PRAYER
In spite of a very prevalent impression in the matter, the
all-important element of religion is not attendance at church or the
public exercise of religious functions, or even the joining in
religious celebrations, for all these may be accomplished by routine
without an element of real devotion to the Creator in them. They may
even be gone through with hypocritically while all the time one is
thinking of merely worldly things, or even of the effect that one is
producing on others by the show of devotion, though with such slight
advertence as to make the devotions of extremely little value or even
a sort of insult to the Almighty if the negligent attitude of mind is
assumed deliberately. Bodily participation in worship is a necessary
adjunct of the expression of religious feeling, but it is of course of
just so much less importance than the mental worship of the Creator as
the body is less important than the mind. Mental adoration of the
Deity is accomplished through prayer, which is the all-important
personal element of religion.
Prayer in the words of the old Christian teachers is "A raising up of
the mind to God asking for help, begging for forgiveness for past
errors and thanking Him for all that He has done for us." Real prayer
is no mere formula of words, and some very fervent prayers are made
without being formulated into words at all. I remember {34} once
suggesting in a medical meeting that prayer was an extremely valuable
adjunct to the treatment for certain milder forms of disturbed
mentality and for the dreads and obsessions that haunt men and women,
that is, in general for that very important class of diseases which in
our day are grouped under the term psychoneuroses. A physician friend,
in discussing the suggestion, said that no words that he knew would
dispel or be of the slightest help in any of these conditions as they
came under his observation. Prayer is not, however, a formula of
words, but an act of the mind and the heart and the will, for to be
genuine, it should contain acknowledgment, affection and resolve. My
colleague's failure to appreciate the true meaning of prayer and his
apparent persuasion that the words were the all-important element in
prayer are not surprising, for rather frequently it happens that the
personal experience of the professional classes as to prayer is not
calculated to be really enlightening.
Professor James confesses that unfortunately comparatively few
educated people have the real power of prayer; those who have,
however, possess a magnificent source of renewed energy that can be of
the greatest possible service to them. He says:
"Relatively few medical men and scientific men, I fancy, can pray.
Few can carry on any living commerce with 'God.' Yet many of us are
well aware of how much freer and abler our lives would be, were such
important forms of energizing not sealed up by the critical
atmosphere in which we have been reared. There are in every one
potential forms of activity that actually are shunted out from use.
Part of the imperfect vitality under which we labor can thus be
easily explained. One part of our mind dams up--even _damns_
up!--the other parts."
{35}
Manifestly the well-known professor of psychology envied those who
lived lives of prayer and felt that he was missing something in life
from not possessing the developed faculty to enjoy their privileges.
Like so many other of the good things of life, prayer, to be really
efficient for all the good it can produce, must be a habit and must be
practiced as a rule from very early years. Otherwise it is hard to
make it such a factor in living as is significant for the best, and
professional men commonly have not given enough time to the practice
in their earlier years to make it of potency when it may be needed.
It is of course not long vocal prayers--though many people find not
only consolation, but strength for their work and the added capacity
to bear their trials in these--but the frequent raising up of the
heart and mind to the Power above us, striving to put our intentions
in line with His in the hope to do our work so that it will not be
unworthy of the best aspirations that He has put in our hearts, that
counts. Many of the saints have suggested that all our work should be
a prayer begun with the right intention, pursued, no matter how
difficult it may be, with the feeling that this is what we ought to do
here and now, and finished with the offering of it to the Creator who
has lent us the energy to accomplish it. _Ora et Labora_, pray and
work, was the motto which Benedict, who revolutionized the social
conditions of Europe by bringing back the dignity of labor and lifting
men's minds out of the rut of the cult of their bodies, into which
they had fallen at the close of the Roman Empire, gave to the members
of his order. It was really not two things but one that he meant. What
his sons accomplished as the result of his great motto we are only
just beginning to recognize. They saved the old {36} classics for us,
kept the torch of education burning when barbarism might have quenched
it, passed it on to the new generation, yet at the same time saved and
developed agriculture so that, as President Goodell of the
Massachusetts Agricultural College said, they made some of the best
agricultural schools, in the best sense of that term, that have ever
been made, and organized health and happiness for the country people
as they have never been made possible before or since, except in the
very modern time.
