Science and Prayer
An excerpt from the beginning of:
CHAPTER I
THE Scriptures affirm, that, in answer to prayer, a part of Palestine was once visited with long drought and afterward with copious rains and harvests, an entire family healed, a raging fire quenched, God's purpose to destroy a stiff-necked people changed, the sun and moon apparently stopped in mid-heaven for an entire day, a thunderstorm made to burst right in wheat harvest, a leprous hand cured, a dead child revived, a good king's life lengthened, and, for an assuring token, a dial's shadow actually turned backward.
The Bible unmistakably teaches that God both can and does interfere in our behalf, that his interference often is a direct result of our asking, that all reasonable prayers offered in a right spirit are certain of favorable answer. The requests may be as varied as the healthful and intelligent longings of human hearts.
Some scientists smile at what they style the childish credulity of the Christian's creed. Our investigations, say they, have disclosed a universal reign of unchangeable law, not only in the production of material but even of mental phenomena. We have found that within the walls of every particle of matter there is lodged a force; that these forces are of sixty-four or more different kinds, and their differences in nature and effect make all the differences in the substances about us ; that they bear to each other certain unalterably fixed relations, and exert over each other unalterably fixed influences. These relations we have been able by our experiments to reduce to mathematical formulae. We have found that these forces never manifest themselves unless certain conditions are fulfilled, and that, when they are, the forces invariably appear and act always in precisely the same way. It is also claimed, that, as far back as we can peer into the past, this same order has prevailed; that this rock-ribbed, wave-washed, verdure-clad, densely populated earth of ours has come up out of chaotic fire-mist by the operations of none other than these very forces which at the first were hidden within it; that the earth has developed from its unorganized primordial state into its present complexity with as regular gradations of growth as those through which the oak passes in pushing up from out the walls of the acorn its sinewy stem with outreaching boughs and waving pennons ; that the earth itself is an organism as truly as the tree, has like complemental parts, has had a germinal beginning, has been, and still is, incarnating under pre-established laws of evolution, point by point, age after age, a certain set ideal under the guidance of a central germ-power, divinely commissioned it may be, but commissioned even as to the details of its finest microscopic work, untold millions of years ago.
How idle, then, it is, they claim, for weak, blind children of a day to presume to break in on this grand order of the universe ! Go out into nature, they tell us, and you will find that not a single one of her laws is ever abrogated, that from their control not the least thing is for an instant released. Gravity holds in its grasp not only the ponderous suns with their whirling satellites, but every infinitesimal mote that floats in the air. The force shut up within the walls of an atom of carbon is never dislodged, and never loses a single characteristic. Manacle it with fetters of frost, immerse it in the white heat of a furnace, smite it with a trip-hammer on the face of an anvil, hurl it into the chemical embrace of an affinitive element, do what you will with it, it will reappear identically the same atom informed by precisely the same mysterious force. This speck of matter defies all powers of earth or sky to batter in its walls and drive out its occupant. Every force, the world over, says that only those who find its secret and meet the conditions can command its services. Do you want bread ? Here are the seed, the soil, the air, the shower, and the sunbeam. Matter and force are at your bidding, but their laws are inexorable. Bays of light will travel ninety-five millions of miles to serve you; the atmosphere will gather its clouds from the ocean and float them across a continent to pour their treasures at your feet; the mountains will furnish you millstones, and the running brooks will turn them. The forests that grew a hundred thousand years ago you may find packed away in beds of anthracite, waiting to heat your ovens so soon as your dough is ready for the baking. Not a force in nature but will serve the veriest outcast if he will comply with the conditions; not one, even the humblest, will condescend to move so much as a hair's-breadth even for the Czar of all the Russias, unless he does. The prayerless sinner and the praying saint meet here on a common level. All those stories about producing thunderstorms by prayer, healing the sick, turning back shadows, stopping the sun in the heavens...
"1100146033"
CHAPTER I
THE Scriptures affirm, that, in answer to prayer, a part of Palestine was once visited with long drought and afterward with copious rains and harvests, an entire family healed, a raging fire quenched, God's purpose to destroy a stiff-necked people changed, the sun and moon apparently stopped in mid-heaven for an entire day, a thunderstorm made to burst right in wheat harvest, a leprous hand cured, a dead child revived, a good king's life lengthened, and, for an assuring token, a dial's shadow actually turned backward.
The Bible unmistakably teaches that God both can and does interfere in our behalf, that his interference often is a direct result of our asking, that all reasonable prayers offered in a right spirit are certain of favorable answer. The requests may be as varied as the healthful and intelligent longings of human hearts.
