In our prayers and addresses to the unseen Power, faith takes it for granted that the suppliant is heard, that the prayer is not a cry into empty space, a breathing wasted on the desert air, that there are really two parties in all such exercises—the soul that prays, and the God who hears. Faith supposes this, or prayer would be the most unmeaning mockery, and, with honest, simple souls, would soon cease altogether.

And yet if we consider it, what a daring assumption to suppose that the Infinite takes note of individual supplications! When we think what countless myriads of suppliants are proffering their petitions—it may be at one and the same moment, and it may be for contradictory favors, in such wise that to grant the requests of one party would be to deny the requests of the other, as where, in the conflict of armies, individuals on both sides pray for success in battle, or where religionists of different faiths entreat the divine blessing, each on their separate cause, and desire the prevalence of their respective churches—when we think of this, it baffles the understanding to conceive that the infinite God should give special heed to the prayers of individual finite beings. On the other hand, the belief of this is so essential to religion that the two must stand or fall together. Religion, in any sense characteristically distinct from philosophy, poetry, or art, is impossible without worship; and worship is hardly possible without prayer; and prayer would soon cease without the belief in a Being who hears and heeds supplication, if he does not always grant the request.

And happily the power of the understanding to conceive is not the measure of spiritual truth. The understanding knows nothing of the existence of God by any insight or function of its own; and, if the understanding were the only guide and the only avenue of truth to man, no prayer would ever go up from mortal lips, and no Godward thought or desire would ever arise in mortal breasts. The understanding views everything in the light of its own laws, which weigh and measure the material world and reduce all the processes of nature and life to arithmetical calculation. Happily there is something else in the world beside measure and weight, and the multiplication table, and cold, mechanical laws. What a world it would be in which everything went by dead weight, where all could be calculated—so much always in a given time; so much, and no more, with given means!—a world in which there should be no surprises, no incalculable factor ever interposed among the measurable forces that work the machine and work out the results of everyday life, no inspiration in man, no reserved power in nature, no residue of spirit or supplemental grace in God. Such is the world in which the understanding lives and moves, a piece of mechanism of limited capacity, in which there is nothing spontaneous, in which every act is predetermined, and piety itself the result of inevitable laws. In such a world there is evidently no place and no legitimate ground for prayer. The world is a machine set a-going with the prime creation, and all the processes of nature and human history are mechanical functions; there is nothing for it but to take what the mill of all-work may grind for us, and ask no questions. Instead of a present God with whom our spirits may commune, and whose spirit responds to our seeking, we must rough it as we can with driving-wheel and fly-wheel—memorials of a God who lived long ago—and trust that the power may not fail, nor the gearing foul, in our short day.

The world which faith inhabits is otherwise constituted. In that world, God is the present Will by whose momentary action it exists and proceeds—a Will in immediate contact with our wills—and prayer, in that world, is a real power; and human life, instead of the blind play of shaft and piston, is growth from a seed, susceptible of momentary modification through the action of that power of prayer on that present, living Will.

For those who live always and altogether in that world, there needs no other proof than their own faith that prayer is heard by the Being addressed, that their souls are in actual communication with God, and God with them, through this medium. But faith is not equally active at all times. Doubts of the objective efficacy of prayer will sometimes obtrude themselves on otherwise believing souls. Do we breathe our petitions into empty space? Or do they light upon some listening Presence? Do they reach their destination in some sympathizing, infinite Spirit—some divine Person, who, shrouded in unfathomable but not inaccessible mystery, receives and considers the supplication addressed to him? It is a question between theism and atheism.

There are moments in life when some pledge is desired of divine communication, some demonstration of a real, responsive relation between the soul and the Supreme. A man is hesitating, let us suppose, between two sides of a given alternative: he has to choose between two courses of conduct, between doing or not doing a certain thing, between taking or not taking a certain position. His decision involves consequences of vast moment to himself and others. Reasons are weighty on both sides, for and against. He is in a strait betwixt two. Unable or unwilling to decide of his own wisdom, he craves direction from the All-wise. Let God decide; let the burden of responsibility rest with him! His will be done! But what is his will concerning the matter in debate? How shall the suppliant, seeking divine guidance, be apprised of it?

Individuals, in such cases, resort to different measures, or satisfy themselves with different tests, according as different ages and faiths, or differences of individual constitution, may incline.

