As widely reported, the Templeton Foundation, an organisation set up by a New York millionaire to fund research into religion, is carrying out an experiment to judge the effects of prayer.

The 'guinea-pigs' are 1800 heart patients in three big US hospitals. 600 are being told that they will be prayed for. The other 1200 are being told that they may be prayed for (but may not); 600 of these will in fact be prayed for, 600 not. The results will be faithfully recorded.

There is, of course, a very easy way to sabotage the scheme from Waterlooville. It is simply for us to pray to God for all the guinea-pigs, whoever they are. That ensures everybody is prayed for! The conditions for the experiment will thus have been destroyed.

Most doctors and surgeons will acknowledge, however be-grudgingly, that patients react better if they have personal faith, and also if they know they are being prayed for. It hardly requires an expensive American foundation to show us that. The result may not be as dramatic as at the time of the canonisation of St. John Ogilvie, when a whole Scottish parish prayed through the Saint for a terminally ill parishioner, who suddenly sat up and asked for a large breakfast (to the amazement of a sceptical doctor who was later received into the Church). But the result may be an increase in calm and serenity, as assurance that, buoyed up by the faith of the Church, one cannot suffer harm.

It is precisely the fact that prayer's result cannot be quantified which should encourage us to pray. The door is left open to that essential Christian ingredient - hope. We are often tempted to say "I pray, but it's useless" But how do we know? We cannot gauge the Holy Spirit. We cannot tell what effect in God's world our little grain of prayer is having, all unknown to us.

One result of the American experiment will probably be that if a patient dies the family will sue the Foundation for 'not praying properly'. Faith is not marketable, but as St. Paul says, "godliness with contentment is great gain" (1 Tim 6:6).

DS.