God is said to be all goodness. Goodness is the performance of duty. Perfect goodness is the performance of all duty, and of nothing beyond. It is also the performance of all duty without reluctance or hesitation. Prayer is an insult to this quality of God’s character. It implies that his goodness is not perfect. Every blessing for which man can ask, it is the duty of God either to grant or to withhold. In either case, prayer implies the possibility of imperfection. To ask God to grant a blessing which it is his duty to grant, is to assume that he will not do his duty without being urged. Such an assumption is downright insolence. To ask for a blessing which it is God’s duty to withhold, is to assume that he can be persuaded to commit sin. This, too, can only be regarded as an insult. In both cases prayer is useless, because God is not likely to grant a blessing asked in the same breath an insult is given.
We are told that God is pleased with prayer, because it shows our faith in his goodness. It rather shows our lack of faith. To be continually asking for blessings, implies a doubt whether we shall get them if we do ask. He who never prays shows the most faith, for he takes it for granted that God is good, and if he is good, he will provide for his children unasked. The child has faith that his father will provide for him, but he never asks him to do so. Such conduct would prove him unworthy of his father’s care. So with prayer; the praying man is the true skeptic, and the Infidel is the true believer.
Prayer makes God a changeable being. It implies that he will grant any favor we ask, whether he had previously designed to do so or not. If we were privy to his designs, and knew what blessings he intended to bestow, we could ask only for such as he had intended to give us. In the absence of this knowledge we pray blindly for blessings which it may be, he has determined to withhold. This necessarily implies that he may change his designs. If the object pleaded for is a good one, such a change would be perfectly proper in an earthly monarch. In God it would be fanciful in the extreme. It would place his will at the disposal of a million fallible human beings. It would overthrow the harmony of his government, and replace it by the most reckless chance. Our reception of a blessing would depend no longer on God’s goodness; it would depend on whether some other person of greater persuasive power, was or was not asking an opposite blessing at the same time. God would be in constant indecision, and we should be in constant doubt. Prayer, then, is based on the changeableness of an unchangeable being, and therefore valueless.
Prayer, in theory, is based on the supposition of God’s personality; prayer, in practice, assumes that God is omnipotent. It supposes that he can be in all places at all times. People are praying at all hours of the day and in all quarters of the globe. To hear them all God must be at such places at such times. To do this he must cease to be a personal being, he must cease to be God. He will then have no intelligence, no volition, for these depend on a personal organization. Prayer, therefore, logically annihilates the being to whom it is addressed.
Prayer implies doubt of the wisdom of God. To pray is to ask for a certain blessing. We assume that such a blessing is best for us, and inform God of the fact. After insulting his goodness by asking for a blessing, we insult his intelligence by specifying what that blessing shall be. Prayers are rarely or never asked for general blessings alone. A person who asks for a blessing and leaves the choice of that blessing wholly to God, is liable to be considered a lunatic by all true believers. Yet to do otherwise is to deny God’s omniscience. It assumes that God does not know what our wants are. If God is a rational being, he can only treat such an assumption with contempt. Prayer has been tried for two thousand years and with no result. No prayer has ever been directly or indirectly answered by God. On the contrary, he apparently delighted in mocking those who call upon him. When the Ville du Havre went down, over two hundred ministers were praying for their lives, but in vain. Two girls who trusted not in prayers, but in swimming-belts, alone were saved. (“Logic of Prayer,” Charles Stevenson.)
Some years ago when the yellow fever raged at Memphis, Tennessee, the pious people of this country prayed most devoutly to have the plague swept away. These prayers were repeated, were offered up by the most faithful in the Christian ranks, but all in vain. They had read in their Bible that the prayers of the righteous availeth much. They had been taught to believe that “all things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.” ([Mat. 21 : 22].) There is no one thing that Jesus taught more explicitly than this; the prayers of those who truly believe shall be answered. He said:
Therefore I say unto you, What things so ever ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. ([Mark 21 : 24].)
But we see that prayers are not answered. And besides, those prayers which it is claimed are answered carry no proof of the fact with them.
Did not millions of Christians pray for the restoration of President Garfield? How utterly delusive it is to palm off as truth the following promise upon credulous minds:
Again I say unto you that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything ye shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father, which is in heaven. ([Mat. 18 : 19].)