the fundamental laws of science. It follows that this venerable practice will cease in direct proportion as those laws become known and people come to rely on them, instead of on petitions to alter them.

But the pseudo-conceptions of this character, and their fundamental illusions, are, as we have intimated, ancient, venerable, and hereditary. Immense capital-material, mental, social, and spiritual-is invested in them. The law of evolution, therefore, leads us to expect that instead of any sudden change there will necessarily arise an immense expenditure of ingenuity to make these pseudo-notions appear credible, and a very considerable amount of indignation will be visited upon those who may oppose them.

Let us, then, next examine the most common mode of sustaining this belief. It is simply a part of theology, and is itself unscientific in nature and method. It assumes a God who is anthropomorphic, and yet perfect, infinite, eternal, unchangeable, omniscient, with a will, capacities, and feelings similar to, and yet infinitely beyond those of man. The assumption is that this God, in some way and at some time "in the beginning," created the world out of nothing, or out of his own potency, and has since governed it in a fixed order, according to the laws of his own enactment, now known to us, however, as the laws of correlation above described. These laws, therefore, under the theological interpretation, are always within the control of this supreme will, and he varies, changes, adjusts, or in some way uses them so as to effect answers to prayer.

But this hypothesis of a personal or anthropomorphic God is invoked in vain. It has no weight with pure Theists, Agnostics, Pantheists, or Atheists. All these classes of thinkers unite in showing that the anthropomorphic conception of God is a false one, and without the slightest scientific warrant; that it is a dogma of theology which cannot be conceived, much less understood, but which must be "received by faith" as a mystery," if it be received at all. When mysteries of this kind (as, for instance, the dogma of transubstantiation) meet the law of correlation, they pass at once beyond the domain of science into that Limbo of Vanity, or of poetry and fancy, known in science as Fable and Myth.

But to those who still retain, or imagine that they retain, a belief in an anthropomorphic Deity, will this hypothesis of a

personal God remove or only increase the difficulty? Plainly the latter. It is as impossible to reconcile prayer-answer or miracle with God's necessary and admitted attributes, which are, his omnipotence, omniscience, and perfection, as it is to reconcile them with the Scientist's laws of Nature. Nor, may we add, does such prayer-answer or miracle remain consistent with any reasonable veneration for a Deity. For if the laws of nature be but the order of continuous manifestations of his power, they are invariable, because they must be perfect, for they are the action of a Perfect Being who omnisciently knew all things for all time, and had infinite power to execute all that he knew or wished. Such a Being is, therefore, commonly and properly described as unchangeable, and "without a shadow of turning." To suppose such a Being to alter the order of the world would be to admit that it was not perfectly conceived and ordered in the first place, and that its Maker failed for want of knowledge or power to make it complete. A perfect and invariable God cannot also be imperfect and variable. Such a Being is a bundle of absurd contradictions.

But let us next suppose that prayer was foreknown and foreordained by this Supreme Being, as a thing to happen as a part of his government by which man would procure a benefit that God had fore-ordained thereupon to grant. Then the prayer would be useless; for, the event would happen as a part of the perfect world-order without prayer, or, if prayer were decreed to be inseparably connected with the event, then it would be simply a part of it, a superfluous concomitant of the event and useless, since the event would happen without it. The maker of the prayer would be only an automaton worked for nothing. If this be the plan of the world, it is plain that God has fore-ordained to grant benefits to intelligent people without this needless addition, which they have practically dropped. He has wisely foreordained that people should drop it as they become enlightened.

But suppose that God has fore-ordained some facts to be born as twins. For he may have arranged "from all eternity," so that a certain event cannot happen without a prayer preceding, which prayer depends upon the volition of some man. Plainly this would be conditioning the order of events, and the order of a perfect world, upon the volition of an imperfect being. This would contradict God's perfection, omniscience, and goodness. The idea that a Perfect Being could let his world be run by im

perfect and ignorant creatures through their prayers would be simply absurd. Leaving a child in charge of a steam-engine would be nothing to it.

But if the prayer did not thus change or determine the order of its twin event, it would evidently be useless. If it does change that order, God, "from all eternity," knew it, or he did not. If he did not know it, he was not omniscient and perfect. If he did know it, he must have ordered it, for all things must have been fore-ordained by himself in order to be knowable by him. But if he knew and ordained the result, he must be morally responsible for it; and if he is also perfect, the result ordained by him must be perfect. But it could be perfect in one order only; for there cannot be two perfect orders. Therefore, the actual order must have been eternally perfect and eternally ordained, and the prayer for any change must be useless and absurd. Prayeranswer could only lead to imperfections and the consequent inference of an imperfect God.

