With regard to the rank which Daniel's prayer occupied among the various means or agencies that were to be employed in bringing about the object of it, he had good reason to believe that it was neither without a definite place, nor in itself devoid of efficacy....

He had been honored to vindicate the power and assert the supremacy of the Lord God of Israel; by the wisdom of his counsels and the weight of his personal character, he had paved the way for that decision in favor of the people of God to which the King of Persia was soon to be brought; and the whole business of his active and most laborious life was made to bear on the interests and the liberation of his afflicted brethren.

And if God had thus assigned to _the outward actions_ of His servant an important place in carrying into effect His thoughts of peace towards his penitent people, is it conceivable that He had no place in that scheme for _the holy and spiritual_ efforts of the same servant?
or that the aspirations of a sanctified spirit, the travailing of a soul intent upon the accomplishment of the Divine will and the manifestation of the Divine glory, should be less efficient or less essential in the execution of the Divine counsels, than the outward and ordinary agency of human actions?
The whole tenor and the most explicit declarations of Scripture stand opposed to such a supposition; nor can I understand how a devout mind should have any difficulty in conceiving that it must be so.

The agency of _prayer_ is, indeed, a less obvious and palpable thing than that outward cooeperation whereby mankind are rendered subservient to the accomplishment of the Divine purposes.
But is it not an agency of an unspeakably loftier character?
Is it not the cooeperation of an immortal spirit, bearing the impress of the Divine image, and at the moment acting in unison with the Divine will?
Is it not befitting the character of God to set upon that cooeperation a special mark of His holy approbation, by assigning to it a more elevated place among the secondary causes which He is pleased to employ?
And must there not be provision made, therefore, in the general principles of His administration, for fulfilling the special promise of His word, 'The Lord is nigh to all that call upon Him, to all that call upon him in truth.'"[215] "We should blush," says Bishop Warburton, "to be thought so uninstructed in the nature of _prayer_, as to fancy that it can work any temporary change in the dispositions of the Deity, who is 'the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.' Yet we are not ashamed to maintain that God, _in the chain of causes and effects_, which not only sustains each system, but connects them all with one another, hath so wonderfully contrived, that the temporary endeavors of pious men shall procure good and avert evil, by means of that 'preestablished harmony' which He hath willed to exist between _moral actions_ and _natural events_." "But should some frigid skeptic, therefore, dare To doubt the all-prevailing power of prayer; As if 'twere ours, with impious zeal, to try To shake the purposes of Deity; Pause, cold philosopher, nor snatch away The last, the best, the wretched's surest stay.
Look round on life, and trace its checkered plan, The griefs, the joys, the hopes, the fears of man; Tell me, if each deliverance, each success, Each transient golden dream of happiness, Each palm that genius in the race acquires, Each thrilling rapture virtuous pride inspires, Tell me, if each and all were not combined In the great purpose of the Eternal Mind?
* * * * * Thus while we humbly own the vast decree, Formed in the bosom of Eternity, And know all secondary causes tend Each to contribute to one mighty end; Yet while these causes firmly fixed remain-- Links quite unbroken in the endless chain, So that could one be snapped, the whole must fail, And wide confusion o'er the world prevail; Why may not our petitions, which arise In humble adoration to the skies, Be foreordained the causes, whence shall flow Our purest pleasures in this vale of woe?
Not that they move the purpose that hath stood By time unchanged, immeasurably good, _But that the event and prayer alike may be United objects of the same decree._"[216] On the whole, we feel ourselves warranted, and even constrained, to conclude that the theory of "government by natural law" is defective in so far as it excludes the superintendence and control of God over all the events of human life, and that neither the existence of second causes nor the operation of physical laws should diminish our confidence in the care of Providence and the efficacy of Prayer.
FOOTNOTES: [181] CICERO, "De Natura Deorum," lib.

I.c.