The sovereigns are literally the shortest lived of all who have the advantage of affluence. The prayer has therefore no efficacy, unless the very questionable hypothesis be raised, that the conditions of royal life may naturally be yet more fatal, and that their influence is partly, though incompletely, neutralised by the effects of public prayers. It will be seen that the same table collates the longevity of clergy, lawyers, and medical men. We are justified in considering the clergy to be a far more prayerful class than either of the other two. It is their profession to pray, and they have the practice of offering morning and evening family prayers in addition to their private devotions. A reference to any of the numerous published collections of family prayers will show that they are full of petitions for temporal benefits. We do not, however, find that the clergy are in any {p.129} way more long lived in consequence. It is true that the clergy, as a whole show a life-value of 69.49, as against 68.11 for the lawyers, and 67.31 for the medical men; but the easy country life and family repose of so many of the clergy are obvious sanatory conditions in their favour. This difference is reversed when the comparison is made between distinguished members of the three classes—that is to say, between persons of sufficient note to have had their lives recorded in a biographical dictionary. When we examine this category, the value of life among the clergy, lawyers, and medical men is as 66.42, 66.51, and 67.04 respectively, the clergy being the shortest lived of the three. Hence the prayers of the clergy for protection against the perils and dangers of the night, for protection during the day, and for recovery from sickness, appear to be futile in result. In my work on “Hereditary Genius,” and in the chapter on ‘Divines,’ I have worked out the subject with some minuteness on other data, but with precisely the same result. I show that the divines are not specially favoured in those worldly matters for which they naturally pray, but rather the contrary, a fact which I ascribe in part to their having, as a class, indifferent constitutional vigour. I give abundant reason for all this, and do not care to repeat myself; but I should be glad if such of the readers of this present paper who may be accustomed to statistics would refer to the chapter I have mentioned. They will find it of use in confirming what I say here They will believe me the more when I say that I have taken considerable pains to get at the truth in the questions raised in this present memoir, and that, when I was engaged upon them, I worked, so far as my material went, with as much care as I gave to that chapter on “Divines;” and lastly, they will understand that, when writing the chapter in question, I had all this material by me unused, which justified me in speaking out as decidedly as I did then. A further inquiry may be made into the duration of life among missionaries. We should lay greater stress upon their mortality than upon that of the clergy, because the laudable object of a missionary’s career is rendered almost nugatory by his early death. A man goes, say to a tropical climate, in the prime of manhood, who has the probability of many years of useful life before him, had he remained at home. He has the certainty of being able to accomplish sterling good as a missionary, if he should live long enough to learn the language and habits of the country. In the interval he is almost useless. Yet the painful experience of many years shows only too clearly that the missionary is not supernaturally endowed with health. He does riot live longer than other people. One missionary after another dies shortly after his arrival. The work that lay almost within the grasp of each of them lingers incompleted. It must here he repeated, that comparative immunity from disease compels the suspension of no purely material law, if such an expression {p.130} be permitted. Tropical fever, for example, is due to many subtle causes which are partly under man’s control. A single hour’s exposure to sun, or wet, or fatigue, or mental agitation, will determine an attack. Now even if God acted only on the minds of the missionaries, his action might be as much to the advantage of their health as if he wrought a physical miracle. He could disincline them to take those courses which might result in mischance, such as the forced march, the wetting, the abstinence from food, or the night exposure, any one of which was competent to develope the fever that struck them down. We must not dwell upon the circumstances of individual eases, and say “this was a providential escape,” or “that was a salutary chastisement,” but we must take the broad averages of mortality, and when we do so, we find that the missionaries do not form a favoured class. The efficacy of prayer may yet further be tested by inquiry into the proportion of deaths at the time of birth among the children of the praying and the non-praying classes. The solicitude of parents is so powerfully directed towards the safety of their expected offspring as to leave no room to doubt that pious parents pray fervently for it, especially as death before baptism is considered a most serious evil by many Christians. However, the distribution of still-births appears wholly unaffected by piety. The proportion, for instance, of the still-births published in the Record newspaper and in the Times was found by me, on an examination of a particular period, to bear an identical relation to the total number of deaths. This inquiry might easily be pursued by those who considered that more ample evidence was required. When