Some scientists smile at what they style the childish credulity of the Christian's creed. Our investigations, say they, have disclosed a universal reign of unchangeable law, not only in the production of material but even of mental phenomena. We have found that within the walls of every particle of matter there is lodged a force; that these forces are of sixty-four or more different kinds, and their differences in nature and effect make all the differences in the substances about us ; that they bear to each other certain unalterably fixed relations, and exert over each other unalterably fixed influences. These relations we have been able by our experiments to reduce to mathematical formulae. We have found that these forces never manifest themselves unless certain conditions are fulfilled, and that, when they are, the forces invariably appear and act always in precisely the same way. It is also claimed, that, as far back as we can peer into the past, this same order has prevailed; that this rock-ribbed, wave-washed, verdure-clad, densely populated earth of ours has come up out of chaotic fire-mist by the operations of none other than these very forces which at the first were hidden within it; that the earth has developed from its unorganized primordial state into its present complexity with as regular gradations of growth as those through which the oak passes in pushing up from out the walls of the acorn its sinewy stem with outreaching boughs and waving pennons ; that the earth itself is an organism as truly as the tree, has like complemental parts, has had a germinal beginning, has been, and still is, incarnating under pre-established laws of evolution, point by point, age after age, a certain set ideal under the guidance of a central germ-power, divinely commissioned it may be, but commissioned even as to the details of its finest microscopic work, untold millions of years ago.
How idle, then, it is, they claim, for weak, blind children of a day to presume to break in on this grand order of the universe ! Go out into nature, they tell us, and you will find that not a single one of her laws is ever abrogated, that from their control not the least thing is for an instant released. Gravity holds in its grasp not only the ponderous suns with their whirling satellites, but every infinitesimal mote that floats in the air. The force shut up within the walls of an atom of carbon is never dislodged, and never loses a single characteristic. Manacle it with fetters of frost, immerse it in the white heat of a furnace, smite it with a trip-hammer on the face of an anvil, hurl it into the chemical embrace of an affinitive element, do what you will with it, it will reappear identically the same atom informed by precisely the same mysterious force. This speck of matter defies all powers of earth or sky to batter in its walls and drive out its occupant. Every force, the world over, says that only those who find its secret and meet the conditions can command its services. Do you want bread ? Here are the seed, the soil, the air, the shower, and the sunbeam. Matter and force are at your bidding, but their laws are inexorable. Bays of light will travel ninety-five millions of miles to serve you; the atmosphere will gather its clouds from the ocean and float them across a continent to pour their treasures at your feet; the mountains will furnish you millstones, and the running brooks will turn them. The forests that grew a hundred thousand years ago you may find packed away in beds of anthracite, waiting to heat your ovens so soon as your dough is ready for the baking. Not a force in nature but will serve the veriest outcast if he will comply with the conditions; not one, even the humblest, will condescend to move so much as a hair's-breadth even for the Czar of all the Russias, unless he does. The prayerless sinner and the praying saint meet here on a common level. All those stories about producing thunderstorms by prayer, healing the sick, turning back shadows, stopping the sun in the heavens...
Science and Prayer
An excerpt from the beginning of:
CHAPTER I
THE Scriptures affirm, that, in answer to prayer, a part of Palestine was once visited with long drought and afterward with copious rains and harvests, an entire family healed, a raging fire quenched, God's purpose to destroy a stiff-necked people changed, the sun and moon apparently stopped in mid-heaven for an entire day, a thunderstorm made to burst right in wheat harvest, a leprous hand cured, a dead child revived, a good king's life lengthened, and, for an assuring token, a dial's shadow actually turned backward.
The Bible unmistakably teaches that God both can and does interfere in our behalf, that his interference often is a direct result of our asking, that all reasonable prayers offered in a right spirit are certain of favorable answer. The requests may be as varied as the healthful and intelligent longings of human hearts.
Some scientists smile at what they style the childish credulity of the Christian's creed. Our investigations, say they, have disclosed a universal reign of unchangeable law, not only in the production of material but even of mental phenomena. We have found that within the walls of every particle of matter there is lodged a force; that these forces are of sixty-four or more different kinds, and their differences in nature and effect make all the differences in the substances about us ; that they bear to each other certain unalterably fixed relations, and exert over each other unalterably fixed influences. These relations we have been able by our experiments to reduce to mathematical formulae. We have found that these forces never manifest themselves unless certain conditions are fulfilled, and that, when they are, the forces invariably appear and act always in precisely the same way. It is also claimed, that, as far back as we can peer into the past, this same order has prevailed; that this rock-ribbed, wave-washed, verdure-clad, densely populated earth of ours has come up out of chaotic fire-mist by the operations of none other than these very forces which at the first were hidden within it; that the earth has developed from its unorganized primordial state into its present complexity with as regular gradations of growth as those through which the oak passes in pushing up from out the walls of the acorn its sinewy stem with outreaching boughs and waving pennons ; that the earth itself is an organism as truly as the tree, has like complemental parts, has had a germinal beginning, has been, and still is, incarnating under pre-established laws of evolution, point by point, age after age, a certain set ideal under the guidance of a central germ-power, divinely commissioned it may be, but commissioned even as to the details of its finest microscopic work, untold millions of years ago.
