with, or stuff him with unwholesome sweets, simply because the child asks these things. If the engineer of the ocean steamer should give me permission to press the lever that sets all the machinery in motion, I should decline to use my power and should prefer to leave such matters to him, unless he first suggested it and showed me how. So the Holy Spirit“helpeth our infirmity; for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself[pg 439]maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered”(Rom. 8:26). And we ought not to talk of“submitting”to perfect Wisdom, or of“being resigned”to perfect Love. Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, 2:1—“What they [the gods] do delay, they do not deny.... We, ignorant of ourselves, Beg often our own harms, which the wise powers Deny us for our good; so find we profit By losing of our prayers.”See Thornton, Old-Fashioned Ethics, 286-297.Per contra, see Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty, 277-294.