The loving-kindness that with open hand
    Dispenses bounty in perennial stream.
  Oft hast thou proved, while in a foreign land
    A sojourner, as all thy fathers were,
    Thou pacest painfully the barren sand,
  How o'er thy path watches a Comforter,
    And scatters manna daily for thy food,
    And bids the smitten rocks that barrier
  The arid track, well out with gurgling flood,
    And oft to shade of green oasis leads,
    And, from pursuer thirsting for thy blood,
  Such scanty shelter as is thine provides:
    And though full oft that shelter fails, and though
    Its torn defence demoniac glee derides,
  Yet not for this the cheerful faith forego,
    That memory of uncounted benefits
    And conscious instinct's still, small tones bestow.
  Charge not thy God with aught that unbefits
    Tenderest compassion, nor believe that He
    With hardened apathetic scorn commits
  A favoured people throughout life to be
    Subject to bondage. Doubt not of His will
    To rescue from that galling tyranny.
  Yet, if in His despite creation still
    In thraldom groan and travail--what remains?
    What but that strength is wanting to fulfil
  His scheme of mercy? What but that He reigns,
    Not as sole wielder of omnipotence,
    But, o'er a world unconquered yet, maintains
  Encounter with opposing influence,
    Which He shall surely quell, but which can stay,
    Awhile unquelled, His mightier providence.

  'And doth this sadden only, or dismay?
    Grieves it that He, whose follower thou art,
    Rules not supreme with unresisted sway?
  Or that, the progress of His grace to thwart,
    Satanic might the host of hell arrays?
    And doth it not a thrill of joy impart
  That not alone need barren prayer and praise
    Thine homage be,--thy choicest offering
    The formal dues prescribed obedience pays?
  Henceforth with firmer step approach thy King.
    Some puny succour, thou, in thy degree,
    Some feeble aid, thou, even thou, mayst bring!
  In the fell conflict raging ceaselessly
    Around, thou, too, mayst join--thou, too, engage
    In that dread feud, twin with eternity,
  Which faithful angels and archangels wage
    Against the powers of darkness, to extend,
    O'er realms retained in demon vassalage,
  Their sovereign's pure dominion,--and to blend
    All worlds beneath one righteous governance,
    Into one kingdom which shall have no end.

  'Wouldst thou, if haply so thou mayst, advance
    That blessed consummation? Wouldst thou speed
    The lingering hour of Earth's deliverance?
  Arise--the naked clothe, the hungry feed,
    The sick and wounded tend,--soothe the distressed.
    If thy weak arm cannot protect, yet plead
  With bold rebuke the cause of the oppressed,
    Kindling hot shame in Mammon's votaries,
    Abashed, at least, in lucre's grovelling quest;
  And, in the toil-worn serf, a glad surprise
    Awakening--when, from brute despondency,
    Taught to look up to heaven with dazzled eyes.--
  Thus mayst thou do God service,--thus apply
    Thyself, within thy limit, to abate
    What wickedness thou seest, or misery:
  Thus, in a Sacred Band, associate
    New levies, from the adverse ranks of Sin
    Converted,--against Sin confederate.
  Or--if by outward act to serve, or win
    Joint followers to the standard of thy Lord,
    Thy lot forbid,--turn, then, thy thought within:
  Be each recess of thine own breast explored:
    There, o'er thy passions be thy victories won:
    There, be the altar of thy faith restored,
  And thou, a living sacrifice, thereon
    Present thyself.--This ever mayst thou do,
    Nor, doing this, wilt aught have left undone.'

  Here ceased the Voice, commissioned to renew
    Truth, which, of old, when Bactrian sage began
    Nature's dim maze to thread with slenderest clue,
  Its doubtful scope and dark design to scan,
    With inward whisper, hopeful witness bare,
    And justified the ways of God to man.
  And suddenly its warning ceased, but ere
    It ceased, the scales had fallen from my eyes,
    And I beheld, and shall I not declare
  What my uncurtained vision testifies?
    Shall coward lips the word of life suppress?
    The oracle vouchsafed from Heaven disguise?
  Nay, as one crying in the wilderness,
    Where none else hearken, to the vacant air
    And stolid mountains utters his distress,
  E'en so will I too cry aloud, 'Prepare
    Before Him the Lord's way. Make His path straight,'
    Nor heed though none regard me, nor forbear
  Though all revile, but patiently await
    Till, like light breath that panting meads exhale,
    And scornful zephyrs lightly dissipate,
  But which, full surely, down the echoing vale,
    Shall roll with sounding current, swift and loud,
    My slighted message likewise shall prevail,
  Entering the heart of many a mourner, bowed
    Beneath despair, and with inspiring voice
    Calling to hope to cleave her midnight cloud,
  And bidding grief, in hope's new dawn, rejoice.

