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II.

That the properties of matter are invariable, that the course of nature is uniform, that a system of fixed laws girds the whole creation, and that they will yield to no entreaty of ours, but sweep on with deaf ears,—must be conceded by us, not only as to a proved theory, but as simple matter of fact and every day experience. The question then immediately forces itself upon us, How can every effect be regarded as expression of an immediate volition of the Creator? How can there be a universal personal interference of God at every point and in every occurrence? What possible use can there be in Prayer? In ages past, when the universal reign of law was unknown, as we now know it, the difficulty was lightly felt—it was easier to believe in Divine interpositions. But now when one and another and another supposed interference of God has been resolved into the natural, God seems to be receding further and further from our grasp. The Greek believed that the Sun was a god who drove his chariot across the sky: the suggestion, that it was a luminous body, was denounced as savouring of impiety : it seemed to banish God out of the heavens and substitute a lump of dead matter. Was it not a much more religious theory to believe that the Sun was a god driving a fiery chariot? Our fathers saw an immediate interference of God in page 13 an eclipse: but astronomy explained how it happened, predicted it, and the prediction came true, and seemed in doing so to destroy a prop and stay of religion, and to remove God a stage further off. When a pestilence scourged the land, its awful mysterious power was readily understood as marking God's displeasure : but when Science began to show that it was connected with certain circumstances over which man himself has control, and that it was the punishment of dirt rather than of sin, it seemed as if the mind was now emancipated from all religious interpretation of it, any more than of the most common occurrence. Thus, seeing how the light of knowledge has been making God flee before it, and retire deeper and deeper into the unknown, the heart of man has begun to tremble lest it should lose God and religion altogether, lest all religion should come to be regarded as a kind of superstition, lest it should no longer be able to believe in any providence of a Heavenly Father, or in having any profit in praying to him. In what sense was it the will of God that a ship should founder, when it would not have foundered if we had built it properly? What use is there in praying to God to remove the cholera, when we can remove it ourselves by flushing the drains? Has not the time come for dispensing with God, Providence, and Prayer? Is it not time to build temples to Science instead of to an invisible Power who hides himself more and ever more? Surely the hour has struck to be done with an idle superstition: to put self-help for trust, and skill and science for prayer. The issue raised is a very serious one. Certainly it is time for every man, who has a conviction left, to utter it, and give a reason for the hope which is in him with meekness and fear.

That there is a difficulty is apparent, but it is necessary to discern precisely where the difficulty lies and what it is. If a workman proceed to rectify any piece page 14 of machinery, having only a vague idea that there is something wrong, but he knows not what or where, he is not likely speedly or efficiently to execute his task. He must first be able to put his finger on the exact spot where the defect lies. So we must not proceed to work, groping in a region which seems all darkened and perplexed : we must trace back the difficulty to its central point, and also reduce it to its narrowest dimensions. It is then supposed that the Christian Doctrine of Providence and Prayer, and the fact of the Government of the world by Law, are antagonistic and contradictory—that both cannot be true, and that if you will maintain the one you must surrender the other. A world governed by law is supposed to leave no room for the immediate interpositions of a living will. It is supposed that God does not hear prayer, does not will to hear prayer, or that God cannot hear prayer, having put an obstacle in his own way: but these two ways of putting it really come to the same thing. We may state the matter thus: 'Seeing it is the manifest will of God to govern the world by fixed laws, it is therefore his manifest will not to hear prayer. The world is an intricate, clever machine, like a watch. God winds it up and sets it a-going. He never interferes, but lets it run its mechanical course.' On this statement I shall meanwhile offer only one remark: Seeing a man can construct a machine, say a steam engine, and set it in motion, and yet is never as it were quite outside of it, but with his brain and hand guides it, regulates it, and interferes in it, in perfect harmony with its laws and by means of them making it execute his behests at every moment—seeing that this is true of a man and his work, it seems a strange thing that the Infinite Mind should not guide and regulate the machine of creation, causing it to do His will, all in sweetest harmony with its laws and by means of them. Do God's works fetter God more page 15 than man's works fetter man? Shall we invert Christ's word and read—'Things which are possible with man are impossible to God.' But this just by the way. We may state the difficulty thus: 'God cannot hear prayer. The mechanism of fixed law is such that God who made it finds it an insuperable obstruction in the way of answering prayer. The hearing of prayer necessitates the supposition of a ceaseless working of miracles—ceaseless interruptions, suspensions, violations, and contradictions of the order of nature : but we know that no such thing does occur. If God heard prayer, He would ever and anon throw nature off its balance: therefore God does not—cannot hear prayer.' Thus Tyndall says :—'We have ceased to propitiate the powers of nature—ceased even to pray for things in manifest contradiction to natural laws.' And again : 'We sometimes pray for a miracle when we do not intend it' This then is perhaps the most precise way in which the difficulty can be stated—the hearing of prayer supposes a miracle—countless miracles, whereas we know that they are not wrought, and nature's course never violated. If then we could show that the hearing of prayer does not require the supposition of a miracle, or that prayer may be heard and nature's courses suffer no violation and no suspension, we should sufficiently answer the difficulty which surrounds the doctrine of Providence and Prayer arising from the government of the world by Law. I believe that this can be done. But we must proceed leisurely, and shall start at a point further back. A leisurely course will be the most satisfactory in the end.

