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.