hers have explained to you the absurdity of all
that: you think? Of all the shallow follies of this age, that
proclamation of the vanity of prayer for the sunshine and rain; and the
cowardly equivocations, to meet it, of the clergy who never in their
lives really prayed for anything, I think, excel. Do these modern
scientific gentlemen fancy that nobody, before they were born, knew the
laws of cloud and storm, or that the mighty human souls of former ages,
who every one of them lived and died by prayer, and in it, did not know
that in every petition framed on their lips they were asking for what
was not only fore-ordained, but just as probably fore-_done_? or that
the mother pausing to pray before she opens the letter from Alma or
Balaclava, does not know that already he is saved for whom she prays, or
already lies festering in his shroud? The whole confidence and glory of
prayer is in its appeal to a Father who knows our necessities before we
ask, who knows our thoughts before they rise in our hearts, and whose
decrees, as unalterable in the eternal future as in the eternal past,
yet in the close verity of visible fact, bend, like reeds, before the
fore-ordained and faithful prayers of His children.

287. Of Elijah's contest on Carmel with that Sun-power in which,
literally, you again now are seeking your life, you know the story,
however little you believe it. But of his contest with the Death-power,
on the Hill of Samaria, you read less frequently, and more doubtfully.

"Oh, thou Man of God, the King hath said, Come down. And Elijah answered
and said, If I be a man of God, let fire come down from Heaven, and
consume thee, and thy fifty."

How monstrous, how revolting, cries your modern religionist, that a
prophet of the Lord should invoke death on fifty men. And he sits
himself, enjoying his muffin and _Times_, and contentedly allows the
slaughter of fifty thousand men, so it be in the interests of England,
and of his own stock on Exchange.

But note Elijah's message. "Because thou hast sent to inquire of
Baalzebub the God of Ekron, therefore, thou shalt not go down from the
bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt surely die."

"Because thou hast sent to inquire:" he had not sent to _pray_ to the
God of Ekron, only to _ask_ of him. The priests of Baal _prayed_ to
Baal, but Ahaziah only _questions_ the fly-god.

He does not pray "Let me recover," but he asks "_Shall_ I recover of
this disease?"

The scientifi