Doctrines of Prayer, Faith, and Peace by James Hastings: Hastings, James - Doctrine of Prayer: 047. Chapter 11: Scientific Objections To Prayer

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Doctrines of Prayer, Faith, and Peace by James Hastings: Hastings, James - Doctrine of Prayer: 047. Chapter 11: Scientific Objections To Prayer



TOPIC: Hastings, James - Doctrine of Prayer (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 047. Chapter 11: Scientific Objections To Prayer

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SCIENTIFIC OBJECTIONS TO PRAYER.

THERE are very real and special difficulties connected with the act of prayer. It would be strange if there were not when the mystery of man meets the mystery of God. It would be strange if there were no difficulties attending the speech of man to God. There are intellectual difficulties attending the act, and there are difficulties inherent in the act, that rise to the very surface of a man’s mind when he thinks intellectually at all of prayer.

Have you observed that the scientific difficulty has no place in the teachings of Jesus Christ? He does not refer to it even. Indeed, it is impossible to conceive how He could have referred to it. To His mind there could be no difficulty on the Divine side. The Father, to His vision, is Lord of heaven and earth. Nature and nature’s laws are under His sway. There is nothing impossible to Him. Our Lord does speak of difficulties in connexion with prayer, and very serious difficulties; but the scientific difficulty is not among them. The difficulties of which He speaks are on man’s side. He speaks of the want of faith as a difficulty, of the want of perseverance as a difficulty, of the want of union with Himself as a difficulty. According to His teachings, it is the absence of these that causes prayer to remain unanswered, never by reason of science which makes it impossible. [Note: Griffith John, A Voice from China, 180.]

1. First of all, we must see distinctly what we mean by prayer. We do not mean merely the act of adoration, of admiration, of praise; we mean also the act of petition, of asking our Father in Heaven to give us something, and believing that He will, if He thinks fit, give us the thing we ask for. That is the real test of prayer; that, and that only, is the real difficulty. There is no difficulty in believing that the act of prayer may have some reflex benefit to the soul of the person who prays; to say, for instance, that though we cannot get what we ask, we may indirectly get good dispositions by asking for what we know we cannot have, presents no intellectual difficulty whatever; the only difficulty in that case is to imagine the possibility of anyone praying under such conditions.

2. Two objections to prayer on intellectual grounds are made—one from a scientific and the other from a philosophical point of view.

(1) The claim is made that an answer to prayer would involve the interruption of the established order; it would mean, therefore, a violation of law. In the presence of the unbending constancy of the physical system which surrounds us, impressing the average man with its moral indifference, prayer seems like an irrational proceeding. It appears to some minds as the act of a puny being urging upon the Omnipotent that the great through traffic of the world be side-tracked in order to give his local train the right of way.

(2) The other objection is to the effect that if God is wise and good, He will do what is best for us, and for every one, without our asking—indeed, to ask Him for anything implies a certain solicitude as to His appropriate action. “Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.” Then why should we ask? It is an impertinence in that it calls upon Him to change His line of action in obedience to our suggestion. All the lesser questions which arise are really comprehended within these two fundamental ones.

In the present chapter we shall deal with the first of these objections to prayer, the objection that arises from the idea of the uniformity of nature. Let us see (1) whether physical and spiritual things may be separated, so that even if we may no longer pray for the former we may still pray for the latter; (2) what is to be understood by “law” as applied to nature, and whether it can properly be said to be immutable; (3) how the matter stands when we regard the laws of nature as the outcome of a personal mind.