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186

OUR INNER SENSE

temptation and fail in life's race. Is any one not actually insane-and such a one by the hypothesis would not be likely to argue about it-justified in believing that "he is as completely the result of his nature, and impelled to do what he does as the needle turns to the pole, or the puppet obeys the pull of the string "? Has God the right, according to our best human judgment, to send into the world those who are as certain to break the moral law as the elements are certain to obey the natural law? We cannot imagine that a just God would act thus; the question is, has the God in whom we believe actually done anything of the sort ? We must not skip difficulties. Browning never does that. He declares that in every man there is an eye instructed by an inner sense to distinguish the light of heaven from the dark of hell, and that the worst man living has a conscience that tells him what right is, though he may never obey it. The obscuration of that light, and the hardening of the heart against that voice, are the acts of the man and not the fault of God. That heredity may hinder us is true enough; it is not less true that heredity on the whole helps us far more than it impedes. If the good and bad traits of the parent were not transmitted to the child, every one born into the world would have to start the business of

1 Christmas Eve.

HOW HEREDITY HELPS

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life on his own account, without any capitalized experience. There could be no such thing as progress. We should have to learn everything afresh, and every child would be worse off intellectually than the child of prehistoric man. A child may be a congenital idiot, but then he is not a responsible being, and has a claim on the sympathy and charity of the world. He may by the fault or affliction of his parents be the subject of epilepsy and other diseases which tend to weaken if not destroy his responsibility. Browning does not discuss exceptional, pathological cases like these, which after all are, for practical purposes, a negligible quantity in the argument. Short of actual mental disease, we have to face the problem how far the descent of bad tendencies from parent to child affects that person's position before his Creator. Browning says, admitting the hereditary tendency to evil, which may sometimes amount to a double dose of original sin, there is for compensation in every one a supernatural monitor warning and enlightening us" a reason out of nature" to turn hard hearts soft.1

1 Halbert and Hob.

CHAPTER XII

PRAYER

"Is it proper to pray?" asks St. Thomas Aquinas, and in answering the question he says: "We must so lay down the utility of prayer as neither to attribute any fatality to the course of human history, subject as it is to Providence ; nor, again, reckon the divine arrangement to be alterable." God is All-wise, All-good, Allmighty.

"How then should man, the all-unworthy, dare Propose to set aside a thing ordained?

To pray means-substitute man's will for God's.

Yet manthe foolish, weak, and wicked-pray! Urges 'My best were better, didst Thou know!'" 2 This is a fair example of the popular objection to prayer made by those who have no claim to tell us what prayer really is. No thoughtful Christian desires to substitute his will for God's, nor does prayer consist merely in begging from the Supreme some coveted boon.

1 Summa, Pt. II.—II., Qu. lxxxiii., Art 2.
2 Ferishtah's Fancies: "The Family."

CARLYLE ON PRAYER

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"Prayer," said Thomas Carlyle, in a letter to a young friend, "is a turning of one's soul, in heroic reverence, in infinite desire and endeavour, towards the Highest, the All-excellent, Supreme. Prayer is the aspiration of our poor, struggling, heavy-laden soul towards its Eternal father, and, with or without words, ought not to become impossible, nor need it ever. Loyal sons and subjects can approach the King's throne who have no 'request' to make there, except that they may continue loyal."

Browning makes his objector to prayer argue that "two best wills cannot be," but prayer which omits "Thy will be done" carries its own rejection. Says St. Thomas-"Divine Providence not only arranges what effects are to take place, but also from what causes and in what order

they are to arise. Now among other causes

human acts count as causes of certain effects. Hence men need to do sundry things, not that by their acts they may alter the divine plan, but that by their acts they may fulfil certain effects according to the order arranged by God. And so it is with prayer; for we do not pray to alter the divine plan, but to obtain what God has arranged to be fulfilled by prayers, 'to the end that men by asking may deserve to obtain what God Almighty before all ages has arranged to give them,' as Gregory says.'

"1

1 Summa, ut supra.

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HUXLEY ON PRAYER

In prayer we raise our minds to God, and hold converse with Him. If there be nought but cold, inflexible "Law" above us, then indeed it would be useless to pray. Men do not invoke the law of gravitation, nor seek to arrest the march of the seasons; but God is our Father, and the laws of the universe are His modes of working. "He is not the mere figure-head of the ship, which sails with it, but cannot steer it," as has been well said, but He is the governing power of the universe and the Father of our spirits. Browning therefore bids us not be overwise, nor try to discard our humanity

"No, be man and nothing more—

Man who, as man conceiving, hopes and fears,
And craves and deprecates, and loves, and loathes,
And bids God help him, till death touch his eyes
And show God granted most, denying all."1

Bishop Barry, in an admirable article in the Nineteenth Century for August 1895, entitled A Defence of Prayer, reminds us that Professor Huxley declared "that it is not upon any d priori considerations that objections, either to the supposed efficacy of prayer in modifying the course of events, or to the supposed occurrence of miracles, can be scientifically based. The real objection is the adequacy of the evidence." The Bishop goes on to explain that Professor Huxley,

1 Ferishtah's Fancies: "The Family."

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