we, pray in our Liturgy “that the nobility may, be endued-with grace, wisdom, and understanding,” we pray for that which is clearly incompatible with insanity. Does that frightful scourge spare our nobility? Does it spare very religious people more than others? The answer is an emphatic negative to both of these questions. The nobility, probably from their want of the wholesome restraints felt in humbler walks of life, and from their intermarriages, and the very religious people of all denominations, probably front their meditations on hell, are peculiarly subject to it. Religious madness is very common indeed. As I have already hinted, I do not propose any special inquiry whether the general laws of physical nature are ever suspended in fulfilment of prayer: whether, for instance, success has attended the occasional prayers in the liturgy when they have been used for rain, for fair weather, for the stilling of the sea in a storm, or for the abatement of a pestilence. I abstain from doing so for two reasons. First, if it is proved that God does not answer one large class of prayers at all, it would be of less importance to pursue the inquiry. Secondly, the modern feeling of this country is so, opposed to a belief {p.131} in the occasional suspension of’ the laws of nature, that an English reader would merely smile such an investigation. If we are satisfied that the actions of man are not influenced by the subtle influences of his thoughts and will, the only probable form of agency will have been disapproved, and no one would dare to advance a claim in favour of direct physical interferences. Biographies do not show that devotional influences have clustered in any remarkable degree round the youth of those who, whether by their talents or social position, have left a mark upon our English history. Lord Campbell, in his preface to the Lives of the Chancellors, says, “There is no office in the history of any nation that has been filled with such a long succession of distinguished and interesting men as the office of Lord Chancellor,” and that “generally speaking, the most eminent men, if not the most virtuous, have been selected to adorn it.” His implied disparagement of their piety is fully sustained by an examination of their respective biographies, and by a taunt of Horace Walpole, quoted in the same preface. An equal absence of remarkable devotional tendencies may be observed in the lives of the leaders of great political parties. The founders of our great families too often owed their advancement to tricky and time-serving courtiership. The belief so frequently expressed in the Psalms, that the descendants of the righteous shall continue, and that those of the wicked shall surely fail, is not fulfilled in the history of our English peerage. Take for instance the highest class, that of the Ducal houses. The influence of social position in the country is so enormous that the possession of a dukedom is a power that can hardly be understood without some sort of calculation. There are, I believe, only twenty-seven dukes to about eight millions of adult male Englishmen, or about three dukes to each million, yet the cabinet of fourteen ministers which governs this country, and India too, commonly contains one duke, often two, and in recent times three. The political privilege inherited with a dukedom in this country is at the lowest estimate many thousand-fold above the average birth-right of Englishmen. What was the origin of these ducal families whose influence on the destiny of England and her dependencies is so enormous? Were their founders the eminently devout children of eminently pious parents? Have they and their ancestors been distinguished among the praying classes? Not so. I give in a footnote [2] a list of their names, which recalls many a deed of patriotism, valour, and skill, many an instance of’ eminent merit of the worldly sort, which we Englishmen honour six days out of the seven—many scandals, many a disgrace, but not, on the other hand, a single instance {p.132} known to me of eminently prayerful qualities. Four at least of the existing ducal houses are unable to claim the title of having been raised into existence through the devout habits of their progenitors, because the families of Buccleuch, Grafton, St. Albans, and Richmond were thus highly ennobled solely on the ground of their being descended from Charles II. and four of his mistresses, namely, Lucy Walters, Barbara Villiers, Nell Gwynne, and Louise de Querouai1le. The dukedom of Cleveland may almost be reckoned as a fifth instance. The civil liberty we enjoy in England, and the energy of our race, have given rise to a number of institutions, societies, commercial adventures, political meetings, and combinations of all sorts. Some of these are exclusively clerical, some lay, and others mixed. It is impossible for a person to have taken an active share in social life without having had abundant means of estimating for himself, and of hearing the opinion of others, on the value of’ a preponderating clerical element in business committees. For my own part, I never heard of a favourable one. The procedure of Convocation, which, like all exclusively clerical meetings, is opened with prayer, has not inspired the outer world with much respect. The histories of the great councils of the Church are most painful to read. There is reason to expect that devout and superstitious men should be unreasonable; for a person who believes his thoughts to be inspired, necessarily accredits his prejudices with divine authority. He is therefore little accessible to argument, and he is intolerant of those whose opinions differ from