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So far as chance is concerned, it does not mean that the occurrence of the event constituting the alleged response is brought about in violation of the natural Law, or what is the same thing in different words, by way of a miracle, but that its relation to the suppliant's wish rests upon nothing more or less than its co-existence with it in point of time. The event was bound to happen, and would have happened, as an independent happening, whether any one prayed for its occurrence or not, so that even its synchronism with prayer cannot be said to be due to the interference on the part of a prayer-granting agency in heaven. There are many such coincidences always occurring in nature which even the most unreasoning deism would refuse to regard as instances of divine response to the outpouring of the human soul, e.g., the occurrence of the death of an enemy or of some other form of calamity to his person or property. But if we are debarred from regarding these dark coincidences as response to prayer, because of their tendency to leave a stain on the honour and character of their 'perpetrators,'
THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
of prolonged, unbearable privations, of unparallelled suffering and of bloody deeds of all conceivable shades of frightfulness, sparing neither sex nor age nor even innocence. All this, we repeat, has gone on under the very nose, as it were, of our omniscient, omnipotent Ruler of the world, and yet he has not seen it fit to stir himself even to save defenceless women and innocent babes, or to put a speedy end to this world-wide calamity. It is not that his aid has not been invoked or his intervention resented; on the contrary, all conceivable forms of supplication-ordinary and special prayers, hymns, intercession service and the like-have been repeatedly employed by men, all over the world, to move him in the matter. These facts speak for themselves, and prove, beyond the possibility of doubt, that the management of the world is not a function or concern of divinity, consisting as it does, in the perfection of vairagya (renunciation), that is, desirelessness. For the same reason, the granting of boons to a worshipper or follower is not an attribute of godhood.
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