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I.

Your attention has often been turned to the fact that the Gospel can obtain no proper hold of us so long as any sinful passion is nourished in the heart or life. A secret sin acts upon the wholesome word of God like some vicious disease which neutralizes all the effects of air and food, and even converts into poison what in itself and for a sound body is nourishment. This is indeed the reason why so many are ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. But attention has not been so frequently directed to the kindred fact that an idea or opinion may in such a manner haunt the mind that the Truth can obtain no proper access to it, and the Gospel in no effectual manner leaven the heart. A sceptical or semi-sceptical thought may act as viciously as a secret sin; aye, even an invincible doubt or an unresolved difficulty may be—for many a mind actually is—like an impenetrable cloud between its gaze and the face of Christ. It is found, to take an example, that the thought of the vastness of the physical universe and of this earth as being only like a vanishing point in space—the thought that the world, with all that it contains, might be annihilated, and no more missed out of the universe than a speck of dust floating in the sunbeam—can in such a manner haunt the mind and bewilder the imagination, as to make it impossible to believe in the Incarnation page 2 of God, or in the earth's having been the scene of a stupendous, divine, redemptive interposition. I am fully persuaded that this difficulty is only a hallucination of the imagination. It disappears like morning mist when we realise that Mind is greater than Matter: that Spirit is everything and physical bulk nothing: that Spirit is substance and Matter but shadow. Yet it is a striking example of the way in which a thought can bar the way of access, and hinder the Gospel becoming ruler of the heart. Now, perhaps there never was a time when a larger number of minds were conscious of the burden and nightmare of such thoughts, which somehow will not amalgamate with the Gospel, which torment them with a misgiving, which hinder all solid rest in belief, and all really saving influence of divine truth on the soul. With one of these it is my purpose to deal—with one which has been very much before the mind of the public, and very much discussed—with one which is hindering very many from entertaining any practical belief in God as a Heavenly Father, and causing them to feel like liars when they bow their knees to pray—with one which, when once in full possession of the mind, will as effectually prevent any man from ever being a Christian as the cup of the drunkard would—I refer to the supposed irreconcilable antagonism between the fact of the Government of the Universe by Fixed Laws and the Christian Doctrine of Providence and Prayer. I am well persuaded that no real difficulty exists. I accept the Christian doctrine with perfect rest and conviction of mind, and shall be only too happy to bring cure to any mind which may be growing sick with the poison of a horrid doubt, and to build you up in your most holy faith in the living God, the Father of our spirits, who worketh all things after the counsel of His will, and heareth prayer.

It will be necessary to commence by stating the page 3 Doctrine of Scripture on the subject of Providence and Prayer. I must refer to both. The ideas of Providence and Prayer cannot be separated: they are only different sides of the great Christian idea of an immediate personal, universal interference of God in the life-experience of men.

It will not be denied by any man that the Scriptures teach the doctrine of Providence. He may count it a delusion or superstition, but he will not deny that Christ taught it. There are few ideas more thoroughly pervading and impregnating the whole body of Scripture. We are taught that God rules in the world as a father in his family, with at once a general care and a particular interest in each. 'In the application of law in Nature, the terms great and small are unknown;' so also in Divine Providence: God attends equally to what we call great and to what we call small—to the great king whose volition vibrates through an empire, and to a little child—the flight of a comet and the falling of a sparrow—the countless hosts of heaven and the hairs of our heads. The immediate will of God extends to everything. He appointed the day of my birth, and He has appointed the day of my death. He has appointed and arranged all the circumstances of my life. Not a blessing has ever descended on my head but He sent it, not a sorrow ever befallen me but He commissioned it. Not a friend was ever raised up to help me but God had sent him : not a foe ever cursed me but God had bidden him : not a dark and cloudy day has ever dawned upon me but 'twas His holy will The sword, the famine, and the pestilence have never awaked to smite a nation but God summoned them; nor did they ever stay their ravages till His voice said, 'Hitherto!—but no further!' The stormy wind fulfils God's word, and goes forth, as if it were an intelligent angel, to execute God's message to the very letter. God keeps in His hands the treasures page 4 of the light and heat, the rain and dew, the snow and ice, and distributes them as He will: so that we rejoice in His sunshine or hide ourselves before His might when He sendeth forth His ice like morsels : we reap God's bounty or pine under his withholding. God's hand is so actively present that it is He alone who gives a man power to get wealth, He who blows upon accumulated treasure, and it vanisheth like a vapour. He is so near, so vitally present, that any hour He can make a straight path for a man's feet through all entanglements, or scatter blindness upon a man's eyes, and be staggers to ruin like a drunken man. But enough! The Scriptures never teach that our lives and destinies are the sport of laws once, it may be, launched by the Creator, but now beyond His control. We are taught that a most wise, righteous, strong, merciful Will rules all things, great and small, determines whatsoever comes to pass, and that every single effect may be regarded as a separate volition of God. Be the doctrine true or false, who will question that Christ so thought and so taught? If Science will permit us no longer to believe this, what orphans Science will make us!