In the chapter on longevity there are some statistics which might very
well and easily have been increased in numbers with regard to the
effect of St. Benedict's foundation on the length of life that men
have lived. Even now, in the midst of all our improvement in
sanitation which has so lowered the death rate among mankind, we find
that nearly fifteen hundred years after Benedict's work was first
begun, his direction to make life a compend of work and prayer is
having its effect in prolonging existence for the followers of his
rule to-day. He himself would probably have said that it was the
combination of these two that proved so effective in this important
matter of lengthening life. We find that people outside the
monasteries work enough, however, but fail to pray, so it would seem
that prayer is a particularly important factor for monastic longevity,
at least. Length of life comes, however, from a healthy mind in a
healthy body, and nothing so conduces to the possession of a healthy
mind as the habit of prayer, since it enables man to throw off to some
extent at least--and the deeper the prayer habit the more it will do
it--the solicitudes and anxieties with regard to the past and the
present and the future which disturb so many people. As Ignatius
Loyola, the {37} wise founder of the Jesuits, said: "Pray as if
everything depended on God; work as if everything depended on you; but
leave everything to the Almighty, for you might as well since His Will
will surely be accomplished anyhow."
It would be very easy to think that such habits of prayer in the midst
of work would only be possible if the work that one was engaged at was
not very interesting or was not taken very seriously and was being
accomplished in more or less of a routine. In particular many
scientific students, and especially those who are interested in
psychology, would probably feel quite sure that very great results
could not be accomplished in any important work if distractions of
this kind were allowed and above all encouraged.
It is interesting then to take some of the examples of men who are
known to have formed and maintained such habits and yet accomplished
very great work for mankind. The list might be made a very long one;
we shall mention only a few of the most distinguished. Almost in our
own time Pasteur said, as we have already quoted: "The more I study
nature the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. I pray
while I am engaged at work in the laboratory." A distinguished
contemporary of his in France in his earlier years was Leverrier.
There is no doubt at all about his power of concentration; he is the
scientist who discovered the planet Neptune by mathematics alone
without the aid of a telescope. He constantly kept a crucifix in his
observatory and used to turn his eyes to it frequently for
recollection and then go on with his calculations. There is a
well-known picture of Vesalius, who so well deserves the title of
Father of Modern Anatomy, at work in his {38} anatomical rooms with a
crucifix before him. The composition is founded on the tradition that
the great anatomist was a devout man who prayed as he worked. He made
a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in his older years in expiation for a
fault committed.
In spite of traditions to the contrary, a great many of our scientists
of the last two centuries whose work has meant most for modern
medicine have been men to whom prayer meant very much. There are
traditions of Morgagni, the distinguished father of modern pathology,
as Virchow hailed him, which show that never a day passed without his
raising his heart in prayer. Volta and Galvani, whose names have
become so familiar in modern electricity, were both of them well known
for their devotion to the practice of daily religious duties. French
scientists were not less devout. Laennec, a Breton by birth, lost none
of the devoutness of his early years so characteristic of the Bretons
even when he was in the midst of the great work which enabled him to
write the greatest medical book in modern times. Ozanam has told us
that when he himself felt thoroughly discouraged and ready to think
religion something that any one who wanted to keep up with modern
thought would have to give up, he wandered into a church, hoping that
prayer might help him to dispel his doubts and difficulties and found
there praying before the altar devoutly his great professor of
science, Ampere.
Deep thinkers, whether of scientific temper of mind or not, have
recognized the value of prayer. Vesalius' great contemporary,
Michelangelo, who is perhaps the greatest intellectual and artistic
genius that the world has ever known--sculptor, architect, painter,
poet, and unsurpassed in all these modes of human expression {39} at
their highest--was another for whom his crucifix meant much and who
frequently turned to it. One of his greatest sonnets is dedicated to
the Crucified One. Of Leonardo da Vinci's private life we we know less, but
on his death bed he left a sum of money to be used to provide candles
to burn before the altar of the little village church at which he had
prayed as a boy, so that evidently something of that old fervor of
spirit was his at the end. Leonardo da Vinci's mind was one of the
most acute in the whole history of mankind. He was a great painter,
sculptor, architect, and also a great engineer, a great scientific
discoverer, an inventor of all sorts of useful appliances and a
veritable marvel of comprehensive appreciation of the significance of
even the most obscure things. He is a founder in half a dozen
sciences, paleontology, biology, anatomy, physics and mechanics, and
nothing makes one feel the smallness of the ordinary man like reading
a sketch of Leonardo's achievements.
