270 galton.org
The collapse of the argument of universality leaves us solely
concerned with a simple statistical question - are prayers answered, or are
they not? There are two lines of research, by either of which we may
pursue this inquiry. The one that promises the most trustworthy results is
to examine large classes of cases, and to be guided by broad averages; the
other, which I will not employ in these pages, is to deal with isolated
instances. An author who made much use of the latter method might
reasonably suspect his own judgment - he would certainly run the risk of
being suspected by others - in choosing one-sided examples.
The principles are broad and simple upon which our inquiry into the
efficacy of prayer must be established. We must gather cases for statistical
comparison, in which the same object is keenly pursued by two classes
similar in their physical but opposite in their spiritual state; the one class
being prayerful, the other materialistic. Prudent pious people must be
compared with prudent materialistic people, and not with the imprudent
nor the vicious. Secondly, we have no regard, in this inquiry, to the course
by which the answer to prayers may be supposed to operate. We simply
look to the final result -whether those who pray attain their objects more
frequently than those who do not pray, but who live in all other respects
under similar conditions. Let us now apply our principles to different
cases.
A rapid recovery from disease may be conceived to depend on many
causes besides the reparative power of the patient's constitution. A
miraculous quelling of the disease may be one of these causes; another is
the skill of the physician, or of the nurse; another is the care that the
patient takes of himself. In our inquiry, whether prayerful people recover
more rapidly than others under similar circumstances, we need not
complicate the question by endeavouring to learn the channel through
which the patient's prayer may have reached its fulfillment. It is foreign to
our present purpose to ask if there be any signs of a miraculous quelling
of the disease, or if, through the grace of God, the physician had showed
unusual wisdom, or the nurse or the patient unusual discretion. We simply
look to the main issue - do sick persons who pray, or are prayed for,
recover on the average more rapidly than others?
It appears that, in all countries and in all creeds, the priests urge the
patient to pray for his own recovery, and the patient's friends to aid him
with their prayers; but that the doctors make no account whatever of their
spiritual agencies, unless the office of priest and medical man be
combined in the same individual. The medical works of modern Europe
