instruments for that purpose.' Is it credible, then, that
the Almighty Being who, as we assume, hears this continuous

scream - animal-prayer, as we may call it - and not only pays
no heed to it, but lavishly fits out animals with instruments

for tormenting and devouring one another, that such a Being
should suspend the laws of gravitation and physiology, should

perform a miracle equal to that of arresting the sun - for
all miracles are equipollent - simply to prolong the brief

and uselessexistence of such a thing as man, of one man out
of the myriads who shriek, and - shriek in vain?

To pray is to expect a miracle. Then comes the further
question: Is this not to expect what never yet has happened?

The only proof of any miracle is the interpretation the
witness or witnesses put upon what they have seen.

(Traditional miracles - miracles that others have been told,
that others have seen - we need not trouble our heads about.)

What that proof has been worth hitherto has been commented
upon too often to need attention here. Nor does the weakness

of the evidence for miracles depend solely on the fact that
it rests, in the first instance, on the senses, which may be

deceived; or upon inference, which may be erroneous. It is
not merely that the infallibility of human testimony

discredits the miracles of the past. The impossibility that
human knowledge, that science, can ever exhaust the

possibilities of Nature, precludes the immediate reference to
the Supernatural for all time. It is pure sophistry to

argue, as do Canon Row and other defenders of miracles, that
'the laws of Nature are no more violated by the performance

of a miracle than they are by the activities of a man.' If
these arguments of the special pleaders had any force at all,

it would simply amount to this: 'The activities of man'
being a part of nature, we have no evidence of a supernatural

being, which is the sole RAISON D'ETRE of miracle.
Yet thousands of men in these days who admit the force of

these objections continue, in spite of them, to pray.
Huxley, the foremost of 'agnostics,' speaks with the utmost

respect of his friend Charles Kingsley's conviction from
experience of the efficacy of prayer. And Huxley himself

repeatedly assures us, in some form or other, that 'the
possibilities of "may be" are to me infinite.' The puzzle

is, in truth, on a par with that most insolvable of all
puzzles - Free Will or Determinism. Reason and the instinct

of conscience are in both cases irreconcilable. We are
conscious that we are always free to choose, though not to

act; but reason will have it that this is a delusion. There
is no logical clue to the IMPASSE. Still, reason

notwithstanding, we take our freedom (within limits) for
granted, and with like inconsequence we pray.

It must, I think, be admitted that the belief, delusive or
warranted, is efficacious in itself. Whether generated in

the brain by the nerve centres, or whatever may be its
origin, a force coincident with it is diffused throughout the

nervous system, which converts the subject of it, just
paralysed by despair, into a vigorous agent, or, if you will,

automaton.
Now, those who admit this much argue, with no little force,

that the efficacy of prayer is limited to its reaction upon
ourselves. Prayer, as already observed, implies belief in

supernatural intervention. Such belief is competent to beget
hope, and with it courage, energy, and effort. Suppose

contrition and remorse induce the sufferer to pray for Divine
aid and mercy, suppose suffering is the natural penalty of

his or her own misdeeds, and suppose the contrition and the
prayer lead to resistance" target="_blank" title="n.抵抗；抵制；耐力">resistance of similar temptations, and hence

to greater happiness, - can it be said that the power to
resisttemptation or endure the penalty are due to

supernatural aid? Or must we not infer that the fear of the
consequences of vice or folly, together with an earnest

desire and intention to amend, were adequate in themselves to
account for the good results?

Reason compels us to the latter conclusion. But what then?
Would this prove prayer to be delusive? Not necessarily.

That the laws of Nature (as argued above) are not violated by
miracle, is a mere perversion of the accepted meaning of

'miracle,' an IGNORATIO ELENCHI. But in the case of prayer
that does not ask for the abrogation of Nature's laws, it

ceases to be a miracle that we pray for or expect: for are
not the laws of the mind also laws of Nature? And can we

explain them any more than we can explain physical laws? A
psychologist can formulate the mental law of association, but

he can no more explain it than Newton could explain the laws
of attraction and repulsion which pervade the world of

matter. We do not know, we cannot know, what the conditions
of our spiritual being are. The state of mind induced by

prayer may, in accordance with some mental law, be essential
to certain modes of spiritualenergy, specially conducive to

the highest of all moral or spiritual results: taken in this
sense, prayer may ask, not the suspension, but the enactment,

of some natural law.
Let it, however, be granted, for argument's sake, that the

belief in the efficacy of prayer is delusive, and that the
beneficial effects of the belief - the exalted state of mind,

the enhanced power to enduresuffering and resisttemptation,
the happiness inseparable from the assurance that God hears,

and can and will befriend us - let it be granted that all
this is due to sheer hallucination, is this an argument

against prayer? Surely not. For, in the first place, the
incontestable fact that belief does produce these effects is

for us an ultimate fact as little capable of explanation as
any physical law whatever; and may, therefore, for aught we

know, or ever can know, be ordained by a Supreme Being.
Secondly, all the beneficial effects, including happiness,

are as real in themselves as if the belief were no delusion.
It may be said that a 'fool's paradise' is liable to be

turned into a hell of disappointment; and that we pay the
penalty of building happiness on false foundations. This is

true in a great measure; but it is absolutely without truth
as regards our belief in prayer, for the simple reason that

if death dispel the delusion, it at the same time dispels the
deluded. However great the mistake, it can never be found

out. But they who make it will have been the better and the
happier while they lived.

For my part, though immeasurably preferring the pantheism of
Goethe, or of Renan (without his pessimism), to the

anthropomorphic God of the Israelites, or of their theosophic
legatees, the Christians, however inconsistent, I still

believe in prayer. I should not pray that I may not die 'for
want of breath'; nor for rain, while 'the wind was in the

wrong quarter.' My prayers would not be like those
overheard, on his visit to Heaven, by Lucian's Menippus: 'O

Jupiter, let me become a king!' 'O Jupiter, let my onions
and my garlic thrive!' 'O Jupiter, let my father soon depart

from hence!' But when the workings of my moral nature were
concerned, when I needed strength to bear the ills which

could not be averted, or do what conscience said was right,
then I should pray. And, if I had done my best in the same

direction, I should trust in the Unknowable for help.
Then too, is not gratitude to Heaven the best of prayers?

Unhappy he who has never felt it! Unhappier still, who has
never had cause to feel it!

It may be deemed unwarrantable thus to draw the lines between
what, for want of better terms, we call Material and

Spiritual. Still, reason is but the faculty of a very finite
being; and, as in the enigma of the will, utterly incapable

of solving any problems beyond those whose data are furnished
by the senses. Reason is essentiallyrealistic. Science is

its domain. But science demonstratively proves that things
are not what they seem; their phenomenal existence is nothing

else than their relation to our special intelligence. We
speak and think as if the discoveries of science were