Of course the clergymen scientists have been men of prayer, but few
people realize how many of them have made distinguished contributions
to the domain of science. Poggendorf's "Biographical Lexicon" contains
the names of nearly a thousand clergymen who have made such
contributions to science as deserve that their fame should be thus
enshrined among the scientists of history. One of the greatest
astronomers of the nineteenth century was Father Secchi, a Jesuit,
some of whose work was done for a time in America. Among the most
distinguished names in modern science are Abbe Breuil and Father
Obermaier, who have taught the world so much about the cave man. Both
of them are well known for their faithful performance of their
religious duties in the midst of their scientific work.
{40}
Raising up the heart and mind in the midst of work, instead of
increasing distractions, rather helps to control them. Distractions
will come and may prove seriously wasteful of time, but are caught in
the habit of lifting up the mind occasionally, and then the original
work is taken up with renewed energy. Above all, such a habit of
prayer keeps people from getting into a state of irritable haste about
their work in which they consume a lot of energy without getting much
done and wear out their nervous systems by the feeling of nervousness
that comes over them. To do anything under a sense of pressure is
nearly always to disturb the best efforts of the mind and skimp the
work. Doing things in this way leads to that bane of modern existence,
nervous breakdown, which has become ever so much commoner since men
forgot that it is not labor for ourselves that counts so much as labor
for others, and that an over-anxiety to get things done for selfish
reasons burns up nervous energy faster than anything else. Fussy,
irritable effort to work gets on the nerves sooner than any amount of
calm effort would. Prayer as I have described would be the cure for
it. St. Theresa's well-known prayer is the antidote. [Footnote 3]
[Footnote 3:
Let nothing disturb thee,
Let nothing affright thee,
All things are passing,
God never changeth.
Who God possesseth
In nothing is wanting.
Alone God sufficeth.
(Longfellow translation.) ]
When the life of the late Cardinal Vaughan of London appeared, one of
the most surprising things in it was the story of the distinguished
English Cardinal's habit of prayer. Almost needless to say he was an
extremely busy man. Important problems in the administration {41} of
his immense archdiocese and in the relationship of the English
Catholics to their fellow citizens came before him every day. He had
to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and make his decisions
promptly and thoroughly, for a great many details necessarily devolved
on him. Somehow he found time for hours of prayer during the day, and
those who knew him best felt sure he would have declared that so far
from distracting him in his work or taking time from it in any real
sense of the word, it would have been quite impossible for him to
accomplish all he did without this habit of prayer. It was this which
enabled him to keep a placid mind and make his decisions easily and
firmly in the midst of his work. He himself would undoubtedly have
added that he felt he actually derived help from the Infinite through
prayer, which enabled him to do his work ever so much better than
would have been possible by his own unaided effort. There have been
many others, and not a few of them who were not churchmen, who have
felt this same way even in our strenuous times.
A whole series of the generals in command of important departments of
the French army were men who never let a day pass without prayer and
who often raised their hearts and minds up to the Power above them for
help in their work and also for resignation that the will of the Most
High might be accomplished. General Pau, for instance, was one of
these. When, during the war, he was presented with flowers by the
children of villages through which he passed, he would say, "These
must be for the altar," and then he would ask the children to pray for
the success of the French army and would insist that for victory "we
must pray very much." General de Castelnau was another of these men
who {42} found a resource and a real help in prayer. He felt that the
prayers of others helped him. That is the index of real recognition of
the value of prayer. "I beg you to implore Him especially to give me
light and courage; there is no position where one is more completely
in His hands than that which I hold." He wrote to Monsignor Ricard,
Archbishop of Auch, "More than ever I find by experience the
all-importance in war, as elsewhere, of the 'imponderables' and these
'imponderables' are manifestly in His hands Who knows all and guides
all."
