Some people have certain spiritual maladies, that become second nature to them, called dominant passions.  For one, it is cursing and swearing; for another vanity and conceit.  One is afflicted with sloth, another with uncleanness of one kind or another.  To discover the failing is the first duty, to pray against it is the next.  You attack it with prayer as you attack a disease with remedies.  And if we only used prayer with half the care, perseverance and confidence that we use medicines, our spiritual distemper would be short-lived.

A person who passes a considerable time without prayer is usually in a bad state of soul.  There is probably no one, who, upon reflection, will fail to discover that his best days were those which his prayers sanctified, and his worst, those which had to get along without any.  And when a man starts out badly, the first thing he takes care to do is to neglect his prayers.  For praying is an antidote and a reminder; it makes him feel uneasy while in sin, and would make him break with his evil ways if he continued to pray.  And since he does not wish to stop, he takes no chances, and gives up his prayers.  When he wants to stop, he falls back on his prayers.

This brings us to the bodily favors we should ask for.  You are sick.  You desire to get well, but you do not see the sense of praying for it; for you say, “Either I shall get well or I shall not.”  For an ordinary statement that is as plain and convincing as one has a right to expect; it will stand against 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.