Such, then, are the views, not of all, but of many of the scientists of our day. Whatever may be the diversities in their views, there is substantial agreement in this, that the immutability of the laws of nature shows the folly of prayer, especially for material blessings. That such views are at variance with the Scriptures, the dullest can see. Both the biblical view and this of the materialistic scientists cannot be true; they are utterly in discord with each other, absolutely contradictory. Christ says with positiveness and with sweeping generality, "Ask, and it shall be given you"; the scientist says it is folly to ask, as no blessing, since the laws of the material universe are immutable, can be bestowed in direct answer to prayer. It is clear, then, that either Christ and his apostles, or the materialistic scientists, are mistaken.

We wish, "with malice toward none and with charity for all," to call attention to some points in the position of those scientists who have essayed to be not only our scientific, but also our religious teachers, which seem to us to be weak and untenable; and by our tentative criticism to suggest that perchance the soundest science does not yet summon us to abandon the biblical view of prayer; that it is quite possible that he who spake, his enemies being the judges, as never man spake, never dropped a word in reference to prayer which conflicts in any degree with absolute science. The question before us, then, is whether the doctrine of prayer as presented by Christ in the New Testament is at variance with established science.

Let us first briefly define our terms. What is science? It is what we really know in all departments of investigation, whether the subject be the material universe or the acts and states of the soul revealed to us through consciousness. To know scientifically, to be sure, implies accurate observation, analysis, generalization, and correct classification; but all these processes simply help us really to know, and to know is the pith of the signification of the term science.

An honest, rigid application of this definition would reduce many ponderous volumes on science to the compass of books fitted to take their place in some vest-pocket series. Much of so-called science is nothing but theories or hypotheses to account for phenomena which everywhere confront us, many of which still remain unexplained. We do not object to these hypotheses as such; they are good in their place. They are the tools with

which scientific men do their work. All advancement in scientific knowledge has been made by using them; but until proved to be true, they are no more science than the chisel with which the sculptor works is the statue which he brings forth from the marble. We must make a sharp distinction between science, that which is absolutely known, and hypothesis, by means of which we strive to know.

On the other hand, what is prayer? It would not specially serve our purpose to attempt a comprehensive definition of it; but we wish to call attention to a single element which should enter into every just definition of prayer. It must be manifest to any one who thinks at all, that men are dependent beings. In the family, in society, and in business, we all, to a greater or less extent, lean on one another, children on their parents, wives on their husbands, the ignorant and the weak on the learned and the strong, and the poor on the rich. Now, lying at the very core of prayer is the fact of our dependence on God. By asking blessings of him, we confess that dependence; but in this confession of dependence, we not only submit our weakness to his strength, but our ignorance to his wisdom. We ask, conscious that we may make grievous mistakes in asking, so that the innermost spirit of true prayer is the submission of the petitioner to God. The cry of Christ in Gethsemane, as he prayed in agony that the cup might pass from him, "Not my will but thine be done," is the undertone of all genuine prayer; so that God answers us truly, when, instead of giving us what we ask, he gives us rather the thing which, in his wisdom, he sees that we need.

The real difficulty in the way of God's answering prayer, according to some able scientists, is, as has already been noted, the fact that the laws of the material universe are absolutely unchangeable. This has led some theistic scientists to affirm that prayer for spiritual blessings may be answered, while prayer for physical good-for example, for rain in time of drought-is folly. But if fixity of law makes prayer for physical good absurd, it must make equally foolish prayer for spiritual blessings, since law is just as fixed in the realm of mind or spirit as in the realm of matter. The laws by which the mind is developed are just as immutable as the laws by which the oak is unfolded from the acorn; the laws by which we think are as rigid and fixed as those which regulate the rivers in their flow or the clouds which

sweep across the sky. If, on account of the fixedness of law, it is absurd to pray for rain, it is for the same reason equally absurd to pray that the divine spirit may illuminate our minds and guide our thoughts. If, then, God may answer prayer for spiritual gifts, he may, in spite of the unchangeableness of law, answer prayer for physical blessings.