We might go on with such examples. For instance, Marshal Petain, who
at the end of the war was in command of the French troops, was another
of these strong men of prayer. Earlier in the Great War he had been in
command at Verdun, transferred there just as it seemed almost
impossible to believe that the Germans could be kept from taking the
place. The words of his first order issued the day of his
arrival--"They shall not pass"--show the character of the man. He was
almost reckless in his bravery when it was necessary to impress his
troops with the need to go on, no matter what it cost. Alone and on
foot he led his troops under a rain of German shells at Saint Bon;
after that he could ask anything of his men. General Gouraud, whose
masterly defense of the Allied line when the Germans made their great
final unsuccessful attack stamps him as one of the greatest military
leaders of the day, had been wounded a number of times before this,
but refused to give up, and when, early in the war, one of his arms
had to be amputated and the surgeons were afraid that he would object,
he said very simply, "Go on, if you think it necessary; I offer it to
God for France." His recovery from his several wounds at that time
seemed almost impossible, so in gratitude for it he {43} hung an
_ex-voto_ in white marble at the shrine of Our Lady of Victories in
Paris. General Fayolle is another striking example of prayerfulness in
a practical man. He had intended to spend a year of his retirement,
which came just before the war opened, in following the footsteps of
St. Paul's missionary voyages. He offered himself for service and
proved a great leader, yet a simple, kindly man whom his soldiers
called Pere Fayolle. A letter of his directed to the Mayor of Mainz
showed very clearly that while he remembered and realized all the
cruelty of the German occupation of Belgium and France, there was no
fear of reprisals from the French, just though they might be. He is a
man of deep knowledge of his religion as well as of firm piety, and he
is famous for his matter-of-fact common sense. He has all the
qualities which some people, because they have had so little
experience in the matter, assume are not to be found in a man who
believes thoroughly in and practices prayer.
A good deal has been said in recent years about the practice of "going
into the silence" and finding there renewal of self. Like so many
other new modes of expression, this is merely a new formula for that
very old religious custom, meditation, and some of the old writers on
spiritual subjects, not only generations ago but actually many
hundreds of years before modern history began, laid down the rules for
it rather carefully. Meditation can be a source of some of the most
valuable suggestive, helpful consolation as well as profound
enlightenment in difficult problems that human nature has. Above all
it generates a calm that makes for peace of mind and, therefore,
health of body. John Boyle O'Reilly recognized its deeper meanings a
generation ago when he wrote:
{44}
"The infinite always is silent:
It is only the finite that speaks.
Our words are the idle wave-caps
On the deep that never breaks.
We may question with wand of science,
Explain, decide, and discuss;
But only in meditation
The Mystery speaks to us."
Most of the religious orders, and it is in them particularly that the
effect of religion on health and happiness and efficiency and increase
of the power to achieve, under the influence of profoundly religious
motives, can be studied, require by rule that their members shall
spend at least half an hour in meditation each morning; and with many
of them, of course, an hour or more is required. They prepare for it
the night before by reading some passage in the life of Christ, or by
taking some special lesson from His teaching; the next morning they
reflect how this can be exemplified in their own daily lives and
proceed to make certain practical applications of it to the everyday
concerns with which they are occupied.
It is surprising how efficient in living up to their very best during
the day this makes a great many of the members. There are exceptions,
of course, who fail to derive the proper benefit from the practice
because they do not devote themselves to it with sufficient
earnestness to secure its advantages, but most of them, as the result
of this daily period of morning prayer, are rendered capable of going
through a monotonous round of hard daily work and succeed in getting
excellent results and in keeping cheerful and light-hearted in the
midst of what might otherwise seem a very trivial mode of life. The
motives thus imparted to them often make even the trifles of life of
great interest and significant import.
{45}
As a result of their life of prayer, members of religious orders have
ever so many less complaints than people who live under corresponding
circumstances, largely within doors amid a rather monotonous round of
existence. It is extremely rare to find religious devotees who "enjoy
poor health" as so many of the laity do. Having less complaints they
suffer less from disease, for after all discomfort depends on two
factors,--one the irritation and the other the mode of its reception.
An irritable person will suffer tortures, though under the same
circumstances a placid, composed person will be but very little
disturbed. Whenever there is much reaction, there is always an
increase of the pain that has to be borne. Whenever much attention is
paid to discomfort, the concentration of mind on it multiplies by the
law of avalanche the number of cells in the brain affected, and this
multiplies the actual discomfort felt. A few thousand cells may be
affected by a particular focus of irritation, but if all the other
cells of the brain are concentrated on this sensation, each of them,
and there are many millions of them, will share something at least of
the discomfort. Besides, concentration of attention sends more blood
or rather opens the blood vessels in the irritated neighborhood
somewhat in the way that a blush opens them up on the cheeks, and this
hyperemia increases the sensitiveness of the part. The individual,
then, who by the help of prayer lessens his complaints actually
lessens his discomfort. To stand a thing patiently for a high motive
actually makes the pain suffered less than it otherwise would be.