This is a creed which long since came to me after earnest inward
communings, and which, though subsequent reflection has in some few
particulars modified it, I still in substance hold, clinging to it with
a grateful consciousness of ever-multiplying obligations. For in it the
soul has free scope for its loftiest aspirations and its widest and
deepest sympathies, strongest incentives to zeal, surest guidance for
activity, solace in every distress, support under every difficulty,
added cause for exultation in every success, renewed resolution in every
defeat. Still, it is here offered, not as ascertained truth, but merely
as a sample of those guesses at truth by which alone ordinary mortals
need hope to promote the common cause of humanity in any of its higher
bearings. Such guesses, however, when harmonising with all the
conditions of their subject-matter, may fairly claim to be provisionally
regarded as truths--nay, to be adopted as working hypotheses until
superseded by new hypotheses capable of doing the same work better; in
which supercession none ought to rejoice, nor, if sincere truth-seekers,
will rejoice, more cordially than the propounders of the discredited
doctrines. It is in this spirit and with these reservations that the
articles of faith above recited are submitted for consideration. How
much soever they may fall short of the truth, they are, I feel, in the
absence of any nearer approach to the truth, capable of rendering
excellent service. However faintly and hazily the outlines of Deity be
shown in them, the Deity whom they so imperfectly delineate is yet one
to whom may justly be ascribed glory in the highest, one worthy of all
trust, love, and adoration--of an adoration, too, inclusive not more of
praise than prayer.

If the divine claim to the last-named tribute be disputed, it had better
be by arguments other than those on which certain writers, with Mr.
Galton for their leader and Professor Tyndall for their backer, have
been recently expending much misapplied ingenuity. If the efficacy of
prayer be, as the foremost of these declares it to be, 'a perfectly
appropriate and legitimate subject of scientific enquiry,' the enquiry
ought at least to be conducted according to scientific rules. On this
point Mr. Galton himself lays much stress, intimating that whereas an
unscientific reasoner may be expected to be 'guided by a confused
recollection of crude experience, a scientific reasoner will scrutinise
each separate experience before he admits it as evidence, and will
compare all the cases he has selected on a methodical system.'
Nevertheless, a brief examination of the experiences on which he and his
principal associate rely, may suggest some doubt as to which of the two
specified classes of reasoners it is that they themselves belong.

