and unqualified
promise is given that the prayer of faith shall save the sick. And yet
we have been confronted for ages with the spectacle of people breaking
their hearts in pleading prayer for those that were sick, and seeing
them fade and vanish from their sight in spite of their petitions.

I have heard it said a good many times that the fame of the Cunard line
of steamships touching the matter of the safety of its passengers was
to be explained by the piety of the founders of the line, and the fact
that they prayed every time a ship sailed that it might safely cross
the seas and land its passengers without accident in the wished-for
haven. Are there no prayers for other lines? Has no one ever prayed on
behalf of a ship that did meet with an accident? But this would be
explained on this theory by saying that the prayer was not the prayer
of faith or that there was some defect in it somewhere.

I refer to these things simply by way of illustration to recall to your
mind that prayer used to be supposed to be a power touching the winds,
the waves, the prosperity of the crops, insuring safety during a
dangerous journey; that it was a power that was able to heal disease,
that could accomplish all sorts of strange and startling effects in the
physical realm.

And now I simply wish to call your attention to the naturalness of that
kind of prayer in the olden time. To some of us this thought may seem
strange, it may seem almost absurd, to-day; but remember it was not
strange, it was not absurd, in the times when the old theory of the
universe was thoroughly believed in, not only by church members, but by
scientific men as well.

What was that old conception? I have had occasion to refer to it in one
connection or another a good many times; and now I shall have to refer
to it again, so that you may clearly see what is involved in this
question of the efficacy of prayer. God was supposed to be up in
heaven, away from nature. Nature was a sort of mechanism, a machine
that ordinarily ran on after its own fashion. God had made it, indeed,
in some sense, God supported it continually; but it went on apart from
him, and he was away from it. He was, as Carlyle used to say, looked
upon as an absentee God. He was up in heaven. He ruled this world as
the Kaiser rules Germany, arbitrarily. He was not even always supposed
to know everything that was going on, at least, if you are to judge by
the tone of the prayers of a good many peop