When a man can look calmly forward to the future and say
wholeheartedly, "Thy Will be done on earth as it is in heaven," a
great many things are easier to bear {46} because of the recognition
of the fact that they are the will of a Providence who oversees
everything that is being accomplished, and that somehow, somewhere,
all is to be for the best. When men recall to themselves the words,
"Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors," or "Forgive us our
trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us," word it as
you will, they are reminded of how much they owe to the Father in
heaven, and, therefore, how much they ought to be willing to pay back,
not only for what they have been given but also for all the failures
that they have made, to say nothing of serious faults. Suffering then
comes to have a real meaning that any one, even the least
intellectual, can understand, and by that very fact it becomes easier
to bear. I have often found that I could do a great deal for nervous
patients by suggesting that they adopt some morning practice of
prayer. Usually the best thing for my Catholic patients was to advise
them to go to Mass. For this they had to get up at a definite hour,
dress promptly, and usually be some blocks away from home by eight
o'clock. Some such duty as this, requiring promptitude and taking the
mind off oneself and the little troubles that often loom so large in
the morning, is an excellent thing for neurotic patients. The great
characteristic of the neuroses is that they make people feel depressed
when they first awake. They often feel tired and incapable and find it
hard to begin the day well; and beginning the day well often means
more than anything else in dispelling nervous symptoms and dreads and
inhibitions. Most nervous people realize that when they have to get up
promptly at about seven o'clock, as for instance after a night on a
train, they have almost none of the feelings of oppression that greet
their arising {47} when they can turn over in bed and drowse a little
longer and let the troubles which have awakened ever so much more
promptly than their incentives to do things soak in and take
possession of them. To get up and accomplish a duty that gives some
satisfaction soon proves to be a wide-open gate of escape from these
early morning "blue devils" of which so many of the nervous complain
so bitterly.
The differential diagnosis between merely nervous symptoms and the
feelings of tiredness and incapacity which come from organic disease
can often be made from the early morning symptoms. Nervous patients
feel their worst in the very early morning. They often wonder how they
will be able to get through the day without breaking down. After an
hour or two they begin to feel somewhat better, though life still
looks blue enough. On towards ten o'clock they think that the sun may
shine for them again. By noon, especially if they have done something
in the meantime, they feel much better, and after their lunch in the
early afternoon they begin to be quite chipper; toward evening they
usually are persuaded that after all life may be worth living, and by
the time they are ready to go to bed--and unfortunately they are
tempted to put off going to bed until rather late because they do feel
so well--they are inclined to wonder how it is possible that they felt
so depressed in the morning. The sufferer from organic disease,
however, always feels best in the early morning and begins to get
tired toward noon; the evening is his time of least enjoyment, and he
is quite ready to get to bed rather early. For the neurotic patient
waking to a sense of his troubles at once, nothing is better than a
prompt lifting up of his mind to God to offer Him the new {48} day
that He has given, no matter how it may turn out, and a readiness to
take things as they come so that His will may be fulfilled.
In nervous patients one would almost have the feeling that their wills
did not wake up nearly so soon as their memories, or even quite so
soon as their intellects, such as they have. Their wills need to be
aroused. For men setting-up exercises of various kinds are
particularly valuable because the will has got to be used in doing
them; many a young soldier who during the war was waked up at the
unearthly hour of five o'clock and had perforce to get out of bed,
found himself full of pains and aches not only of body, but of mind,
and wondered how he could stand it. After ten minutes of setting-up
exercises, with the blood coursing through his muscles and deep
breaths of outdoor air to oxygenate sluggish tissues, he felt like
another man. The days seemed nothing to endure then. For a good many
nervous women the exercise of getting to church after prompt rising
and dressing and then the occupation of mind with deep, serious
thoughts of prayer, will do very much what the setting-up exercises
did for the young soldiers during the war. I have tried this so often
on patients that I know whereof I speak, and I can think of nothing
that does them more good than to have some such enlivening incident
that satisfies their hearts and minds and starts them at once doing
something that will help them throw off the fear thoughts so prone to
crowd in.