his, especially on first principles. Consequently, he is a bad coadjutor in business matters. It is a common week-day opinion of -the world that praying people are not practical. Again, there is a large class of instances where an enterprise on behalf of pious people is executed by the agency of the profane. Do such enterprises prosper beyond the average? For instance, a vessel on a missionary errand is navigated by ordinary seamen. A fleet, followed by the prayers of the English nation, carries reinforcements to quell an Indian mutiny. We do not care to ask whether the result of these prayers is to obtain favourable winds, hut simply whether they ensue in a propitious voyage, whatever may have been the agencies by which that result was obtained. The success of voyages might be due to many other agencies than the suspension of the physical laws that control the winds and currents; just as we showed that a rapid recovery from illness might be due to other causes than direct interference with cosmic order. It might have been put into the captain’s heart to navigate in that course and to perform those acts of seamanship which proved links in a chain that led to eventual success. A very small matter would suffice to make a great difference in the end. A vessel navigated by a man who was a good forecaster of weather and an accomplished hydrographer would considerably outstrip another that was deficient in so accomplished a commander, but otherwise similarly {p.133} equipped. The perfectly instructed navigator would deviate from the most direct course by perhaps some mere trifle, first here, then there, order to bring his vessel within favouring slants of wind and advantageous currents. A ship commanded by a captain and steered by a sailors whose hearts were miraculously acted oupon in answer to prayer would unconsciously, as by instinct, or even as it were by mistake, perform these deviations from routine, which would lead to ultimate success. The missionaries who are the most earnestly prayed for are usually those who sail on routes where there is little traffic, and therefore where there is more opportunity for the effects of secret providential overruling to display themselves than who sail in ordinary sea voyages. In the usual sea routes a great deal is known of the peculiarities of the seasons and currents, and of the whereabouts of hidden dangers of all kinds; their average risk is small, and the insurance is low. But when vessels are bound to ports like those sought by the missionaries the case is different. The risk that at attends their voyages is largely increased, and the insurance proportionately raised. But is the risk equally increased in respect missionary vessels and to those of traders and of slave-dealers? The comparison between the fortune that attends prayerful and non-prayerful people may here be most happily made. The missionaries are eminently among the former category, and the slave-dealers and the traders we speak of in the other. Traders in the unhealthy and barbarous regions to which we refer are notoriously the most godless and reckless (on the broad average) of any of their set. We have, unfortunately, little knowledge of the sea risks of slavers, because the rates of their insurance involve the risk of capture. There is, however, a universal testimony, in the parliamentary reports on slavery, to the excellent and skilful manner in which these vessels are sailed and navigated, which is a reason for believing their sea risks to be small. As to the relative risks run by ordinary traders and missionary vessels, the insurance offices absolutely ignore the slightest difference between them. They look to the class of the vessel, and to the station to which she is bound, and to nothing else. The notion that a missionary or other pious enterprise carries any immunity from danger has never been entertained by insurance companies. To proceed with our inquiry, whether enterprises on behalf of pious people succeed better than others when they are intrusted to profane hands, we may ask,“Is a bank or other commercial undertaking more secure when devout men are among its shareholders,” or when the funds of pious people, or charities, or of religious bodies are deposited in its keeping, or when its proceedings are opened with prayer, as was the case with the disastrous Royal British Bank? It is impossible to say yes. There are far too many sad experiences of the contrary. {p.134} If prayerful habits had influence on temporal success, it is very probable, as we must again repeat, that insurance offices, of at least some descriptions, would long ago have discovered and made allowance for it. It would be most unwise, from a business point of view, to allow the devout, supposing their greater longevity even probable, to obtain annuities at the same low rates as the profane. Before insurance offices accept a life, they make confidential inquiries into the antecedents of the applicant. But such a question has never been heard of as, "Does be habitually use family prayers and private devotions?" Insurance offices, so wakeful to sanatory influences, absolutely ignore prayer as one of them. The same is true for insurances of all descriptions as those connected with fire, ships, lightening, hail, accidental death, and cattle sickness. How is it possible to explain why Quakers, who are most devout and most shrewd men of business, have ignored these considerations, except on the ground that they do not really believe in what they and others freely assert about the efficacy of prayer? It was at one time considered an act of mistrust in an overruling Providence to put lightening conductors on