CANON LIDDON ON PRAYER AND MIRACLE.
IN the second edition to his thoughtful lectures on "Some Ele- ments of Religion," reviewed in these columns a year and a quarter ago,.1. Canon Liddon has replied in a very clear, cireful, and interesting preface, to our criticism on his doctrine of iirayer as some- times at least involving prayer for a miracle, and so far as it does so, as being really open to the scientific objections which are so often unreasonably directed against all prayer. Dr. Liddon's reply makes it evident that he regards all answer to prayer as miraculous, in any sense in which he can attach an intelligible meaning to the word 'miraculous' :—" It may perhaps be questioned," he says, "whether every real answer to prayer is not miraculous. Or, to speak more accurately, every such answer involves a certain departure from what, as we presume, would otherwise have been His mode of working who works everywhere, in the physical as in the moral world. The difference between a resurrection from the dead at a prophet's prayer, and the increase of clearsightedness or of love, through the infusion of grace in the soul of a cottager, is a difference of degree. It is not a difference of kind. Each result is- the product of a Divine interference with the normal course of things." And it is, we suppose, a development of the same idea, when he tells us in a subsequent page that he regards the reign of Law as extending to all regions of the universe equally, in all senses in which it extends to any, and not to be in the least inconsistent with the existence of free-will, though unquestionably "the activity of free-will in the moral sphere makes the laws which govern that sphere much more in- tricate and difficult to trace than are physical laws." Free-will, says Dr. Liddon, "cannot be held to annihilate all law in the highest region of created life, and therefore, if the presence of law be an objection to prayer anywhere, it is an objection to prayer everywhere. If it is an impertinence to ask God to vary His ordinary working in the lower region of physics, it must be an impertinence to ask Him to do so, in the higher region of spiritual being,—of morals."
We cannot agree with this view of the matter, which seems to us not to be built on a distinct apprehension of the word "law" in its scientific sense. We understand the region of Law to be the region of practically invariable successions of phenomena, —phenomena in the order of which, when that order is dis- covered, thousands or millions of experiments have failed to discern any variation, and the order of which, so far as it is unknown, is assumed to present equally invariable lines of succession to the penetration'of the investigator. Of course, we do not for a moment deny to God the power to vary, if he will, even the most uniform of all natural successions. We take the uniformity of Nature to be the sign and result of his will, not a controlling power of fate overruling his will ; but the distinction is clear between successions in phenomena the order of which is assumed to be not only independent of every will but God's, but as a result of God's will fixed and knowable by man unless a miracle change it by way of • "Some Elements of Belgion." Lent Lectures, 1870. By H. P. Liddon, D.D., Canon of St. Paul's. Second Edition. Elvingtons. t On the 218t September, 1872. sign to man, and successions in phenomena the order of which depends more or less directly on human wills, and varies constantly with human volitions. We quite understand necessarian thinkers, who hold that there is no such thing as free-will in man, asserting that the reign of law extends as much to moral as to physical phenomena. That has a definite meaning. It means that if we could but analyse the laws of character and circumstance, as, according to that conception, we may one day be able to analyse them, we should be able to forecast human actions of all kinds with as much certainty as that with which we now predict the revolutions of the planets or the results of chemical combination. But how can a man who believes in any human free-will hold this? Such a belief implies that much, or at lead something important, probably in every day of every human life, is left absolutely free to a man's choice ; that his will determines the order of succession in all such cases, and, so far as there is freedom, that nothing external to his will determines his will. Of course, even in human life every rational man admits that the sphere of circumstance and necessity is large, and the sphere of freedom and real choice comparatively small. But so far as that sphere extends, to talk of the reign of law being still paramount, seems to us to be using the same word in different and inconsistent senses. We mean by the reign of law the existence of an order so invariable, that given the proper ante- cedent, we can infer the consequent with as much confidence as we infer that if we place our hands near the fire we shall feel its warmth, or that if we divide an artery the blood will flow. But so far as free-will really obtains, how are