And what, now, is the Scripture teaching in regard to Prayer? We are taught that our Prayer becomes an actual power that brings results to pass, which shapes and determines what transpires otherwise than it would have been without it. You have seen a lecturer on chesmistry pour water into a vessel, then add to it some ingredient which instantly coloured it, then another which changed the colour, then another which resolved the elements into isolation, then another which produced a new composition and a new colour. For every element introduced there was a new effect; withdraw any one element, and there is a different result. Now, we are taught that prayer introduced into a man's life is an element producing an effect and page 5 a change in it—that the element of prayer withdrawn, all that transpires in his inward and outward life would be different. We are taught that if we bow down before the face of Him who seeth in secret, and, telling Him all about ourselves, pouring out before Him the story of our sins, miseries, perplexities, and temptations, implore Him to help and bless us, He will hear, and so act within us by His Holy Spirit, and so interfere in the world of men and things around us, as to send us the wisdom, strength, guidance, and comfort which we require: and that He will thus do because of our asking what He would not have done without our asking.

It can scarcely be questioned that this is what the Scriptures teach : but attempts are frequently made to explain away great part of the fulness and the fearless sweep of the Christian doctrine. For example, it has sometimes been said that the effect of prayer is wholly subjective, that the exercise of prayer reacts upon the mind of the suppliant with an elevating, soothing, bracing influence, that herein alone lies all its use and virtue, and that this is the answer to prayer that it answers itself. Undoubtedly the very act of prayer has in it a blessing, and it has, of all things, the most salutary reactionary influence upon our moral nature; at the same time it is manifest that it does so only so long as we earnestly believe in its prevailing power with God—that its subjective virtue is nourished by a persuasion of its objective validity. The moment a man entertains the idea that prayer is only self-discipline, his heart becomes the grave of prayer, his lips will refuse to frame one true petition. The doctrine that prayer has only subjective force is suicidal, and strikes a death-blow at the very roots of prayer. Again, it has sometimes been said that the power of prayer must be limited to spiritual things, but wholly kept out of things physical—that it is right to pray for pardon, page 6 peace, wisdom, and purity, and we may cherish the persuasion that in answer to our prayers, God will interfere in the world of our minds to create these things, but that it is absurd to pray for health, or fair weather or rain, and superstitious to imagine that, in answer to our prayer, God will interfere in the physical world to do or create what we supplicate. But certainly no such distinction can be mantained, and every argument which is supposed to banish the power or prayer from physical things is equally powerful to banish it from the realm of mind. The Scriptures know of no such distinction, and teach us to regard prayer as a power with God equally in the world of mind and matter. There is only one distinction to be drawn. When we pray that God would pour out upon us His Holy Spirit, we know that we are praying for what He has unreservedly promised, and for what is at all times good, and never can be ill: whereas, when we pray that God would send us health or rain at a specified time, our prayer does not rest upon any such absolute promise, and we do not know whether the bestowal of what we ask would really be a blessing—we have no certainty that we are not entreating what would be a curse: and therefore prayer in regard to physical things must always be qualified. But, with this solitary distinction arising from the very nature of the case, Scripture teaches us to believe that the worlds of mind and matter lie equally open to God, and are equally under His immediate control, and to expect results alike in each in answer to prayer. Prayer may heal the sick body as well as the sick soul—may bring rain to the parched ground and quickening grace to dead souls—may cause the locusts to depart and the moral wilderness to blossom—may overthrow the chariots of Pharaoh and speed the message of mercy to men's hearts.

Having now stated the doctrine of Scripture con- page 7 cerning Providence and Prayer, we must now proceed to state, with equal prominence and emphasis, the doctrine of Science concerning the Government of the Creation by General Laws—the doctrine which, to so many minds, stands in irreconcilable antagonism to Scripture teaching, and is felt to make it an intellectual impossibility any longer to accept Christ's voice.

Let me here say, before proceeding, that while with full assent I believe Christ's teaching concerning Providence and Prayer, I do none the less fully accept the fact that the world is governed by General Laws, and acknowledge that the doctrine of Science is established beyond all doubt. I should despair if I had in any way to throw doubt or discredit on the doctrine of General Laws in order to defend my Christian belief. I believe that what Christ says is true. I believe that what Science has established is true. My task will be to show that there is no necessary contradiction between the two beliefs.

Let me now proceed to state the fact or doctrine which modern Science has lifted up into such clear light and huge proportions : and this we shall do in a popular way, without aiming at scientific precision of statement. Experience teaches even a child that nature is uniform and regular, that the properties of matter are not one thing to-day and another thing to-morrow, but so fixed and invariable that we can infallibly calculate upon their action. Fire always burns. Cork always floats. Heavy bodies always fall to the ground. Water always rises to the level of its source. A man need not put his hand in the fire and expect Providence to prevent his being burnt: he will be burnt although a thousand saints were praying that he might not be. Submerge a man under water for a couple of minutes, and he will be drowned; no prayer will prevent it any more than shouting at the moon will stop an eclipse.