The facts or fancies cited by Mr. Galton in proof that praying is of no
use are the following: 1. 'Sick people who pray or are prayed for do not
on the average recover more rapidly than others.' 2. Although 'the
public prayer for the sovereign of every state, Protestant or
Catholic, is and has been in the spirit of our own--"Grant her in health
long to live"--sovereigns are literally the shortest-lived of all
persons who have the advantage of affluence.' 3. The 'clergy are a far
more prayerful class' than either lawyers or medical men, it being
'their profession to pray,' and 'their practice that of offering morning
and evening family prayers in addition to their private devotions,' yet
'we do not find that the clergy are in any way more long-lived in
consequence;' rather, there is room for believing their class to be the
'shortest-lived of the three.' Nay, even missionaries, eminently
prayerful as they are themselves, and prayed for as they are with
especial earnestness by others, 'are not supernaturally endowed with
health,' and 'do not live longer than other people.' 4. 'The proportion
of deaths at the time of birth is identical among the children of the
praying and the non-praying classes.' 5. Though 'we pray in our Liturgy
that "the nobility may be endowed with grace, wisdom, and
understanding,"' our 'nobility are peculiarly subject to insanity;' as
are likewise, indeed, 'very religious people of all denominations,'
'religious madness being very common indeed.' 6. So far from 'religious
influences' appearing to have 'clustered in any remarkable degree round
the youth of those who, whether by their talents or their social
position, have left a mark upon English history,' 'remarkable devotional
tendencies' have been conspicuous chiefly by their absence from 'the
lives either of our Lord Chancellors or of the leaders of our great
political parties;' while, out of our twenty-three extant dukes, four at
least, if not five, are descended from mistresses of Charles II., not a
single one of them, on the other hand, being known to Mr. Galton to be
of 'eminently prayerful qualities.' 7. In respect of those
'institutions, societies, commercial adventures, political meetings and
combinations of all sorts' with which England so much abounds, and of
which 'some are exclusively clerical, some lay, and others mixed,' Mr.
Galton 'for his own part never heard a favourable opinion of the value
of the preponderating clerical element in their business committees.'
'The procedure of Convocation which, like all exclusively clerical
meetings, is opened with prayer, has not inspired the outer world with
much respect.' Nay, 'it is a common week-day opinion of the world that
praying people are not practical.' 8. In those numerous instances in
which an enterprise is executed by the agency of the profane on behalf
not of the profane themselves but of pious clients, 'the enterprises are
not observed to prosper beyond the average.' Underwriters recognise no
difference in the risks run by missionary ships and by ordinary traders,
nor do life insurance companies, before they accept a life, introduce
into their 'confidential enquiries into the antecedents of the
applicant' any 'such question as "Does he habitually use family prayers
and private devotions?"' Neither are the funds of devout shareholders
and depositors at all safer than those of the profane when entrusted to
the custody of untrustworthy directors, not even though the day's work
of the undertaking commence, as that of the disastrous Royal British
Bank used to do, with solemn prayer.[52]

Two or three minutes' attention to the grounds for, and the
circumstances connected with, these statements, may assist us in
appreciating Mr. Galton's notion of the difference between confusedly
recollected experiences and experiences properly scrutinised and
methodically selected.

For the statement first on the list, some negative evidence is
considered to be afforded by the absence of any 'single instance in
which papers read before Statistical Societies have recognised the
agency of prayer either in disease or in anything else.' The chief
authority for it, however, is the eloquent silence of medical men 'who,
had prayers for the sick any notable effect, would be sure to have
observed it,' seeing that they are 'always on the watch for such
things.' But are they really, in every case of recovery from illness
that comes under their notice, so particular and so successful in their
enquiries whether any, and, if so, how much, prayer has been offered on
behalf of the patient, as to be qualified to judge whether prayer has
had anything to do with the cure? If not, although they may be showing
their discretion by not speaking on the point, the 'eloquence of their
silence' must not be too hastily interpreted. For doctors, of all men,
should be the last to deny, as an abstract proposition, the efficacy of
prayer in disease, knowing, as they do, how great is the curative
influence of prayer when addressed to themselves. How, they may
naturally ask, is it to be expected that sickness should be cured unless
properly treated? and how can it be properly treated without a doctor?
and how can a doctor be expected to attend unless he be asked? Upon
which very natural queries others naturally follow. What would be the
good of the doctor's coming unless he prescribed judiciously? and will
he not more certainly prescribe judiciously if his judgment be guided by
special interposition of divine grace? and if prayer to himself has
plainly been one condition of his coming, why may not prayer to God
have been one condition of his judgment having been rightly guided? Will
it be pretended that God's proceedings are abjectly submissive to
inexorable laws from which those of the doctor are exempt, and that
though the latter would certainly not have attended unless he had been
asked, the grace of God, if given at all, must have been given equally
whether asked for or not?