The Hebrew Gideon, fifth in that line of military dictators known in our Bible by the name of "Judges," felt himself divinely called to free his people from the ravages of the Midianites, who invaded their borders and laid waste the land. Before entering on this difficult and dangerous enterprise, he required to be assured of the truth of his calling by some visible token which should justify and supplement the inspiration of faith, and be a God-given pledge of success. "If now I have found grace in thy sight, show me a sign that thou talkest with me" [Judges 6:17]. "If thou wilt save Israel by my hand, as thou hast said, behold! I will put a fleece of wool in the floor; and if the dew be on the fleece only, and it be dry upon all the earth besides, then shall I know that thou wilt save Israel by my hand as thou hast said" [Judges 6:36-37]. According to the story, the sign was vouchsafed: the fleece, in the morning, was wet with dew, and the earth around was dry [6:38]. The chief still wavered. Natural causes might explain the wonder. Another trial was required. Let the miracle now be reversed. "Let it now be dry only upon the fleece, and upon all the ground let there be dew. And God did so that night; for it was dry upon the fleece only, and there was dew on all the ground" [6:39-40].

I enter into no explanation of this story. My concern is not with Gideon's fleece, but with the impression on the mind of the suppliant, with the feeling which led him to desire this external authentication of his mission. The same feeling has impelled men in every age to look for demonstrations of the will of Heaven in some visible or audible sign. The Greeks had recourse to oracles, which consisted in the utterances of a kind of delirium, supposed to be a medium of divine communications. The Hebrews consulted the sparkle of jewels, or were counseled by voices in the air. The Romans drew auguries from the entrails of victims and the flight of birds. Decision by lot is a common resort in cases of doubtful choice. When, after the death of Judas Iscariot, the disciples of Jesus proceeded to fill his vacant office of two individuals who seemed to be equally fitted for the function, they prayed the Lord to designate by lot the one whom he had chosen. And, when the lot fell upon Matthias, they doubted not that the Lord had directed the event in accordance with their prayer [Acts 1:23-26].

Chance readings in sacred or cherished books have also been accepted as signs from heaven. St. Augustine, at a critical moment of his life, resolved that the passage on which his eye should first light, on opening a copy of Paul's Epistles, should determine his future course. He opened and read, "Make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof," and forthwith embraced a life of devotion. How many good Christians, the world over, have sought and received counsel, suggestion, consolation, inspiration, from accidental words of Scripture! The soldier on the eve of battle, opening his pocket Bible in the tent, chances on the passage, "A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee." And he thinks, on the field the next day, in the thickest of the fight, that he bears a charmed life. The preacher on shipboard, in imminent peril as he fancies, opens at random, and reads, "Thou shalt not die, but live and declare my statutes." He feels that God has spoken to him in those words, and the tempest loses its terrors. There are few devout persons who have not at some moment of their lives experienced what seemed to be an immediate communication of God to their souls, who have not felt that God spoke to them individually by some written word or sign addressed to the eye or ear, or, it may be, some dream which they so interpreted, or some internal experience which they could not, or would not, explain in any other sense than that of the immediate action of God on their mind. The prepared soul finds a divine communication in every word or event that touches it effectually and savingly in its hour of need. Wherever it finds God especially near, it feels itself found and addressed by him.

But reason still questions, Can there be a direct communication with God, and of God with us, as man converses with man? Can there be any token or demonstration to the senses or the understanding of such communication? Can there be, in the nature of things, any credible sign that God talks with us, or hears and heeds our prayer, that he is really a party, an active, conscious party, in this supposed communication with Deity in prayer, that the conscious action is not all on one side, on the side of the soul? Can there be any proof of this that will stand the test of criticism?

Here are two distinct questions. The possibility of a real communication between the human and divine is one question. The possibility of any proof to the understanding, of such communication, is another. The first is substantially, as I have said, a question between theism and atheism, between God and no God, in the proper sense of the term, between a personal God and any other conception to which we may choose to apply that sacred name. Mutual communications between the human soul and a personal God follow necessarily, if truly and devoutly sought on the human side, from the nature of that divine Person. And, if we dismiss from our idea of God the attribute of personality, what have we left but the absolute rule of almighty Power, the origin and law of universal being? A wise and beneficent rule, if you please, a rule of which the purpose and issue is the general good, and submission to which is duty and safety, but not a God who receives supplication, or to whom supplication would ever be addressed by rational souls. Prayer, in that case, can mean nothing more than devout contemplation of the universal order, and devout acquiescence therein; grateful recognition of the good received, patient endurance of necessary evil. This, too, is a kind of religion, but not a religion which meets the requirements of faith, or satisfies devout aspiration. It is not enough for me to know that the world is not subject to irrational, lawless accident, but governed, and well governed, and ordered for good. I desire to enter into personal, conscious, mutual relations with the Power that rules, to feel that I, individually, am known and loved by that ruling Power, can reach him with my petitions, so that he shall heed them, that I can commune with a Spirit above the level of the human, and above the order of nature, and that Spirit with me. The idea of a person in the Godhead answers to this demand: it reaches my need with infinite succors. The idea of a personal God carries with it the possibility—nay, certainty—of divine communication to all who sincerely desire, and earnestly and perseveringly seek it.

