To begin with, 'To pray is to expect a miracle.' 'Prayer in
its very essence,' says a thoughtful writer, 'implies a
belief in the possible intervention of a power which is above
nature.' How was it in my case? What was the essence of my
belief? Nothing less than this: that God would have
permitted the laws of nature, ordained by His infinite wisdom
to fulfil His omniscient designs and pursue their natural
course in accordance with His will, had not my request
persuaded Him to suspend those laws in my favour.
The very belief in His omniscience and omnipotence subverts
the spirit of such a prayer. It is on the perfection of God
that Malebranche bases his argument that 'Dieu n'agit pas par
des volontes particulieres.' Yet every prayer affects to
interfere with the divine purposes.
It may here be urged that the divine purposes are beyond our
comprehension. God's purposes may, in spite of the
inconceivability, admit the efficacy of prayer as a link in
the chain of causation; or, as Dr. Mozely holds, it may be
that 'a miracle is not an anomaly or irregularity, but part
of the system of the universe.' We will not entangle
ourselves in the abstruse metaphysical problem which such
hypotheses involve, but turn for our answer to what we do
know - to the history of this world, to the daily life of
man.
