October 4, 1900

“God, Law, and Prayer” The Present Truth 16, 40, pp. 629, 630.

ATJ

WHAT a queer mistake people make who hold that all things are ruled “y” law, absolute law; “and that therefore there is no place for prayer, because prayer would be an attempt to interfere with “law,” and must necessarily be futile.PTUK October 4, 1900, page 629.1

Even if it be granted that “law, absolute law,” holds everything in its grip like a vice, it would not follow that there could be no place for prayer; because prayer itself would be included in the realm and reign of “law, absolute law.” Prayer would be just as certainly a part of that system of absolute law as is anything else.PTUK October 4, 1900, page 629.2

The only way in which prayer could be excluded from such a realm and reign of “law, absolute law,” would he the exclusion of man himself. And this is exactly the way in which it is done. A man sets himself aloof from all things. There he stands, self-centred, solitary, and supreme, and passes his superior and critical judgment upon all things, to the effect that all things are ruled by “law, absolute, inexorable law,” that this leaves “no place for prayer,” and accordingly he will not pray; and having thus relieved himself of all accountability, he proceeds to hold all other people to the most rigid accountability.PTUK October 4, 1900, page 629.3

But the whole conception is a self-imposed fallacy. All things are rot ruled by “law, absolute law.” All things are ruled by God, the loving, the faithful, the merciful God. All things are not held in the grip of an inexorable law as in a vice: all things are held in God’s hand, that hand which in His love was pierced on the cross in behalf of men.PTUK October 4, 1900, page 630.1

His rule is not according to law, as if there were law above Him; but is the expression of principle that inheres within Him. The so-called “laws of nature” are but “the habits of God.” They are simply His accustomed ways of doing things. And this is so, in mercy, in order that His creatures, who are finite, may know what to depend on. And when for the good of His creatures it is needed, He can do any of these things another way, as He chooses, without violating any law.PTUK October 4, 1900, page 630.2

And all this gives the largest possible place for prayer. Prayer is simply the response in consent on the part of intelligent creatures, to the wish of God to rule them through principle, which is only the expression of Himself. Thus the principle of prayer is the principle of the harmony of the intelligent universe. It is the means of finding and holding the accordances of the universal intelligence.PTUK October 4, 1900, page 630.3

A. T. JONES.