churches; for it was said that God would surely take care of his own. But Arago’s collection of the accidents from lightning showed they were sorely needed; and now lightning conductors are universal. Other kinds of accidents befall churches, equally with other buildings of the same class; such as architectural flaws, resulting in great expenses for repair, fires, earthquakes, and avalanches. The cogency of all these arguments is materially increased by the recollection that many items of ancient faith have been successively abandoned by the Christian world to the domain of recognised superstition. It is not two centuries ago, long subsequent to the days of Shakespeare and other great names, that the sovereign of this country was accustomed to lay hands on the sick for their recovery, under the sanction of a regular Church service, which was not omitted from our prayer-books till the time of George II. Witches were unanimously believed in, and were regularly exorcised, and punished by law, up to the beginning of the last century. Ordeals and duels, most reasonable solutions of complicated difficulties according to the popular theory of religion, were found absolutely fallacious in practice. The miraculous power of relics and images, still so general in Southern Europe, is scouted in England. The importance ascribed to dreams, the barely extinct claims of astrology, and auguries of good or evil luck, and many other well-known products of superstition which are found to exist in every country, have ceased to be believed in by us. This is the natural course of events, just as the Waters of Jealousy and the Urim and Thummin of the Mosaic law had become obsolete in the times of the later Jewish kings. The civilised world has already yielded an enormous amount of honest conviction to the inexorable requirements of solid fact; and it seems to me clear that all belief in the efficacy of prayer, in the sense in {p.135} which I have been considering it, must be yielded also. The evidence I have been able to collect bears wholely and solely in that direction, and in the face of it the onus probandi lies henceforth on the other side. Nothing that I have said negatives the fact that the mind may be relieved by the utterance of prayer. The impulse to pour out the feelings in sound is not peculiar to man. Any mother that has lost her young, and wanders about moning and looking piteously for sympathy, possesses much of that which prompts men to pray in articulate words. There is a yearning of the heart, a craving for help, it knows not where, certainly from no source that it sees. Of a similar kind is the bitter cry of the hare, when the greyhound is almost upon her; she abandons hope through her own efforts and screams,—but to whom? It is a voice convulsively sent out into space, whose utterance is a physical relief. These feelings of distress and of terror are simple, and an inarticulate cry suffices to give vent to them; but the reason why man is not satisfied by uttering inarticulate cries (though sometimes they are felt to be the most appropriate) is owing to his superior intellectual powers. His memory travels back through interlacing paths, and dwells on various connected incidents; his emotions are complex, and he prays at length. Neither does anything I have said profess to throw light on the question of how far it is possible for man to commune in his heart with God. We know that many persons of high intellectual gifts and critical minds look upon it as an axiomatic certainty that they possess this power, although it is impossible for them to establish any satisfactory criterion to distinguish between what may really be borne in upon them from without and what arises from within, but which, through a sham of the imagination, appears to be external. A confident sense of communion with God must necessarily rejoice and strengthen the heart, and divert it from petty cares; and it is equally certain that similar benefits are not excluded from those who on conscientious grounds are sceptical as to the reality of a power of communion. These can dwell on the undoubted fact, that there exists a solidarity between themselves and what surrounds them, through the endless reactions of physical laws, among which the hereditary influences are to be included. They know that they are descended from an endless past, that they have a brotherhood with all that is, and have each his own share of responsibility in the parentage of an endless future. The effort to familiarise the imagination with this great idea has much in common with the effort of communing with a God, and its reaction on the mind of the thinker is in many important respects the same. It may not equally rejoice the heart, but it is quite as powerful in ennobling the resolves, and it is found to give serenity during life and in the shadow of approaching death. This article was provoked by would-be anonymous suggestions by Professor Tyndall in The Contemporary Review . It was followed by several typically Victorian letters couched in various moods of hilarity, cynicism and outrage. This corrrespondence can be found in the latter half of the year edition for 1872, in both The Contemporary Review and The Spectator . Maybe some day, I will find the time to put this correspondence online. Tyndall was a physicist, particularly interested in heat radiation. He was the first to answer successfully the question, why is the sky blue? He made several other scientific contributions - another interesting fellow. References are also made to the Pall Mall Gazette , 1865 and 1867, and to an earlier Fortnightly Review , but I have not bothered to track these down.