Statements 2 and 3 are founded on a memoir by Dr. Guy, purporting to
show the 'Mean Age attained by males of various classes who had survived
their 30th year from 1758 to 1843,' and whose deaths were not caused by
violence or accident. According to this table, the average age of 97
members of royal houses was only 64·04, while that of 1,179 members of
the English aristocracy was 67·31, and that of 1,632 gentlemen commoners
70·22; the proportion between the total number of royal, and that of
noble and gentle, personages who died within the period specified, being
apparently supposed to be as 97 to 2811, or as 1 to about 29. Except
upon this supposition, Mr. Galton could not with any consistency have
appealed to these figures, for he had previously announced his intention
to be 'guided solely by broad averages and not to deal with isolated
instances.' He seems, however, to forget this judicious rule when he
comes to treat of the clergy, of whom 945 are compared in the table with
294 lawyers and 244 medical men. Here, he says, 'the clergy as a whole
show a life value of 69·49 against 68·14 for lawyers, and 67·31 for
medical men;' but then, he adds 'this difference is reversed' when the
comparison is made between members of the three classes sufficiently
distinguished to have had their lives recorded in Chalmers'
Biographical Dictionary or the Annual Register, the value of life among
clergy, lawyers, and medical men then appearing as 66·42, 66·51 and
67·34 respectively. Whether, of the distinguished professional men
concerned in this second comparison, the parsons were distinguished for
their prayerfulness and the lawyers and doctors for their
prayerlessness, Mr. Galton omits to state; and still more serious
omissions on his part are those of not mentioning in what part of our
Liturgy we are accustomed to pray that it may be granted to the Queen,
not simply long to live, but also to live longer than other people;
likewise in which of 'the numerous published collections of family
prayers' that have undergone his scrutiny, is to be found a petition
that parsons may live longer than lawyers or doctors; and, yet again,
since an _average_, falling short of threescore years and ten by little
more than three and a half, is so contemptuously rejected by him, what
is the precise number of years that would be accepted by him as a
liberal compliance with prayer for long life?

While deducing his argument from clergymen, Mr. Galton makes repeated
and particular reference to the clerical _sub-genus_, missionaries,
treating it as the more remarkable that these should not enjoy
comparative immunity from disease, because, as he suggests, it would
have been so easy for God to have made them a favoured class in respect
of health: to wit, by the notable expedient of dissuading them from
exposing themselves to any of the risks peculiarly attendant on
missionary enterprise. 'Tropical fever, for example, is due to many
subtle causes which are partly under man's control. A single hour's
exposure to sun, or wet, or fatigue, or mental agitation will determine
an attack.' What more simple than for God so to 'act on the minds of
the missionaries as to disincline them to take those courses which might
result in mischance, such as the forced march, the wetting, the
abstinence from food, or the night exposure?' What more simple, either,
it may be added, than for God to save prayerful soldiers from ever being
killed in battle by merely putting it into their minds to desert
whenever they are ordered upon active service?

That 'the distribution of still-births is wholly unaffected by piety'
Mr. Galton has satisfied himself by finding, 'on examination of a
particular period, that the proportion of such births published in the
'Record' newspaper and in the 'Times' bore an identical relation to the
total number of deaths.' He had previously, we must suppose, satisfied
himself that advertisers in the 'Times' never say their prayers.

For the asserted commonness of religious madness Mr. Galton cites no
evidence whatever, and, to judge from the sympathies and antipathies of
which one of his avowed opinions may be supposed to be the subject and
the object, speaks probably on this point solely from hearsay. Very
possibly, however, his assurance of the extraordinary prevalence of
insanity among British noblemen may be based on personal observation,
as, of course, is that regarding the prayerlessness of his own ducal
acquaintances. Birds of a feather, proverbially, flock together, and the
same touch of irreligion may quite possibly suffice to make certain
dukes and certain commoners kin.

Against the inefficiency, however notorious, of the clerical element in
business committees, ought in fairness to be set the equally notorious
efficiency of Jesuits in whatever they undertake, the signal statecraft
displayed by the Wolseys, the Richelieus, and the Ximenes's of the days
in which cardinals and archbishops were permitted to take a leading
part in executive politics, and the very respectable figure still
presented by the lords spiritual, beside the lords temporal of the
British House of Peers. As for 'the common week-day opinion that praying
people are not practical,' those by whom it is entertained, of course,
mentally except praying Quakers.

The fact that insurance offices do not attempt to distinguish between
the prayerful and the prayerless, but, treating both classes as liable
to the same risks, exact from both the same premiums, proves, I submit,
nothing against the efficacy of prayer, not even that the managers of
insurance offices do not believe in it. The statement that prayerful and
prayerless, when placing their money in the same dishonest keeping, or
engaging in the same bad speculations, suffer losses, bearing exactly
the same proportion to their respective ventures, although most probably
quite true, is also one which Mr. Galton has neglected to verify by the
application to it of any test, scientific or other. Finally, if the
disasters of the Royal British Bank are to be ascribed to its custom of
opening business with prayer, not only ought the cackle of Convocation
to be attributed to a similar cause, but also all the legislative
botchery of the House of Commons, and the abolition of prayer before
debate should be treated as the most urgently needed of those further
parliamentary reforms with which the fertile brains of certain eminent
statesmen are suspected to be teeming.