It is surprising often to learn what things are accomplished by people
who find an unfailing resource for their powers physical and mental in
prayer. I had the privilege of knowing a frail little woman whose life
seemed to be one long prayer, so entirely was every {49} action guided
by what she felt God would like her to do at any particular time; and
during very nearly sixty years she directed the destinies of a
community of women who did more for the charities and education of an
important State than any other single factor that I know. She
organized hospitals, multiplied schools, built homes for the care of
orphans, established an academy with excellent standards in the days
when educational criteria were low, and put a climax to her work by
building a college for women in which hundreds of young women are now
being educated in the best sense of that word,--that is, not only
having their minds stuffed with knowledge, but having their thinking
powers aroused and, in Huxley's expressive phrase, having their
"passions trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a
tender conscience." I am sure that Huxley's further words might be
used of the graduates,--that they have "learned to love all beauty,
whether of nature or of art, to hate all vileness and respect others
as themselves." The little woman who did all this, frail little thing
she often seemed, would have said, I feel certain, that she derived
the energy to do it all from prayer.
Some years ago I wrote a sketch of another one of these women of
prayer, a little Italian noblewoman who, touched by the condition of
the poor Italians in America--only by America she meant both
Americas--came over here to help them. She organized Columbus
hospitals in New York, Chicago, Seattle and Denver. She established
literally hundreds of schools. She gathered around her a band of
several thousand young women who devoted themselves to the
accomplishment of anything and everything that would help the Italians
in this country. They were not all Italians themselves, but they were
won to {50} the work by the ardent enthusiasm and the marvelously
charming personality of this little woman. The United States would
seem to be field large enough for her zeal or for that of any one, but
she did not think so, so she went down to South America and organized
to similar good purpose down there, having herself carried on one
occasion across the Cordilleras in a hamper on mule-back. It seemed
almost impossible that any one could have all the energy that she had
and the initiative, and yet with it charming tact, winning ways and
the prudence that enabled her to find her path in some of the most
difficult circumstances. She said over and over again that she owed
her power to prayer. Many times when she was told that she must rest,
she just prayed and went on.
Sometimes the stories of these old-fashioned, prayerful women of our
time will be told properly. They hid themselves from publicity as
sedulously as most people seek it. I think it one of the most precious
privileges of life to have known a score of such women, East and West.
Some of them actually seemed to achieve the impossible and even
ventured to get up from sick beds to do what they felt they must do,
yet they pushed through successfully. Not infrequently they had to
stand all sorts of hardships. Over and over again I have heard the
story of pioneer work in the midst of privations that would surely
seem must break down health; yet many of these women lived to be well
beyond seventy and sometimes even beyond eighty years of age. They
were strengthened, consoled, held up in trial by prayer, and it
enabled them to tap layers of energy in their physical beings which
they themselves scarcely knew they possessed and concerning which
other people were {51} so dubious that they felt sure the workers
would die young of exhausted vitality. Many wondered why some of them
did not suffer from nervous prostration. Men and women of prayer
seldom suffer from nervous prostration in the ordinary sense of the
word, and what is called that in them is very often the manifestation
of some organic ailment which has not been recognized.
As to the power of prayer to enable people to stand suffering and
pain, that is discussed in the chapters on these special subjects.
Raising the mind and heart to God will do more to make even the
extremity of pain bearable than anything else in the world. I have
known a man under an engine, almost literally cooking to death from
the steam that was escaping near him, in poignant agony, take on a
quiet, peaceful look after a priest had crawled under the engine to
give him the last rites of the Church; and though his groans would
still escape from him involuntarily, it was mainly words of prayer
that came and he was evidently in a very different state of mind from
that which governed him but a few moments before when only the
physical side of his case was occupying his mind. Many a soldier
during the war found that when a dread came over him, and he feared
that his courage might leave him, especially when men were falling
thick and fast all around, a little prayer would lift him up and give
him new courage; and when he was so tired that it seemed as though he
could not go on any farther it would enable him to tap a new level of
energy and get his second wind, as it were, and "carry on."
