as he evidently has been, by the objections which have often been raised to prayer, on the ground that a belief in the efficacy of prayer is inconsistent with a belief in the constancy of the order of Nature.
The bishop appears to admit that there is an antagonism between the "regular economy of Nature" and the "regular economy of prayer" (p. 39), and that "prayers for the interruption of God's natural order" are of "doubtful validity" (p. 42). It appears to me that the bishop's difficulty simply adds another example to those which I have several times insisted upon in the pages of this Review and elsewhere, of the mischief which has been done, and is being done, by a mistaken apprehension of the real meaning of "natural order" and "law of Nature."
May I, therefore, be permitted to repeat, once more, that the statements denoted by these terms have no greater value or cogency than such as may attach to generalizations from experience of the past, and to expectations for the future based upon that experience? Nobody can presume to say what the order of Nature must be; all that the widest experience (even if it extended over all past time and through all space), that events had happened in a certain way could justify, would be a proportionally strong expectation that events will go on so happening, and the demand for a proportional strength of evidence in favor of any assertion that they had happened otherwise.
It is this weighty consideration, the truth of which every one who is capable of logical thought must surely admit, which knocks the bottom out of all a priori objections either to ordinary "miracles" or to the efficacy of prayer, in so far as the latter implies the miraculous intervention of a higher power. No one is entitled to say a priori that any given so-called miraculous event is impossible; and no one is entitled to say a priori that prayer for some change in the ordinary course of Nature can not possibly avail.
The supposition that there is any inconsistency between the acceptance of the constancy of natural order and a belief in the efficacy of prayer, is the more unaccountable as it is obviously contradicted by analogies furnished by everyday experience. The belief in the efficacy of prayer depends upon the assumption that there is somebody, somewhere, who is strong enough to deal with the earth and its contents as men deal with the things and events which they are strong enough to modify or control; and who is capable of being moved by appeals such as men make to one another. This belief does not even involve theism; for our earth is an insignificant particle of the solar system, while the solar system is hardly worth speaking of in relation to the All; and, for anything that can be proved to the contrary, there may be beings endowed with full powers over our system, yet, practically, as insignificant as ourselves in relation to the universe. If any one pleases, therefore, to give unrestrained liberty to his fancy, he may plead analogy in favor of the dream that there may be, some-