Thus much by way of intimation that there would be no excessive temerity
in encountering Mr. Galton even on the ground of his own choosing, were
that ground really worth contending for. But baseless and exorbitant as
all Mr. Galton's postulates are, there is not one of them to which he
might not be made heartily welcome, for any effect its surrender could
have upon the real issue, the true nature whereof both Mr. Galton and
his principal coadjutor have, with marvellous sleight of eye, contrived
completely to overlook. Such Pharisees in science, such sticklers for
rigorously scientific method, might have been expected to begin by
authenticating the materials they proposed to operate upon, and, when
professing to experiment upon pure metal, at least to see that it was
not mere dross they were casting into the crucible. Plainly, however,
they despise any such nice distinctions. The most earnest prayer and the
emptiest ceremonial prate are both alike to them. What sort of a process
they imagine prayer to be may be at once perceived from the sort of
trials to which they desire to subject it.

'After much thought and examination,' the coadjutor aforesaid--a bashful
Teucer, over whom Professor Tyndall has, like a second Ajax Telamon,
extended, with chivalrous haste, the shelter of his shield--does 'not
hesitate to propose that one single ward or hospital under the care of
first-rate physicians or surgeons, containing a number of patients
afflicted with those diseases which have been best studied, and of which
the mortality rates are best known, should be, during a period of not
less than three to five years, made the object of special prayer by the
whole body of the faithful, and that, at the end of that time, the
mortality rates should be compared with the past rates, and also with
those of other leading hospitals similarly well managed during the same
period.'[53] In suggesting this experiment, termed by himself
'exhaustive and complete,' its propounder imagines himself to be
offering to the faithful 'an occasion of demonstrating to the faithless
an imperishable record of the real power of prayer.' If, however, he
were himself petitioning for the reprieve of a condemned criminal, he
would scarcely expect to succeed, even with so tender-hearted a minister
as Mr. Bruce, if he were to let out in the course of his supplications,
that he did not care whether he succeeded or not, and was asking for the
reprieve solely for the purpose of ascertaining whether the head of the
Home Office is really invested with the prerogative of mercy. Yet no
suspicion crosses his mind that the Searcher of Hearts may possibly be
displeased with prayers addressed to Him by the lips of those who were,
all the while, saying in their hearts that they did not want their
prayers to be granted, but only wanted to satisfy their curiosity to
know whether they would be granted or not. Equally remarkable is the
trustfulness of Mr. Galton, in opining that 'it would be perfectly
practicable to select out of the patients at different hospitals under
treatment for fractures, or amputations, or other common maladies, whose
course is so well understood as to admit of accurate tables being
constructed for their duration and result, two considerable groups, the
one consisting of markedly religious and piously befriended individuals,
the other of those who were remarkably cold-hearted and neglected; and
that, then, an honest comparison of their respective periods of
treatment, and the result, would manifest a distinct proof of the
efficacy of prayer, if it existed to even a minute fraction of the
amount that religious teachers exhort us to believe.' Evidently, he
imagines that it would be sufficient for the hospital authorities to
advertise--not of course, in the 'Times,' but in the 'Record'--and
that, thereupon, whoever, having entered into his closet and shut the
door, had, on behalf of any of the patients experimented upon, prayed to
the Father who seeth in secret, would at once come forth and proclaim
openly how he had been engaged. Not by 'arguments' of no greater
'cogency' than that of any based upon results thus obtainable, need
either of the two experimentalists expect to persuade praying people
that prayer is, 'in the natural course of events,' doomed to become
'obsolete, just as the Waters of Jealousy and the Urim and Thummin of
the Mosaic Law did in the times of the later Jewish Kings.' Not quite so
easily will they cause it to be 'abandoned to the domain of recognised
superstition,' just as belief in witches and in the Sovereign's touch as
a cure for scrofula, and 'many other items of ancient faith have already
successively been.' Both of them have, it seems, yet to learn that the
only prayer which is believed by people of some little enlightenment to
be of any avail, is the 'fervent, effectual prayer of a righteous man,'
prayer that cometh from 'a pure heart fervently,' prayer that is made
'with the spirit and with the understanding also.' Prayer of this sort
is not to be discredited by any abundance of statistical testimony to
the futility of cold lip-worship, or by any number of fresh examples of
the generally recognised fact that the children of this world are wiser
in their generation than the children of light. The recovery from the
very jaws of death of King Hezekiah, of Louis XV. of France, while as
yet undetected and _bien-aimé_, and of the present Prince of Wales, may,
none the less probably, have been in part due to the prayers offered up
for the first by himself, for the second, according to President Hénault
and Mr. Carlyle, by all Paris, and, for the third, by the whole British
empire, because _lessons_ appointed to be regularly said or _sung_ in
churches for the prolongation of the Sovereign's life, and said and sung
by the congregations to whom they are set, with equal regularity,
whether the Sovereign be well or ill, detested or beloved, are to all
appearance disregarded. Modern believers in prayer are well aware that,
although they ask, they may not receive if they ask amiss, and would
accept this as fully adequate explanation of the disappointment of
anyone, who had the face to pray that he might grow as rich as the late
Mr. Brassey, or be created a duke, or appointed Lord Chancellor, or
supplant Mr. Gladstone in the premiership, or Mr. D'Israeli in the
leadership of Her Majesty's Opposition. Moreover, the spirit, duly
seasoned with understanding, in which alone true prayer can be made, is
one, not of presumptuous dictation to a Heavenly Father, but of sincere
and grateful recognition that 'He knoweth better than ourselves what is
for our good.' Far from praying for selfish aggrandisement, we cannot,
if we pray aright, pray that, whether from ourselves or others, the cup
of affliction may pass away, without adding, 'Nevertheless, not as I
will, but as Thou wilt.' The only gifts that can with propriety be
prayed for unconditionally are gifts spiritual--cleansing of the
thoughts of the heart, strength to resist temptation, strength to endure
trials, strength to perform our appointed work; and whoever may think
fit to make these the subjects of statistical inquiry, may depend upon
being assured by everyone experimentally qualified to reply, that they
are never asked for faithfully without being obtained effectually;
together with large measure, if not of the cheerfulness, at least of the
patience, of hope.

