1. A third argument directed against the efficacy of prayer seems, at first sight, to appeal to the humility which must ever be characteristic of the creature face to face with his Creator. It is the difficulty which, with deepest feeling, was expressed by the Psalmist when, in contemplation of the infinite vastness of the heavens, he was lost in wonder at the fact that so insignificant a being as man should be chosen by God as the object of His special regard:—
“When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers,
The moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
What is man, that thou art mindful of him?
And the son of man, that thou visitest him?”
In the original the contrast is even stronger than in the translation, for the words for “man” (Enosh, Ben-adam) are chosen to emphasize man’s frailty, and mortality, and earthly origin, in contrast to the vast and apparently unchanging structure of the heavens. But the contrast deepens yet further as we realize that, to whatever period of Jewish history this psalm may belong, the writer’s knowledge of the vastness of the creation, and of the nature of celestial phenomena, was almost as nothing in comparison with what we know of it. To us the revelation, through the telescope, of space which appears illimitable, through the microscope, of minuteness almost infinite, the discovery of forces close to us and around us, but, until recently, unsuspected and unemployed, gives to the ancient words of the Psalmist, when taken on our lips, a power and a pathos such as he would not have felt.
2. It is in writings such as the Thoughts of Blaise Pascal, or passages in the works of Cardinal Newman or Dean Church, that we are helped to break through the sway of custom and habit in regarding our position, and to enter into the wonder of our apparent insignificance, and yet more of our true greatness. But the Psalmist, in his amazement at the Creator’s “visitation” of man in constant, loving, providential regard, knew also the solution of the difficulty. The reason why man in bodily infirmity and insignificance, placed in a world which is almost a speck in comparison with the sun which governs our system, and yet more with hundreds and thousands of suns governing other systems, is the object of Divine care, is expressed in the words by which his own question is answered:—
“For thou hast made him but little lower than God,
And crownest him with glory and honour.
Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands;
Thou hast put all things under his feet.”
As a spirit conscious of his own existence, and determining his action in the freedom of his will, man is the “crown, and glory, and perfection of God’s creation”. If creation grows upon us, startling us with a sense of its vastness, we can in the very light of those great advances of scientific discovery and human control over our system discern the pledge of man’s lofty destiny, and also the assurance that God will attend to his prayers and manifest His care.
3. And if we pass from the true conception of man to the thought of the Divine omniscience with which the Divine omnipotence is inseparably united, there is one further assurance that, while we cannot conceive how God can attend to each member of the human race, we can rationally believe that He does so. “To know well,” writes Bishop Gore, “is to know both broadly and in detail. And to act well is to act with a wide grasp, and also an insight into each individual case.” In education, the master whose skill, not only in imparting knowledge but in forming character, is the highest is the teacher who, like Arnold or Thring, holds in combination the government and guidance of the corporate society of the school with the knowledge of each class and of each boy in it. A Church ruler can be really great only when, in forming wide conceptions and plans, he is also alive to the details, and the training, in countless ways, of the persons needed for their realization. Great commanders such as Wellington, Napoleon, von Moltke, or Roberts, have held in combination the plan of great campaigns with concentration of attention to smallest contingencies and details, and, in one case at least, to the welfare, moral, and spiritual, of the soldiers under their command. If that combination exists in the highest forms of human action, need we hesitate to believe that it also characterizes the all-sovereign action of God Himself? Not trustfully only, but also reasonably, we may say with the Psalmist:—
“The Lord doth build up Jerusalem;
He gathereth together the outcasts of Israel.
He healeth the broken in heart,
And bindeth up their wounds.
He telleth the number of the stars;
He giveth them all their names.
Great is our Lord, and mighty in power;
His understanding is infinite.”
A controversy on this difficulty took place in the Hibbert Journal recently. In an article on Prayer, Mr. Charles Stewart asked: “Can it rationally be supposed that the prayers, made daily and hourly by hundreds of millions of human beings of one religion and another, addressed to their deity, true or false, asking for all manner of things, wise and unwise, selfish and unselfish, can reach the ears of God, or that they deserve to do so, a very large proportion of them being merely formal, perfunctory, insincere, or misdirected? Considering the incalculable amount of weighing and sifting which these petitions must require, thewide and constant knowledge and observation of the bodily circumstances and mental conditions of each suppliant which must be presupposed in God if the petitions are to be dealt with judicially and fairly (and any other idea is incompatible with Divine justice), can it be conceived that God can give serious ear and individual consideration to each and all of them?”
Bishop D’Arcy replied: “Mr. Stewart seems to imagine that the amount of ‘weighing and sifting which these petitions must require’ is too complicated a problem for the Deity. He thinks it more probable that they are dealt with according to general laws. But surely this is an amazingly petty view of the Divine Nature. How infinitely worthier is the teaching that not a sparrow falls to the ground without God’s knowledge and care! It is more philosophical also. To imagine, as Mr. Stewart does, that God’s interest in His universe is entirely concerned with general laws, is a deification of red tape. The truth is that, in the actual world, reality is always concrete and individual. The law is a mere abstraction.” [Note: The Hibbert Journal, ix. 650.]
The avocations of God, however manifold, do not hinder Him in the least from bestowing as much attention upon this earth as if He had nothing else to attend to; and to suppose the contrary is to transfer to Him the ideas and attributes of a limited creature. If we judge from the fine balance which there is between the necessities of nature and the supplies of Providence—the rare occurrence of famine or starvation upon the earth, and the ample means of meeting these occurrences by prudent foresight and proper economy—from the adaptation of every creature to its abode, and of the productions of the region to its wants, and in general from God’s being so ready even much beforehand with His gifts to man and beast, we shall, instead of concluding against a similar intercourse between the Creator and the creature in things religious, conclude that here also there should be a correspondence of want and of supply, of request and of gift. It is very well, therefore, for men who have made a few advances into the knowledge of the universe, to conjecture from its ample population that the Creator has not time to attend to our little wants, when it is the universal acknowledgment of the learned, that the least microscopic insect is as richly furnished with organic structures and beautiful adaptation to its birthplace and habitation, as if the Almighty had occupied His faculties upon that invisible creature alone. [Note: The Collected Writings of Edward Irving, iii. 3.]
