The bearing of all that we have just said on the necessity of prayer will have already suggested itself to the reader. The feeling of dependence, the sense of feebleness will prompt man to pray. Man is not sufficient for himself. He is not fit to be his own all in all. He has not resources within himself to supply his own spiritual wants. He needs some external succor, some support to the will, some inspiration from without. And he can become a strong man and a noble man only by aspiring and striving after something beyond and above himself—
"Unless above himself he can
Erect himself, how mean a thing is man!"
When his affections and cares and thoughts all centre upon himself, his soul shrivels down to a dreary selfishness, and becomes a dry microscopic point, or else a mass of putrid sensuality. Man needs a lofty object above himself, after which he may aspire and upon which he may lay hold and lift himself into a nobler form of life. That lofty object is the ideal of a perfect, noble human character. "The formation of noble human character," says Mr. Murphy, "is the highest work that man or, so far as we know, that God can be engaged in."[418] The thoughtful mind recognizes that there is a purpose to be fulfilled in life which is nobler than mere enjoyment. Who has dared to say that our highest duty is to be happy? But every one must feel that it is our highest duty to form a nobler character and let the happiness take care of itself.
And now is it not a fact of experience that the more a man strives after a pure and noble life, the more does he become conscious of the need of superhuman strength and grace? He finds that he has to wage an uncompromising, sometimes even agonizing warfare against hereditary "taints of blood," against morbid instincts and low passions, against inherent selfishness and meanness, against tyrant habits engendered in the recklessness of youth, against the temptations of designing men and abandoned women, and the false sentiment, despotic opinion, and arbitrary customs of modern fashionable society. In the presence of these giants of evil with their fetters of iron he stands appalled, and against himself, against his temptations and sins, even against society itself, he feels he must call upon God for help. Through Divine strength he may conquer; without it—never. There are those who hope to conquer evil through a certain inherent force of nature, or a certain self-caused and self-attained culture. We do not dare to say that they will utterly fail, or that what they achieve is utterly valueless. But we do say that the character they develop is not the highest style of excellence. There is in it a boldness bordering on audacity, a self-sufficiency akin to haughtiness, and an arbitrariness which is repulsive. The very basis of a noble character, the very essence of that prophetic power which has exerted the mightiest influence on the destinies of man, is humility. The loftiest and finest minds have been eminently trustful—men of heroic confidence who derived their inspiration and confessed their dependence on the light and strength which come from above. These are the men who really shape the history of the world,[419] these are the men who command the esteem and win the reverence even of unbelievers. We can not illustrate this point better than by quoting the words of Dr. Tyndall in regard to Michael Faraday. Faraday, it is well known, was one of the greatest of modern scientists—it ought also to be as widely known that he was a devout Christian. Tyndall dined with Faraday, and on that occasion Faraday "said grace."
Tyndall writes: "I am almost ashamed to call his prayer a 'saying' of grace. In the language of Scripture, it might be described as the petition of a son into whose heart God had sent the Spirit of his Son, and who, with absolute trust, asked a blessing from his father. We dined on roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, and potatoes; drank sherry, talked of research and its requirements, and of his habit of keeping himself free from the distractions of society. He was bright and joyful—boylike, in fact—though he is now sixty-two. His work excites my admiration, but contact with him warms my heart. Here surely is a strong man. I love strength, but let me not forget the example of its union with modesty, tenderness, and sweetness in the character of Faraday."[420]
This, then, is the point we desire to emphasize. It is a fact of experience that prayer can give calmness, purity, and strength of soul. It can lighten perplexity and sorrow. It can empower us to resist temptation, and enable us to overcome sin. It can give "modesty, tenderness, and sweetness" to character. In a word, it can aid us materially in the formation of a noble human character.
Noble character can only be formed under two conditions. First, it can only be formed under the condition of freedom. The unfree is the unmoral.[421] There can be no dignity and no moral worth in action which results from mere mechanical force. Personality alone has responsibility, dignity, and worth. If, then, moral personality has true freedom and self-determination, we are free to pray, and God is free to answer prayer. We may believe that the physical world is held in iron bands of necessary causation, but we can not believe that the moral world is so bound. The human will is free, and the Divine will is free. "The First Cause," says Mr. Spencer, "includes within itself all power"—therefore alternative power—"and transcends all law"—therefore it can not be necessitated. We can not doubt that Mr. Tyndall would freely accord this position. He might hesitate, he would unquestionably refuse to unite in "prayer for rain," for example, because he holds that the fall of rain is governed by changeless physical laws, and "no act of humiliation, individual or national, could call one shower from heaven;" this would be a miracle, and "the age of miracles is past."[422] But we do not see how he could refuse to unite in the prayers of the National Church for the forgiveness of sins, for strength to overcome sin, for fortitude to endure, and for consolation under the afflictions and sorrows incident to human life.
The second condition necessary to the development of noble character is that man shall be capable of receiving inspiration from the great source of all life, especially of all spiritual life. The universal belief of our race that there is a community of nature between God and man, expressed alike in the words of Aratus, the Asiatic poet, Cleanthes, the Stoic philosopher, and Paul, the Christian teacher—"We are the offspring of God"—justifies the further expectation and hope that there may be a real communion between the human and the Divine. Of course this is fundamentally "a question between Theism and Atheism, between a God and no God," between a conscious Being and an unconscious Force. If there is a personal God, then He may communicate with our souls which dwell, as it were, within the ocean of his immensity, and are surrounded and interpenetrated by his living presence. Then there may be a real sympathy, a loving fellowship, and a sanctifying communion. Even should science forbid the Author of nature to interpose in the slightest degree in the procession of phenomena or modify in the least the action of the so-called natural forces, surely it will not be so "audacious"[423] as to forbid that He shall come near to human souls, and interpose in the moral order of the world to deliver man from sin and purify and elevate human society. Here at any rate science is out of its place. It is guilty of that very presumption with which it is evermore charging the theology of the Middle Ages, viz., the attempt to monopolize the whole field of human knowledge and experience. If the good man does feel that God is with him and in him, if he knows by experience that prayer is an act of Divine communion—that it opens to him an unfailing fountain of refreshment, solace, and strength; if he is conscious that it does lift him up to a larger and more blessed life, then even science, which boasts its rigid adherence to the inductive method, and its unswerving loyalty to fact and experience, must obey the Divine injunction—"Be still, and know that I am God." "I dwell with him that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite."
2. We come now to the consideration of the second question, What are the facts concerning the order of nature which have been placed beyond controversy by the inductions of science, and what are the logical inferences from these facts?