But we also suggest that the position which we combat is probably untenable, on the ground that these able scientists do not, in stating their objections to prayer, use the term law with that precision of meaning that is requisite in scientific discussion. Sometimes they personify it. It seems clothed with personality, as when they tell us that the laws of nature do this and that. They often deify it, ascribing to it attributes which the devout theist ascribes only to God. This is the method of poetry rather than of science. Every thinker knows that the term law has several distinct meanings. It will be sufficient for our purpose to note barely two. We call attention to the first simply because of its diversity from the second, so that by the contrast we may add to the vividness of the second meaning, on which we propose to comment. First, we speak of moral law. It is distinguished by oughtness. We are so made that we discern a distinction between right and wrong; we know intuitively that they are opposites. Men universally recognizing this distinction feel that they ought to do the right and shun the wrong. This ought is mightier than all other forces which impel men to action. This distinction of right from wrong, and the oughtness which presses a man, as with the superincumbent weight of a mountain, to do the right, constitute the essence of moral law. Bentham, in his utilitarian argument in reference to morals, was so troubled with this element of oughtness that he declared that the word ought "ought to be banished from the vocabulary of morals." From the inexorable necessities of his own being he could not

say it in any other way.

Now, when we come to talk of the laws of the material universe, we have in mind a very different conception. No oughtness appears. We mean simply the processes of nature,-the ways in which things, so far as the observation of men has extended, come to pass. When the cold reaches a given degree of intensity, water freezes; we say that that is a material law. When the higher temperature of spring comes, the ice melts and vegetation starts; we call these processes laws. When vapor freezes,

it takes the forms of crystals; and this process we call a material law. The profoundest scientist cannot carry his analysis any further. He knows more than a clown or a child only because, by study and extended observation, he has seen more of the processes of nature, and has generalized and grouped them. In any single example, he can only see what the ignorant may see,-that a law of nature is simply the way in which a thing, in the material world or in the world of mind, is done.

Now, since in these varied laws of nature we see that certain useful ends are met, the suggestion inevitably comes that intelligence established these laws or now works out these varied and beneficent processes. Since a law of nature is nothing more than the way in which a certain thing is accomplished, it is certainly not contrary to anything which science has discovered to consider the laws of nature simply as God's methods of doing things. Such a supposition does no violence to scientific method, while it provides a suitable cause for the beneficent element in these laws. If it is asked why these processes, or laws of nature, on the supposition that they are God's ways of working, are fixed, invariable, we find a ready answer in the biblical revelation of God's nature and character. Being absolutely perfect, when, for the first time, he did anything, he did it with absolute perfection. When a thing is perfect, there can be no change for the better, since nothing can be any more than perfect; but God cannot change, in these processes of nature, to that which would be in any sense imperfect, since that would be a contradiction of his own absolute perfection. So we find in the character of God, as presented to us in the Bible, the sufficient reason for the immutability of natural laws, when we regard them as simply his methods of acting. So when David sang, "The Lord also thundered in the heavens, and the highest gave his voice," he may not even in his imaginative song have uttered anything opposed to the strictest science; it may be that in such diction, poetry and science met together and kissed each other. But if these processes of nature may, without the slightest conflict with science, be considered simply the actings of God immanent in his own creation, it is not impossible that, working by these unchangeable processes, he may answer the prayers of his children.

And it will not be difficult for us to discover by analogy how, in perfect harmony with the fact of the immutability of

natural laws, God may do this. The perfect confidence of men in the fixity of natural laws underlies all their acts. Without such confidence they could not construct or work the simplest machinery. They would not dare to sail lake or ocean, lest by a change of natural laws their vessel should suddenly sink rather than float. But because they know these laws to be immutable, they use them with confidence in all their manifold activities. Now, from analogy, we are able to see how the immutability of natural laws, instead of being an obstacle standing in the way of God's answering prayer, may become rather the very means by which he answers every prayer of faith. Men, because these natural laws are unchangeable, are able by the adjustment to each other of even a very few of them to secure the most wonderful results. The adjustment to each other of a few immutable laws gives us the steam-engine, which moves most of the machinery of the civilized nations. The adjustment of a few immutable laws drives our great merchant ships around the globe. The bird which darts upward into the air and onward through it with such great velocity, instinctively adjusts a few unchangeable laws to bring about this surprising result. If men, with their limited knowledge, and the birds of the air by instinct, can use unchangeable laws to reach such marvelous and varied results, can not God, who established these laws, so adjust them to each other as to answer every true prayer breathed into his ear? Immutability of law, then, does not make prayer even for physical blessings a folly, but rather suggests to us how God, because of this very immutability, may answer every true petition.

Then we are never to forget that at the best we know but little. La Place is reported to have said, just before he died, "What we do not know is enormous." We have discovered, by centuries of toil, a few natural laws. As the circle of our knowledge has widened, we have become aware of a still greater circle just beyond that no human mind has ever explored. And in the future, as our knowledge extends, we shall ever grow more and more keenly alive to the infinite reaches of being and of law which we do not know. What we know of the laws of the material universe compared with what we do not know, is like the handful of sand in the hour-glass compared with the vast Sahara. If man, with his very limited knowledge of unchangeable laws, can by their adjustment to each other achieve so much,