st all argument. But the conclusion is not of a
piece with the premises. In that case why do you call in the physician,
why do you take nasty pills and swallow whole quarts of vile
concoctions that have the double merit of bringing distress to your
palate and your purse? You take these precautions because your most
elementary common sense tells you that such precautions as medicaments,
etc., enter for something of a condition in the decree of God which
reads that you shall die or not die. Your return to health or your
shuffling off of the mortal coil is subject to conditions of prudence,
and according as they are fulfiled or not fulfiled the decree of God
will go into effect one way or the other.

And why does not your sane common sense suggest to you that prayer
enters as just such a condition in the decrees of God, that your
recovery is just as conditional on the using of prayer as to the taking
of pills?

There are people who have no faith in drugs, either because they have
never used any or because having once used them, failed to get
immediate relief. Appreciation of the efficacy of prayer is frequently
based on similar experience.

To enumerate all the cures effected by prayer would be as bootless as
to rehearse all the miracles of therapeutics and surgery. The doctor
says: "Here, take this, it will do you good. I know its virtue." The
Church says likewise: "Try prayer, I know its virtue." Your faith in it
has all to do with its successful working.

As in bodily sickness, so it is in all the other afflictions that flesh
is heir to. Prayer is a panacea; it cures all ills. But it should be
taken with two tonics, as it were, before and after. Before: faith and
confidence in the power of God to cure us through prayer. After:
resignation to the will of God, by which we accept what it may please
Him to do in our case; for health is not the greatest boon of life, nor
are sickness and death the greatest evils. Sin alone is bad; the grace
of God alone is good. All other things God uses as means in view of
this supreme good and against this supreme evil. Faith prepares the
system and puts it in order for the reception of the remedy.
Resignation helps it work out its good effects, and brings out all its
virtue.

Thus prayer is necessary to us all, whether we be Christians or pagans,
whether just or sinners, whether sick or well. It brings us near to
God, and God near to us, and thus is a foretaste and an image of our