But, it is said, may not God, in some way, adjust his fixed laws so as to effect answers to prayer much as human beings do, or are supposed to do? The answer is, that scientific laws are unvariable, and therefore always unadjustable. They cannot be adjusted by either God or man. They can only be obeyed or followed. As Bacon taught, man conquers Nature only by obedience. Man may adjust matter, or phenomena, or himself, and events, so that these laws may come in play, as is the case in all scientific experiments. But to speak of man adjusting the laws of nature is a total misapprehension of them and of man's relation to them. Man modifies phenomena by bringing them under laws, but he never varies, or changes, or bends, or adjusts laws in any way whatsoever. Nor can God do it without violating his own attributes and committing logical suicide; for the law is the order which is the condition of his attributes and existence. But if any such thing could be done consistently with God's attributes, would it be less a violation of the law of correlation? Certainly not. If prayer be of any value, it must cause God to vary the order of his correlates in some degree, or direction, or time. It matters not whether this variation from the fixed law is made at the time of the prayer, or years before or after. Whether at once, or gradually, it is a variation of the order which otherwise would have occurred if the prayer had not been offered. Laws, therefore, cannot be adjusted; but man and his affairs may be

adjusted to them by his will and efforts. Thus he is said, by labor and prevision, to modify phenomena to his use, and to avoid the crushing weight of fatalism which the inexorable laws. of nature would otherwise bring upon him. But the very possibility on the part of man of this power of modifying phenomena, and so of making his life tolerable, or glorious, depends upon the invariability of unadjustable laws. Let it be supposed for a moment that these laws could be changed or adjusted by prayer, or in any other way, then science and the certainty of life would be gone, and modern civilization would disappear.

But next, it may be said, why may not God, in a similar way to man, adjust and modify phenomena under these fixed laws, and so effect answers to prayer? If man can do this somewhat and beneficially for himself, why cannot God do it for him infinitely more? The answer is, that God must be just as perfect, omniscient, and omnipotent as to phenomena as he is as to their laws. As such, he has settled the phenomena and their order, including man's will and works, as well as all possible laws, perfectly and forever, from all eternity. Man is weak, imperfect, and ignorant, and therefore he has to change and adjust himself according to his own will and imperfection. Man is thus subject to the "struggle for existence," and therefore has developed a will, and uses it to provide for his wants. But God is freed from all strife; will and law are one with him, and cannot be otherwise. Man is a contestant; God is conceivable only and always as perfect. He exists only in perfect order. To suppose that he does not, is to involve the absurdities referred to above as to God's attributes and law.

Lastly, this anthropomorphic notion of God which we are considering makes him the reverse of worshipful. He becomes a limited, imperfect quasi human agent, morally responsible for the evils that exist and for all of the sufferings of his creatures. These moral consequences are too horrible to be more than referred to, nor is more than a reference necessary to any intelligent person. All personal Theism, therefore, in attempting to adjust or to escape the order of correlation falls into intellectual contradictions, and ends in making God a moral monster. Such attempts to make prayer-answers credible are hopeless.

But it is said, then let the appeal be to facts: if the case fails a priori, it may be proved a posteriori. Can it be possible that

the almost numberless facts from sacred and profane records, detailing, even down to our own day, what have appeared to the relators to be answers to prayer, can be wholly mistaken or fraudulent?

To this the answer may seem rude or cruel; but to science, "facts" of this kind, related after the events, even by the observ. ers, are only second-hand facts, and, when repeated by others, have no weight whatever. They simply are not facts to any scientific or intelligent person. Among the superstitious, or those who wish to believe, the eye "brings more than it sees." Such "facts" are illusions, common enough now in uncivilized countries and among the more ignorant Roman Catholic people. They merely prove the credulity of the people who assert them, and their incapacity to make and to cross-examine their observations. Anything desired may be proved to or by such individuals.

But, besides this, the ordinary conditions and "facts" of prayer are commonly not of a verifiable nature, as Professor Tyndall has fully pointed out in his well-known letter on prayergauge. No facts on this subject, unscrutinized by science, are of the slightest scientific value, and no such scrutiny has ever been applied. No advocate of prayer dares to imitate Elijah by an appeal to facts that could be known to be real and scientific. And this one fact outweighs all alleged "prayer-facts," and is conclusive evidence that the confidence of prayer advocates is traditional and sentimental and not real.

The truth of this view was well illustrated in 1872, when Professor Tyndall and Sir Henry Thompson proposed, in the fairest and most candid manner, a practical trial, or prayer-gauge, referred to in the above paragraph, so that something might be done to verify this prayer-power, if it have any existence. What was the result? Instead of coöperation, these distinguished scientists were vociferously accused, in the Professor's words, of "insolence, outrage, profanity, and blasphemy"; to which he very appropriately replies: "They obviously lack the sobriety of mind necessary to give accuracy to their statements, or to render their charges worthy of serious refutation." He had simply asked for one test under conditions that would enable prayer to be established. "A single experiment," he said, "is frequently devised by which a theory must stand or fall"; as, for instance, the lesser velocity of light