After Candide and Cacambo part, Candide is able to convince a man into letting him board his ship. As he is heading towards his destination, the ship crosses the path of two other ships that are at war. There is one French ship that is shooting cannons at the other and manages to sink it. As the ship is sinking, Candide observes men aboard that begin to stretch their arms toward heaven. All of them drown. Seconds after, Candide leans over the ship and notices that one of his sheep has survived and is know swimming towards him. How ironic.
Men that have been praying to survive all die but a sheep that does not even express itself properly manages to swim aboard the ship. This shows that those who are in any way religious are doomed and will most likely die. In my opinion, Voltaire is not saying "If you pray, you die" but he is rather demonstrating that God cannot guarantee safety to you, no matter how much you pray. Everyone is at risk in life, which is just a part of living. Instead of stretching their arms towards Heaven, these men should have been searching for something to help them survive. Sure, miracles do occur (rarely), but the truth is that in life you have to work for what you want and you can't just wait for it to be "miraculously" handed to you.
This is definitely a crude message as are many others in this book, but it is unfortunately true. Some people waste an eternity asking for things but they never act. They don't realize that the odds of them reaching a goal or even just getting something they desire are extremely low if they don't make an effort. We tend to ask ourselves why can he/she achieve that and I can't? We even think that at times life can be unfair, but the person who won probably did try harder than you, which is hard to face/admit. However, if we do choose to accept this, we can just try harder next time to reach our goal. There are times in which a decision that affected you might have been unfair, but this is not every time that you lose or miss out on something. In these cases, you just have to move on.