we to con- ceive of such an antecedent phenomenon as will enable us to infer with certainty the moral consequent ? Whenever the consequent comes, the cause of it, so far as the will was free, was an act which, by the very conditions of the case, might have been otherwise, not only without a miracle, but without a reason for surprise. If the will is ever really free to take either of two alternatives, compelled by no preponderant motive, by no involuntary inclination, in its choice, it is impossible to say that, given all the antecedents of the choice, the consequent could have been inferred as you infer that fire will warm the hands. To be suspended in anticipation between one of two or more consequents, is not to be dealing with what comes under the "reign of law ;" not to be so suspended, to be able to declare with certainty which of the two or more consequenta will succeed, is to be dealing with the reign of law, but then it is also to deny real free-will. If God leaves anything really dependent on human will, so far he denies, even to the fullest knowledge, the certainty of scientific inference ; —if more than one alternative is really open, no knowledge, how- ever wide and minute, of human antecedents would enable us to select the inevitable consequent, and without an inevitable con- sequent there is no reign of law. God, who knows the inmost will, may foresee how it will act without controlling its freedom, hue that is not after the manner of human foresight ; it is not the anticipation of a consequent from a knowledge of such ante- cedents as are visible to human minds, but is due to a knowledge that goes far beneath anything that men can observe. Admit free-will, and you admit a number of cleavages in the rules of the uniform succession of phenomena which throw out science, in the human sense, altogether. Once admit that we may be able one day to predict volition absolutely from a knowledge of the laws of drcumstance and motive, and you practically admit that volition is not a •true self-determining power at all, but a mere name for one link in the chain of ordained successions.
And this is more than abstract theory. If free-will is more or less woven into the very substance of every day of every human life, and if prayer, being intended and declared by God to be the highest and most fruitful exercise of free-will, is also of the very substance of human life, resulting in answers to prayer, which involve, as Dr. Liddon justly says, "a certain departure from what, as we presume, would otherwise have been God's mode of working," then clearly such modifications and alterations of the order of life as that order would be without prayer, cannot be rare or wonderful, must, on the contrary, be among the most constantly recurring of human events, i.e., cannot be miracles, but must be a part, if not of the order of Nature
in the limited sense, yet of human life as including something beyond Nature, namely, the regular and intelligible order of the supernatural. Now what we want to ask Canon Liddon is whether there is any analogy between such regularly ordained alterations, introduced into what would be the merely secular or
unreligious order of life, under the dispensation of prayer, and miracles, the very essence of which is something rare and stopen- dons, a deviation from God's ordinary rules of action ? "The increase of clearsightedness and love, through an infusion of grace in the soul of a cottager," to use Dr. Liddon's own illustration, is, as we suppose he holds, in a Christian country at least, an event of every hour of every day. If that differs only "in degree," and not at all in any intelligible principle, from "the raising of a dead man et the prayer of a prophet," then surely there is no use in studying the divine order at all. It seems to us to be the most obvious teaching of constant experience, i.e., of science, that there are certain rules of succession among phenomena over which, as a matter of fact, our wishes and our prayers are not, as such, allowed the least control, or rather have never been allowed this power except in the great crisis of a divine revelation, when it was necessary to show once for all that God's power, even in the physical order, is guided by free love, and not by fate. On the other hand, in the sphere of free-will, in the sphere in which the sense of duty and of affection to God grows, there is a very large reserve of divine power which answers freely to human yearning and petition, —not of course al ways in the sense demanded, but always in some sense which makes U9 feel that human yearning and petition to God are not vain, but fruitful. Is it wise to ignore this difference ? Does Dr. Liddon himself doubt that when death, for instance, has once happened, to pray for the resur- rection of the dead in this world, however pure and pious the motive of the prayer, is to pray for what God has shown us by millions of proofs, through centuries of his govern- ment, that be will not grant ? Is it pious to pray for what God has thus shown us that it is his better will not to grant ? Can we for