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This is unquestionably true. Nature acts uniformly, not capriciously and at haphazard. Not only are the properties of matter invariable, but the more carefully we look, the further we penetrate, the more clearly we perceive that nature acts according to definite laws, that there is an invariable order of sequences in nature, that certain things always happen together or in immediate succession, that one thing given, something else is at hand, or will follow, and cannot be prevented. Given a certain intensity of cold, water always becomes ice: given a certain amount of heat, water becomes vapour. Given a certain mineral, say a poison like arsenic, in the human body, and life is destroyed—no power can prevent it. Given a certain state of the atmosphere, and fever or cholera appears immediately: restore the atmosphere, the pestilence disappears as darkness flies when the sun rises. Given certain conditions of air and light, and dew falls—otherwise, never, although hecatombs were offered. All this is unquestionably true. Thus men begin to learn that the kingdom of nature is surrendered to them, and that they can predict. So steady, so uniform, so invariable is nature, that we can predict—in certain departments with infallible accuracy—what will come to pass. To untutored minds and more ignorant ages, nothing seemed so arbitrary and so manifest an interference of the Deity as a comet or eclipse; but now we can calculate on the very hour when a comet will return, when an eclipse will commence and depart. An astronomer will tell you to a second when such events will occur next century, with as much certainty as if he were inspired by God. But law reigns just as triumphantly in all other departments, although we cannot predict in departments where the results of so many laws are all inextricably interwoven, where so many subtle forces are all linked together. Yet no one doubts that law is everywhere. The gyrations of a page 9 feather tossed about in the air are ruled by laws as surely as the movement of a planet. The uncertainty of human life has almost become a proverb. Our breath is in our nostrils. No man knoweth the day of his death. Yet observation and experience show that there is no caprice ruling the length of our days. Take any thousand men of a given age, and you can tell to within a fraction of certainty just how many will be alive, say 25 years hence. Nothing seems so arbitrary as the blowing of the wind; yet no one doubts that there is a law of storms, that laws as fixed govern the wild career of the wind as govern the nutrition of the human body. Let this be enough. We live in an ordered world, in a world governed by invarible laws, which sweep on in their path, and for no entreaty will turn to the right hand or to the left. It is this remorseless sweep of law which frightens us—the cruel, inexorable way in which Nature rushes on, making no account of moral distinctions, crushing alike the good and the bad, and seeming to make a plaything of man's well-being and destiny.

That we are now confronted with a formidable difficulty must be apparent to every one. It lies upon the very surface—happily just upon the surface. The difficulty has existed ever since the uniformity of Nature was observed: Science has only made it more prominent. It is very long since men asked, where is there room for an immediate Providence in this iron-bound world? And what can prayer do? Only now men are saying so more loudly as Science has found law a little further back. Reserving the task of explanation and reconciliation to the next lecture, let me add some not unnecessary remarks on the fact of the Government of the World by Law.

It might seem to you that it would have been a great advantage to religion if things had been otherwise arranged—that if Nature had been less uniform and page 10 invariable it would have made belief in Providence and Prayer much easier to us—that if we had been left in habitual uncertainties we should have been taught to trust and pray—but that this world seems just so arranged as to make religion difficult, to hide God, and shut him out of our hearts and lives. But such reflections are not well founded.

It is manifest that if the laws of nature were not uniform, if the course of nature were not fixed and invariable, life and action would be impossible. If fire burned to-day and cooled to-morrow : if to-day it fused iron, and to-morrow hardened it: if to-day wood floated in water and to-morrow sank, and all the laws of specific gravity were for ever shifting: if to-day a substance were nutritious and to-morrow poisonous: we should be like men paralyzed. We live with energy, we plan with deliberation, we put down our foot with firmness, because we walk among certainties, in an ordered world, where all things are uniform. Who would build a house if to-day stones flew upwards and to-morrow fell downwards? Who would sink a well if to-day water rose to its level and to-morrow became inert as sand? Who would plough or sow if the rotation of the seasons were not fixed? Surely, a world so arranged that we could not live, and could not act, would scarcely reveal God or help us to be devout.

But further: we cannot even imagine an intelligent Creator governing the world in any other way than by a system of fixed and invariable laws—laws so perfect that they need no make-shift expedients to supplement them. It is the mark of a child to be wayward and capricious. The undeveloped reason has no principles, no calculation, and no foresight. Can you imagine the Creator acting like a capricious child in the government of the world? You regard method, uniformity of regulated action, as the characteristic of rational manhood. If a man live waywardly, not uni- page 11 formly subjecting his conduct to a law: if he adopt one maxim or principle as guide of his way to-day, forget it to-morrow, and take a quite different one the third day, you regard him as so far an irrational person—he has on him the mark of folly. Shall we expect the Creator so to govern the world? Were the world not governed by laws, we might almost be excused for being atheists. It is because the Creation is so orderly, so symmetrical, so full of law, that we feel it to be full of Mind : that looking into the realm of nature with the eye of reason, we feel ourselves met by the gaze of a Spirit. The perception of order is the perception of Mind. The perception of law is the perception of a deliberating Intelligence. The world reflects the face of the Creator-Father, with whom is no variableness neither shadow of turning.