Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 56:223 (Jul 1899)
Article: Prayer In War-Time
Author: Edward Mortimer Chapman

BSac 56:223 (July 1899) p. 532

Prayer In War-Time

Edward Mortimer Chapman

“It is time that humanity learned that praying to some divine power or being for escape from the consequences of violating the eternal laws of justice and goodness, is vanity and foolishness. Prayer may have its consoling and inspiring influences upon minds more or less superstitious, but any belief contrary to the law of cause and effect is demoralizing to the individual or nation.*’

I have quoted these sentences from a daily paper because they voice so well certain popular notions concerning the nature and the place of prayer. They seem instinct with a high moral purpose to preserve the nation and its citizens from “all belief contrary to the law of cause and effect.” Belief contrary to the law of cause and effect is certainly a damnable heresy, from which, if it were permissible to pray at all, one might petition to be delivered. They assure us further, that it is vain and foolish to expect that petitions “to some divine power or being “can serve as shields under cover of which the eternal laws of justice and goodness may be violated with impunity. It is sound doctrine, worthy of proclamation in season and out of season. But the writer, though he is evidently suspicious that prayer tends upon the whole to promote the heresy and to corrupt the doctrine, would not therefore condemn it to extinction. He is considerate of the hardness of men’s hearts and the frailty of their natures. He realizes that there are minds, “more or less superstitious,” to whom the exercise of prayer proves grateful. It exerts upon them certain “consoling and inspiring

BSac 56:223 (July 1899) p. 533

influences” which it would be cruel to ask them to forego. It serves as a stimulating intellectual or spiritual gymnastic. What though it be a mere sublimated and beatified tugging at one’s own boot-straps in an effort to rise into a clearer and purer air, so long as it has amused Augustine, Francis of Assisi, Luther, Maurice, Bushnell, and Phillips Brooks, the world may bear with it a little longer. Meanwhile, to sneer at it politely, serves admirably as the cachet of the superior person, and to smile patronizingly upon the superstition of those who practice it reveals an intelligence that has measured the limits of Creative Power.

It is especially in war-time that the absurdity of the praying man vexes the righteous souls of those who cannot think as he does. The newspaper writer quoted above goes on almost in a strain of bitterness as he thinks of the multitudes upon both sides in every great conflict who will persist in praying. Charm he never so wisely, some among them will not abandon the practice. Nay further, they teach it to their childre...