When it is said, for example, that God, being omniscient, does not need to be informed either of the wants or the wishes of any of His creatures, the objection involves a great and important truth,--a truth which was explicitly recognized by our Lord when He said, "Your heavenly Father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask Him;" but that truth is grievously misapplied when it is directed to prove that prayer is either superfluous or ineffectual, since the objection virtually assumes that the object of prayer is _to inform God of what He did not know before_, and that His omniscience is of itself sufficient to show that prayer from men or angels must needs be unavailing.

When it is said, _again_, that God being immutable, His will cannot be affected or altered by the "petitions" of His creatures, this objection, like the former one, involves a great and important truth,--a truth which is also explicitly recognized in Scripture when it is said that "He is without variableness or the least shadow of turning;" but this truth, too, is grievously misapplied when it is directed to prove that there can be no efficacy in prayer, since it might as well be said that the Divine dispensations must be invariably the same whatever may be the conduct of His creatures _in other respects_, as that they must be the same whether men do or do not pray; or, that His procedure as a Moral Governor has no reference whatever either to the character or conduct of his subjects.

But, in the words of Dr.Price, "God's unchangeableness, when considered in relation to the exertion of His attributes in the government of the world, consists, not in always acting in the same manner however cases and circumstances alter, but in always doing what is right, and varying His conduct according to the various actions, characters and dispositions of beings.

If, then, prayer makes an alteration in the case of the suppliant, as being the discharge of an indispensable duty, what would in truth infer _changeableness_ in Him would be, not His regarding and answering it, but His _not_ doing this."[207] When it is said, _again_, that there can be no "efficacy in prayer," because there is an established constitution and regular course of Nature, by which all events, whether prosperous or adverse, are invariably determined, and which cannot be altered or modified without _a miracle_, this objection, like each of the two former, involves an important truth,--a truth which is also explicitly recognized in Scripture when it speaks of "the ordinances of the heavens and the earth," and of the peculiar laws and properties of all created things; but this truth is also grievously misapplied when it is directed to prove that God's will has no efficient control over natural events, or that He has no agencies at His disposal by which he can accomplish the desires of them that seek Him.

In all these objections there is an apparent truth, but there is also a latent error; and the false conclusion is founded on an erroneous supposition in regard to the nature and object of prayer.
For this reason, we shall endeavor to separate the truth from the error, and to lay down a few positions which may be established both by reason and Scripture, and which will be sufficient to show that the doctrine which affirms the efficacy of prayer is not only credible, but true.
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