But when we inquire further, if any sign is possible of the fact and reality of such communication, which shall satisfy the understanding—any proof impregnable to criticism—reason answers that such signs are neither possible nor desirable. The region in which these communications take place is a region of faith, and only through faith and to faith are such communications possible. When God speaks to the understanding, it is not of himself, or things spiritual, that he speaks, but of such things only as the understanding, whose function is to methodize sensible impressions, referring them to physical or physiological laws, can receive. Only those truths which admit of mathematical demonstration, or those which follow with logical necessity from incontrovertible premises, are impregnable to criticism. Spiritual truths, however assured to those who receive them, though certain as mathematical demonstration within their proper domain, cannot be proved to the understanding, because the domain itself to which they relate is outside of the sphere of the understanding, or more properly perhaps inside of it, in either view beyond the reach of that faculty which deals only with sensible existences and their relations. It is impossible to imagine any outward sign or visible token of divine communications which the understanding will not dispute, for which it will not find another interpretation. The Hebrew warrior doubted the very token he himself had desired: he demanded another, and would, with a little more criticism, have doubted that as well. Visible tokens of divine communication there may be, but faith will always be required to receive them as such. In the view of faith, the answer of prayer in the thing desired will seem a sufficient demonstration of the fact that the prayer is heard, and that the favor received is the natural effect and fruit of prayer. Yet it is impossible to prove to the understanding any real causal relation between the two. A skeptic, disinclined by mental habit to admit the principle involved, will dispose of such cases with the vague and accommodating phrase "coincidence," which, duly considered, is only a different statement of the fact from another point of view. Coincidence is the external aspect of that for which some interior reason must be supposed. For though things which coincide are not always related as cause and effect, yet where, together with coincidence in time, there is also a mutual fitness and a moral link between the two, a reaching-forth of one toward the other, a natural correspondence between the antecedent and the consequent, it is fair to presume a divine adaptation. Sober thought, independently of faith, will not rest satisfied with an empty name, but, pursuing the inquiry, will see that coincidences are not blind accident, but marks and moments of a pre-established harmony which arranges these parallelisms between the natural and the moral world, and adjusts creation to the faithful soul.

Further than this, it is not to be expected, and not to be desired, that the commerce with God assured to faith should be vouched to the senses by visible signs. One sees at once what a door would be opened to wild superstition and irreverent use, if such demonstrations were vouchsafed, or might be expected whenever and by whomsoever desired, how every event would be subsidized by vain curiosity impertinently questioning the deep things of God, how all nature would be perverted to oracles of private interpretation by importunate souls, and how all barriers between the holy and profane would be broken down. The visionary Rousseau relates that, in early youth, he sought, by throwing stones at a mark, to ascertain whether he was destined for heaven or hell. A hit or a miss should be a sign from God of life eternal, or everlasting death. No wonder he took care, as he frankly confesses, to stand very near, and to have the mark conveniently broad. Such misapplications might be expected of any supposed license to question God by visible signs. The soul has a right to seek assurance of the presence and participation of God in its conference with him, but not to prescribe the desired pledge, or to dictate the nature of the proof. It stands in the nature of the thing that the proof must be internal, and the token evident only to faith. Such a token is a sudden inspiration breathed into the mind, or a sudden peace descending on the heart, in answer to the soul's aspiration and appeal, the new strengthening of the will, the newborn courage, the newborn hope. These are the fire from heaven that kindles the flame on the altar, assuring an acceptable offering. What better sign can there be? What surer pledge of a hearing, heeding, answering God?

If there be the personal God whom faith conceives, there must be the personal relations and communications with him which faith supposes and religion craves. Our spirits must be in contact with their kind. Somewhere and somehow there must be an answer to every true prayer. For surely the economies of the moral world are not less exact than those of the natural. In the realm of matter, there is no waste. Not a grain of dust, not a drop of water, not a particle of vapor, can ever be lost to the sphere of which it is a component part. The dew which bathes the summer rose, and glorifies the meadow with its morning sheen, had its origin in what might seem to be the escapes and wastes of the planet. And, when rose and meadow have exhaled their dews at the touch of the sun, the viewless, imponderable vapor is not dissipated beyond recall. It is not all spent on the thankless air; it is gathered and garnered in the chambers of the sky, and returns again in due season, according to its circuit, in orient dews or refreshing showers. And shall not the finer exhalations of the soul—the prayers which are breathed from the deeps of the breast, the secret vows, the Godward thought, the devout aspiration—shall not these also return again according to their circuit, and bring their blessing?