OCR Rendition - approximate

126 STATISTICAL INQUIRIES INTO THE, EFFICACY OF PRAYER. 127 The phrases of our Church service amply countenance this view ; and if we look to the practice of the opposed sections of Ilu• religious world, we find them consistent in ntainluinin • it. I'hc !,o-called Low Church" notoriously places absolute belief, in special providences accorded to pious: prayer. This is testified bt- Iho l)iogniphies of its members, the journals of its tuissionuries, ,tad the "United prayer-meetings" of the presentt day. 'fbc Ilonuut Catholics oiler religious vows to avert danger; they male pilgriuzages to shrines; they Icing votive offerings mill pictorial r, prcsenlations, souu;times by thousands, in their churches, of total accidents averted by the manifest interference of a solicited Taint. A pitoid /ibr•ii' argument in favour of the efliatcy of prayer is therefore to be drawn from the very general use of it. Tire greater part of mankind, during all the historic ages, have been nccustonnxl to pray for temporal advantages. I low vain, it, unity be urged, mast, be the reasoning that ventures to oppose this utighty cmtsensus of belief ! Not so. The argument, of universality either proves too little]], or else it, is suicidal. It either compels us to admit that (lie prayers of 1'aguts, of Fetish worshippers, and of Buddhists who turn praying-wheels, are recompensed in the same way as those of orthodox believers ; or else the general consensus proves that it has no better foundation (lion the universal tendency of man to gross credulity. The collapse of the argument of universality leaves us solely concerned with a simple statistical question-are prayers answered, or arc 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 cutmine large classes of cases, find 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 night 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 t7le answer to prayers may be supposed to operate. W e simply look to the final result-whetheiu 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 muses besides the reparative power of the patient'$ constitution. A miraculous quclliug of the disease may bo one of these causes ; another is tIc skill of the physician, or of' the nurse; ano(hcr is flit' care that the paticnl, taints of himself. In our inquirv, whither prayerful people recover store rapidly than others nndcr similar circumstances, we need not complicate the question 1.v endeavouring to lours the ultatnel through which the patient's prayer may love reached its fulfibuent.. 11, is foreign to our present purpose to ask if' (lterc be nut' signs of it miraculous quelling of' the disease, or if', llu'ougli the grace of Cod, the physician had showed unusual wisdom, or flit' nurse or the patient unusual discretion. Ave simply look to the maim issue--do sick persons who pray, or uro prayed for, recover ()it flto average more rapidly thin others ? It appears that, in fill countries and in all creeds, the priests urge thi' paticnl. I.o pray for leis own recovery, and f110 patient's friends to aid hill with their prayers ; bat that the doctors Make no account whatever of their spiritual agencies, unless the. office of priest and medical man be combined in the sable individual. The medical works of modern Europe toont with* records of individual illnesses and of broad averages of disease,'but I have been able to discover hardly any instance in which u medical inns of any repute lifts attributed recovery to the influence of prayer. There is not a single instance, to my knowledge, in which papers read before statistical societies have recognised the agency of' prayer either on disease or on anything else. The universal habit of the scientific world to ignore the agency of prayer is a veer i nportant fact. To fully appreciate the " eloquence of' the silence " of medical men, we must bear in mind the care with which they endeavour to assign a sanatory value to every influence. Had prayers for the sick any notable effect, itt is incredible but that the doctors, who are always on the watch for such things, should have observed it, and added their influence to that of the priests towards obtaining them for every sick man. If they abstain from doing so, it is not because their attention has never been awakened to the possible efficacy of prayer, but, on the contrary, that although they have heard it insisted on from childhood upwards, they are unable to detect its influence. Most people have some general belief in the objective efficacy of prayer, but none seem willing to admit-its action in those special cases of which they have scientific cognisance. Those who may wish to pursue these inquiries upon the effect of prayers for the restoration of health could obtain abundant materials from hospital cases, and in a different way from that proposed in the challenge to which I referred at the beginning of these pages. There acre many common maladies whose course is so thoroughly well understood as to admit of accurate tables of probability being constructed for their duration and result. Such are fractures and amputations. Now it would be perfectly practicable to select out of the patients at different