How idle, then, it is, they claim, for weak, blind children of a day to presume to break in on this grand order of the universe ! Go out into nature, they tell us, and you will find that not a single one of her laws is ever abrogated, that from their control not the least thing is for an instant released. Gravity holds in its grasp not only the ponderous suns with their whirling satellites, but every infinitesimal mote that floats in the air. The force shut up within the walls of an atom of carbon is never dislodged, and never loses a single characteristic. Manacle it with fetters of frost, immerse it in the white heat of a furnace, smite it with a trip-hammer on the face of an anvil, hurl it into the chemical embrace of an affinitive element, do what you will with it, it will reappear identically the same atom informed by precisely the same mysterious force. This speck of matter defies all powers of earth or sky to batter in its walls and drive out its occupant. Every force, the world over, says that only those who find its secret and meet the conditions can command its services. Do you want bread ? Here are the seed, the soil, the air, the shower, and the sunbeam. Matter and force are at your bidding, but their laws are inexorable. Bays of light will travel ninety-five millions of miles to serve you; the atmosphere will gather its clouds from the ocean and float them across a continent to pour their treasures at your feet; the mountains will furnish you millstones, and the running brooks will turn them. The forests that grew a hundred thousand years ago you may find packed away in beds of anthracite, waiting to heat your ovens so soon as your dough is ready for the baking. Not a force in nature but will serve the veriest outcast if he will comply with the conditions; not one, even the humblest, will condescend to move so much as a hair's-breadth even for the Czar of all the Russias, unless he does. The prayerless sinner and the praying saint meet here on a common level. All those stories about producing thunderstorms by prayer, healing the sick, turning back shadows, stopping the sun in the heavens...
CHAPTER I
THE Scriptures affirm, that, in answer to prayer, a part of Palestine was once visited with long drought and afterward with copious rains and harvests, an entire family healed, a raging fire quenched, God's purpose to destroy a stiff-necked people changed, the sun and moon apparently stopped in mid-heaven for an entire day, a thunderstorm made to burst right in wheat harvest, a leprous hand cured, a dead child revived, a good king's life lengthened, and, for an assuring token, a dial's shadow actually turned backward.
The Bible unmistakably teaches that God both can and does interfere in our behalf, that his interference often is a direct result of our asking, that all reasonable prayers offered in a right spirit are certain of favorable answer. The requests may be as varied as the healthful and intelligent longings of human hearts.
Some scientists smile at what they style the childish credulity of the Christian's creed. Our investigations, say they, have disclosed a universal reign of unchangeable law, not only in the production of material but even of mental phenomena. We have found that within the walls of every particle of matter there is lodged a force; that these forces are of sixty-four or more different kinds, and their differences in nature and effect make all the differences in the substances about us ; that they bear to each other certain unalterably fixed relations, and exert over each other unalterably fixed influences. These relations we have been able by our experiments to reduce to mathematical formulae. We have found that these forces never manifest themselves unless certain conditions are fulfilled, and that, when they are, the forces invariably appear and act always in precisely the same way. It is also claimed, that, as far back as we can peer into the past, this same order has prevailed; that this rock-ribbed, wave-washed, verdure-clad, densely populated earth of ours has come up out of chaotic fire-mist by the operations of none other than these very forces which at the first were hidden within it; that the earth has developed from its unorganized primordial state into its present complexity with as regular gradations of growth as those through which the oak passes in pushing up from out the walls of the acorn its sinewy stem with outreaching boughs and waving pennons ; that the earth itself is an organism as truly as the tree, has like complemental parts, has had a germinal beginning, has been, and still is, incarnating under pre-established laws of evolution, point by point, age after age, a certain set ideal under the guidance of a central germ-power, divinely commissioned it may be, but commissioned even as to the details of its finest microscopic work, untold millions of years ago.
How idle, then, it is, they claim, for weak, blind children of a day to presume to break in on this grand order of the universe ! Go out into nature, they tell us, and you will find that not a single one of her laws is ever abrogated, that from their control not the least thing is for an instant released. Gravity holds in its grasp not only the ponderous suns with their whirling satellites, but every infinitesimal mote that floats in the air. The force shut up within the walls of an atom of carbon is never dislodged, and never loses a single characteristic. Manacle it with fetters of frost, immerse it in the white heat of a furnace, smite it with a trip-hammer on the face of an anvil, hurl it into the chemical embrace of an affinitive element, do what you will with it, it will reappear identically the same atom informed by precisely the same mysterious force. This speck of matter defies all powers of earth or sky to batter in its walls and drive out its occupant. Every force, the world over, says that only those who find its secret and meet the conditions can command its services. Do you want bread ? Here are the seed, the soil, the air, the shower, and the sunbeam. Matter and force are at your bidding, but their laws are inexorable. Bays of light will travel ninety-five millions of miles to serve you; the atmosphere will gather its clouds from the ocean and float them across a continent to pour their treasures at your feet; the mountains will furnish you millstones, and the running brooks will turn them. The forests that grew a hundred thousand years ago you may find packed away in beds of anthracite, waiting to heat your ovens so soon as your dough is ready for the baking. Not a force in nature but will serve the veriest outcast if he will comply with the conditions; not one, even the humblest, will condescend to move so much as a hair's-breadth even for the Czar of all the Russias, unless he does. The prayerless sinner and the praying saint meet here on a common level. All those stories about producing thunderstorms by prayer, healing the sick, turning back shadows, stopping the sun in the heavens...
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Science and Prayer
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Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940016175355 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | OGB |
| Publication date: | 02/28/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 294 KB |
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