a moment let evidence of the uniformity of the divine action go for nothing, even in the sphere of prayer? Is it not all but certain that what God has never done but in one or two moments of unveiling, he has some great and divine purpose in refusing to do, which it is anything but pious in us to attempt to gainsay ? Dr. Liddon says that our argument goes further than we intend,—that if we are to argue from what God does to what he wishes, we ought to limit ourselves to acts of resignation and praise, and not ask for any specific gift at all. But this is a complete misinterpretation of our position. We hold with Dr. Liddon that God does, both by the conscience and by revelation, teach us that prayer is both in the highest sense natural, and also fruitful,—that he does habitually answer prayer for moral and spiritual help, and constantly also grants petitions for other blessings which perhaps we might have spared without any real spiritual loss, simply for the sake of encouraging the habit of communion with him, and teaching us that there is a real sphere of life not beyond the moulding power of our requests, in which he meets us half-way, though be often denies what would hurt us. But we hold also, not, apparently, with Dr. Liddon, that this sphere is strictly limited, and that it belongs chiefly to the neighbourhood of that moral freedom in which the law of uniform antecedents and consequents fails. As a matter of fact, most men believe that they can, more or less, mould their own lots by their volitions. If they can mould them by their volitions in any real sense at all, it is clear also that they can mould them by the prayers which influence volitions. And that, also, all who habitually pray, believe. But it does not follow in the least that because there is a real sphere within which the will is free, and prayer is efficient, there should be no sphere within which the will is not free and prayer not efficient. I may know that I have the power to do either this or that, but I know also that whichever I do, I cannot avert the natural consequences of the choice I make. I may believe that I shall obtain power to choose right, even though otherwise I should not have the power to choose right, by prayer. But I do not believe that if I pray that I may do wrong and yet suffer no ill moral result from it, the prayer will be answered. Just so, it may be of the greatest profit to pray that death may not come till a given work is done, and of no profit at all to pray that death may not come at all. When Dr. Liddon contends that, for a sufficiently high spiritual purpose, we are just as right in praying for a miracle as for an event which involves indeed, supernatural gifts, but no miracle, because it involves nothing which is not asked and given every day, he seems to us to maintain that God does not teach us his true Will through the order of Nature at all. Suppose a man earnestly believed, as one of the Apostles, for instance, very well. might have believed, that by continuing to live through all the centuries, he could give a witness to the facts of revelation such as would otherwise have been impossible, would he have been justified in praying for such an mule life? Dr. Liddon would say yes, for he says that for a sufficiently high spiritual purpose, it would be legitimate to
pray that an eclipse which was just on the point of beginning, might be delayed. We should say no, on the distinct ground that to pray for miracles is to pray for what God has taught us by the simplest sort of teaching to believe contrary to his will ; and we do not doubt that whenever prophets or apostles did pray for miracles, they did so only under the special illumination of higher knowledge than any which ordinary men possess. Our position is that the laws of the natural world, so far as they are known, are distinct lessons on the limits within which God's laws are practically immutable, and within which, there- fore, our duty is absolute acquiescence, and not even humble petition. We should think a prayer for the restoration of the dead to life, as David apparently did, a prayer that God's will might not be done. So, too, we should think a prayer that fire might not burn, that a river might suddenly run dry, that the sun might not rise, or that gunpowder might lose its explosive power, a prayer that the Creator's laws might fail. If it is not per- missible to judge of the divine purposes from uniform physical suc- cession, in the absence of any higher illumination, these laws have no moral teaching for us at all. This is an error of the opposite extreme to that of science, which regards the physical laws as more really characteristic of God than his moral or spiritual laws. That, no doubt, is very false. But it is a bad remedy surely to teach that the physical laws of God are so little divine that every well-intentioned human wish may so far impugn their wisdom, as to beset God with entreaties to change the principles of his govern- ment and repent the never-varied decrees of generations and of ages.
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