There are a great many people nowadays, and unfortunately they are
ever so much more frequent among the educated classes than among those
who have not had the benefit of an education, who seem to think that
prayer {52} is a confession of weakness. When a man or a woman has
recourse to prayer they would be inclined to say that it is because he
or she has not the strength of character and personality that enables
them to stand up under the trials of life and to face difficulties
valiantly and hopefully. Impressions like this have been rather
fostered among the modern intellectual classes who, it must be
recalled, are not always intelligent.
We saw in the first chapter that while there is a very prevalent
impression that somehow science is opposed to religion and that
scientists find it utterly impossible to accept religious beliefs
seriously and indeed can only pity those who continue to cherish such
outworn superstitions, practically all the greatest scientists of
modern times have been deep believers.
What is true with regard to scientists and belief in religion is true
also with regard to the strongest characters of the world and prayer.
The greatest moral force of the war, the man who stood as Horace long
ago said the perfect man, _totus teres atque rotundus_, should stand,
unmoved, even though the world is falling in pieces around him, was
Cardinal Mercier. When they asked him at the luncheon given to him in
New York by some two thousand of our most prominent commercial
representatives how he, a bishop, "brought up in the peace and quiet
of a university, should stand unmoved in the presence of the greatest
military power on earth and insist on the rights of his country and
his people", his very simple reply was, "As a bishop, there was
nothing else that it occurred to me for the moment to do."
Some of Cardinal Mercier's favorite maxims show how deeply he feels
whence comes his strength. He said, for instance, that "the ideal of
life is a clear sense of {53} duty." His favorite quotation is from
St. Theresa, that well-known expression, "whenever conscience commands
anything, there is only one thing to fear and that is fear." His maxim
for daily life was "The whole duty of man consists in doing God's will
to-day. I care to have no vain regrets with regard to the past and no
idle dreams as to the future, but I shall be quite satisfied if God
gives me His grace to accomplish His Holy Will to-day." It is easy to
see from these that the Cardinal feels his utter dependence on a
Higher Power and the necessity for keeping as closely in touch with
that Higher Power by prayer as possible. There is no doubt at all
about his supreme strength of character and his placid, yet unbending
resolution to accomplish what he sees as duty. There is no doubt,
also, that he feels that he draws his strength to accomplish whatever
he can from prayer. His daily recourse to it, far from being a sign of
weakness in any sense, simply represents the man's own feeling of his
inadequacy to accomplish what his conscience dictates unless he is
strengthened from on High.
Perhaps it is to be expected that a churchman would find his strength
in prayer, but it must not be forgotten that the greatest military
leader of this war, who because of the immense armies that he had to
lead must be considered one of the greatest military geniuses of all
time, confesses also that the source of whatever power he had came
from prayer. Over and over again during the time while he was the
commander-in-chief of the Allied armies. Marshal Foch was discovered
at prayer in some quiet chapel, manifestly absorbed in communion with
God. When congratulated on what he had accomplished, he said at once,
"Do not thank me, but thank the Author of all good to whom the victory
is due." He {54} was often known to ask for prayers and when on the
morning of the first battle of the Marne he met the chaplain of one of
his regiments, he said to him, "Pray for us, father; we advance from
here or die here to-day."
There is a story that comes from his own headquarters that when
sometimes he was thought to be asleep he was found at prayer. When his
first decision as commander-in-chief of the Allied armies had to be
made, and he had to determine whether Amiens should be surrendered to
the enemy and a defense made on lines behind that city, both Haig, in
immediate command of the British forces, as well as Petain, the French
commander, are said to have advised retirement. Foch listened
patiently to their reasons and then asked for twenty minutes by
himself before making his decision, declaring that he would give it in
that time. He spent those minutes walking up and down the garden in
the slight rain that was falling, very much in the concentrated manner
that he was known to assume when praying. At the end of twenty minutes
he declared that Amiens was to be held at all cost,--and it was. This
was the first great step in the breaking of the enemy morale. When
three months later, on the 18th of July--after the Germans had tried
for three days to come through his lines and had practically succeeded
and then, lacking in men and munitions had to stop--Marshal Foch
launched his counter-offensive which represented the beginning of the
end of the war, it was easy to understand the strain through which he
had just passed and the immensity of the responsibility of the
decision that he had to make. After the orders for the
counter-offensive had been sent out he said, "Now I must rest." As can
readily be imagined he had slept {55} but little on any of the three
preceding nights. Half an hour after he retired there came a dispatch
which the high staff decided must be communicated to the
general-in-chief. They hesitated for some time to wake him, but there
was nothing else for it. His adjutant found him on his knees.
