"I ask that one single ward or hospital, under the care of first-rate physician's and surgeons, containing certain numbers of patients afflicted with those diseases which have been best studied, and of which the mortality rates are best known, whether the diseases arc those which are treated by medical or by surgical remedies, should be, during a period of not less, say, than three or five years, made the objects of special prayer by the whole body of the faithful ; and that at the end of that time the mortal- ity rates should be compared with the past rates, and also with the rates of other leading hospitals similarly well managed during the same period."
This proposal is open to several grave objections.
1. It is not warranted by the Scriptures nor by the nat- ure of prayer. Neither religion nor science is under any obligation to accept all challenges. No system of truth does that. The true man of science comes to nat- ure, not as a dictator, but as the humblest of learners. He does not invent tests and demand that she shall ac- cept them ; he ingeniously finds out what tests she pro- poses to him. It is his office, not to alter nor to criticise, but to interpret her hieroglyphics.
In the same spirit we must study Christianity. The Bible is our text-book. We compare its parts with each other, and the whole with human consciousness and ex- perience. We come to the book as learners. We are to accept and try the tests it offers, and not to set up tests of our own. It teaches a doctrine of prayer; it makes prayer to be a real and mighty power — a power produc- ing physical results — but efficient only under prescribed conditions. These conditions, so far as they relate to the special case before us, are sufficiently indicated in these words: "The fervent, effectual prayer of a right- eous man availeth much;" "the prayer of faith shall save the sick." The promise is attached only to the earnest, importunate supplication of a righteous man, offered with fidl faith in God. The prayer proposed to us vacates the essential conditions of prayer. It aims not directlv at the result it asks, but indirectly to test God. It says, " Will he ?" Faith says, " He will." The thing it seeks is not really the healing of the sick, but "to confer quantitative precision on the action of the supernatural in nature."
This sort of challenge is not new in substance, if it is in form. How do the Scriptures treat it? On a cer- tain occasion a personage of very acute intellect and large intelligence conducted the perfect man to a pre- cipitous height, and challenged him to prove his claims by casting himself down, trusting to be borne up on angels' wings; and he quoted Scripture to enforce the test. The reply was simply, " Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." When that perfect and divine man hung on the cross the minions of the arch-tempter pro- posed another test, "Let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe in him ;" but he came not down. When once a miracle was demanded of Jesus he said, "You have ahead}' more convincing proofs than sufficed for the Ninevites and for the queen of Sheba; an evil ami an adulterous generation seeketh after a sign." A lost spirit, himself convinced at last by the re- sistless argument of hell-torment, prayed for the resur- rection of a dead man to convince his brothers, but was VIII.— H h
assured on the highest authority, " If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead."
2. The test proposed would be nvyatory. Suppose it were admissible, and that the Christian world should gladly accept it, and that the results should be all that believers could desire. The hospital is selected — St. Luke's, the west wing; one hundred patients of the kinds indicated are entered. The same surgeons, phy- sicians, and nurses have charge of both wings; the tem- perature, treatment, and diet are the same ; there is per- . feet scientific exactness in all the conditions, except that the patients in the west wing are made the subjects of daily prayer wherever prayer to the God of the Bible is offered. After three or five years the hospital records are inspected and compared with other records, and it is found that twenty-nine and a half per cent, more recov- eries have taken place in the wards which prayer has overshadowed than, in similar cases, anywhere else in the world.
Now, what will the sceptical men of science say? " The Lord, he is the God ; prayer is vindicated forever ; we have found a new force ?" Not at all. We should hear such suggestions as these: "It may be the morn- ing sun is bad, or the clatter of wheels and hoofs on the avenue has injured the patients in the east wing;" "We more than suspect some of the nurses and physicians in the west wing have a bias towards Christianity;" "Probably some new remedy has been secretly used; at all events, though there is something mysterious about it, this we know, nothing can contravene the laws of nature." Let not such a supposition be thought slan- derous. The prototypes of such men were not convinced by miracles. Some of the persons who witnessed the resurrection of Lazarus went about from that very day to kill Jesus— yes, and to kill Lazarus too, lest the sight of him might convince others.