FOOTNOTES:

[50] 'Auguste Comte and Positivism,' pp. 25-8.

[51] 'Fortnightly Review' for June 1868, 'Mr. Darwin's Hypotheses.'

[52] 'Statistical Enquiries into the Efficacy of Prayer,' by Francis
Galton, in Fornightly Review,' for August 1872.

[53] 'Contemporary Review,' July 1872. 'The Prayer for the Sick. Hints
towards a serious attempt to estimate its value.' Communicated by Prof.
Tyndall.

_EPILOGUE._

  If with rash step, or with presumptuous word
  I have transgressed, or with unshrinking eye
  Have sought to pierce the awful mystery
  That veils thy Godhead, yet forgive me, Lord!
  Thou knowest that I sought not to draw nigh
  Thy Throne, save that my witness might record
  More truly of Thine attributes, whereby
  On Earth, e'en as in Heaven, might be adored
  The fulness of Thy glory. Not in wrath
  His trespass wilt Thou judge, whom, licence, bred
  Of zeal, though blinded, yet devout, betrays,
  Nor scorn the unconscious wanderer from Thy path,
  Nor leave me hopeless, if indeed misled
  By thirst for truth, more deep in error's maze.

  LONDON: PRINTED BY
  SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
  AND PARLIAMENT STREET

_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._

ON LABOUR:

ITS WRONGFUL CLAIMS AND RIGHTFUL DUES;

ITS ACTUAL PRESENT AND POSSIBLE FUTURE.

SECOND EDITION.

8vo. cloth, price 14_s._

'This is a book which all true economists should welcome.'

  ECONOMIST..

'It may be doubted whether any considerable economic work of equal merit
has appeared since the first publication of Mr. Mill's "Political
Economy."'

  ATHENÆUM.

MACMILLAN & CO., London.