The practice of prayer, then, instead of being an index of weakness of
character, is on the contrary a note that is found exemplified in a
great many men who are distinguished for their strength of character.
It is the strong man above all who knows his own weakness and realizes
how incapable he is of doing very great things of himself. It is the
conceited man who is confident that he can accomplish anything that he
wants out of his own strength and often fails. Great generals almost
as a rule have been men who turned aside from the immense calls made
upon them by their military responsibilities to gain consolation and
strength from the Most High. It is surprising often to find how
devoutly they turn to the Higher Power in their trials. Field Marshal
Lord Wolseley carried a copy of Thomas a Kempis' "Imitation of Christ"
with him always and read in it every day. When they found Chinese
Gordon dead at Khartum there was a little copy of Newman's "Dream of
Gerontius" in which he had been reading and making some annotations
during the days before the end. For him, too, the "Imitation of
Christ" was favorite reading, as it was for Stanley the explorer and
many another thoroughly practical, intensely brave and strong man whom
the world has come to appreciate for his strength of character.
In our time there has been noted an extreme lack of delicacy and a
diminution of that reticence which {56} characterized human beings at
their best. There has been a pouring out of the story of their woes
and ills by men and women seeking sympathy which not only does them no
good but which tends to break down their own character. It was
Nietzsche who said, in one of these striking aphorisms of his,
"Sympathy only makes us feel bad and the person for whom we sympathize
feel worse than before." In an older time when there was more faith
and the practice of prayer was commoner, the habit of prayer replaced
this pouring out of the heart to others. People let God know about it
and in that way brought themselves into the mental attitude that
somehow, somewhere, all was well, for God's in His world and all is
right with it. This proved an antidote to that sympathy-seeking
self-pity which is not only so fatal to character development, but
which actually makes the trials and sufferings of life harder to bear
than they would otherwise be and will sometimes lift the little
discomforts that are almost inevitably associated with living up to a
plane of superconsciousness on which they seem to be torments. Prayer
is often its own reward, though any one who practices it in reality
knows that there are other and much higher effects than this
psychological influence which can of itself, however, neutralize many
of the lesser disturbances of life that may be so readily exaggerated.
To many people in our time prayer seems a useless exercise except in
so far as the state of mind which it engenders reacts upon the
individual to console and strengthen him in trials and to hearten him
for difficulties that lie ahead. Even if it had no other effect than
this, prayer would still be a very valuable factor for health in the
midst of the difficulties and above all the {57} dreads of humanity
which are so likely to disturb the proper functioning of organic life.
If this were all that it meant, however, prayer would not be a
religious but a psychotherapeutic exercise. As a matter of belief,
however, prayer is much more than this and, to the mind of the
believer at least, leads to help from on High that may prove of
immense consequence in the development of individual life. Many people
feel that it would be idle to think that prayer can alter the ordinary
course of natural events and that these are rigidly connected with the
causal elements which lead up to them and cannot be modified, once the
chain of causes has been set to work.
It is curiously interesting to realize that not a few of those who
urge this inevitability of causation are just those who refuse to
acknowledge the principle of causation as necessarily leading to the
demonstration that there must be a first cause. As suggested by Sir
Bertram Windle, president of University College, Cork, in his volume
"The Church in Science" which has recently been awarded one of the
Bridgewater prizes in England, it is not difficult to realize "that
the world is by no means so rigidly predetermined as many enthusiastic
votaries of science would have us believe"; he adds:
"There is room for free play; chance has a real objective
significance, viz., the intercrossing of independent causal chains,
and is not a mere cloak for ignorance. Not alone is a large part of
natural occurrences within our own control, but there is opportunity
for God's special direction of events without any contravention of
the laws of science. We cannot see far ahead; for aught we know, a
small change of present plans may result in far-reaching future
consequences. And many present {58} realities were once frail
possibilities hanging on slender causal threads; did not England's
present mineral wealth and insular position originate in some
chance-formed heterogeneity in a nebula? All these life-histories of
countries and individuals stand spread out to God's eternal gaze. At
each stage He sees the possibilities foreclosed or initiated; He
influences development by the primal distribution in the past and by
direction and inspiration in the present."
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