Excerpt from Does God Answer Prayer?

I deem it a great privilege to be allowed to associate your name with this little book. By all who know you well, you are regarded as the greatest living master of the art of analogical reasoning. Butler's method is not deemed by you, as it is by some less thorough thinkers, an ana chronism in our present stage of progress; on the contrary, you believe it capable of most profitable extension, and still the great philosophical defence of the Christian faith. It is the analogical argument which is employed in the present essay. You have been good enough to read over the proofs and to express your approval of the general course of argument they contain. You say most truly that verification is the great difficulty and, in venturing to handle this part Of the subject, Ihave not' been un mindful of the circumstance that the outstanding facts, which I maintain fairly imply the efficacy of prayer, have received explanations excluding the idea of its efficacy altogether. All we can do in such circumstances is to abide by the more reasonable explanation. But as everything depends on the moral attitude we take up in the inquiry, I would respectfully solicit attention to the Epilogue before judgment is passed upon the i' Verification.

You have expressed yourself very cordially about the value Of Note H, in the Appendix in which the proposed Hospital Test is treated more fully than was possible when drafting the text. It was written in 1872, when the proposal was made, but has lain among my papers until now. Iam grateful for your verdict' on it, and hope it may secure attention to it, though it has been relegated to the Appendix.

It only remains for me to tender to you in this public manner the gratitude I feel for the encouragement and sympathy you have extended to me for a long series of years.

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