1. It will be admitted that our assertions ought always to be cautious just in proportion to the density of our ignorance in the departments in which they are made : we call by no polite name the man who affirms dogmatically where his ignorance is so great that an important element which might qualify or change his page 16 assertion may be unknown to him. What then is the measure of the rashness of the assertions made by the opponents of the doctrine of Providence and Prayer? It may be that God has purposed not to hear prayer, or finds His own arrangements such that to hear prayer were to act in contradiction to Himself: but to affirm that it is so, must be so, and cannot be otherwise, is surely reckless in the highest degree : it is to affirm in a region of deepest darkness where a veil of impenetrable obscurity hangs around us at every step. It may ultimately aid us to ponder this fact.

You would imagine, to hear some men speaking about what God does do, does not do, and cannot do, that they had climbed up into a region where there is a light shining like the sun at noon. Would you credit it that they are walking among inscrutable mysteries, themselves being witness? They speak much about matter, properties of matter, and laws of matter, and have got into a way of speaking as if matter were the grand essence and substance which confronted God like some granite wall. Not one of them knows what matter is—a profound mystery meets them at the very threshold. You take a stone in your hand. What is it? It is something hard, cold, coloured, and so on. But what is hardness? To a hand a thousand times stronger it would be soft. What is coldness? It is all relative to your own senses. What is colour? It is a perception of your own eye—in it, not in the object. And what is that something which is hard, cold, coloured? Who can tell? Matter seems to melt away before the gaze of the mind. It melts away, too, in the laboratory of science. "Under the analysis of the Physiologist, the Chemist, and the Electrician, matter dissolves and disappears, surviving only as the phenomena of Force." (Argyle's Reign of Law, p. 116.) "Heat and Light are only modes of motion," says Tyndall. It seems to be one of the admitted conclusions of science that Matter page 17 is resolvable into Force—that we are confronted, not by a material universe, but a magazine of wondrous Forces. But what have we learned? We are only plunging deeper into the inscrutable. We speak of the force of gravitation, the force of electricity, the force of magnetism. But what is Force? Who can answer? Not one. 'Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow?' Who has been behind nature? What if all matter be only force? What if all the forces be but modes of one Force? What if that once Force be only the living Will of Him whose name is I am, streaming its energy through the universe? Who dares deny that that is possible? Who, then, dares pronounce dogmatically on the relation in which God stands to things which come to pass? Again: Science is never weary speaking about the causes of things, is ever assigning the causes of phenomena, and is supposed to explain things when it assigns causes for them. Are you aware that men of science admit that they do not know the real and true cause of anything? We know only a certain invariable order of sequences. We know the fact that Hydrogen and Oxygen in certain quantities of each produce or become Water: but why or how no man knows. We know the fact that seeds sown in the ground germinate : but why or how no man knows. The true productive and efficient causes always elude our grasp. And if we know not the real cause of anything, shall we make bold to affirm that the immediate volition of God causes nothing? never operates? It remains at least possible that the volition of the Creator is imme-diate cause of everything? I affirm, then, that seeing we know not what matter is, know not what force is, know not what the true cause of anything is, and seeing that the relation in which the Infinite Mind stands to the Creation must needs be above our comprehension, it must be pronounced rash and reckless to affirm page 18 that God does not or cannot hear prayer. In this boundless region of the Unknown there seems to be room enough left for everything which religion asserts—space enough for every truth which Christ has taught. If even Science allows that it is everywhere brought face to face with a Mystery—may not that veiled mystery be God? What if the veil which shrouds matter, force, and cause be the evil which He wears upon His face, of whom it is written—"Thou art a God who hidest thyself,"—"who coverest thyself with light as with a garment?"

2. There is now a second point to which we shall do well to direct our attention. The doctrine of the government of the world by General Laws is admitted to be true : at the same time that doctrine is often misapprehended, misstated, and exaggerated, and just in these misapprehensions, misstatements, and exaggerations is found to lie no small part of our whole difficulty. It is amazing how the atmosphere clears when they are removed. We speak of the order of nature as fixed, rigid, inexorable, invariable; and in a certain sense it is undoubtedly so. But in what sense? There is also a sense in which the order of nature is not fixed, not rigid, not inexorable, and not invariable. Nature is full of Law : but at the same time the word 'Law' carries with it a misleading association, for the laws of nature are not hard and unbending, but of all things the most yielding and pliable. Nature is not built of blocks of granite and not forged of adamant; nature were just as fitly compared to softened wax or to the yielding waves of the sea.

Let us look into the kingdom of nature. Nature is just a great storehouse of materials with definite properties, or a geat magazine of forces and power of definite quality—materials and forces which are being constantly arranged in ceaseless varieties, which are capable of being assorted, adjusted, and manipulated in page 19 ever-varying manner to produce new results. When you go into a great manufactory you find large stores of materials with definite properties, wood, coal, iron, lead, and so on : and when anything has to be done, any effect produced, they are brought out, adjusted, fitted into each other, combined and arranged by a presiding mind, and made all co-operant to an end: and the materials are thus pliable just because their properties are so fixed—the more pliable, the more definite, and the better known their properties are. What else do we see in nature? The Creation lies waiting for the Mind and Hand of God and Man to move it and mould it. Our houses, our temples and palaces, our railways, our bridges, our ships—all show to what an amazing extent nature is soft and plastic—to what an incredible extent a few primitive properties and forces are capable of adjustment and combination; to produce new results. It has been shown how nature constructs the little barnacles which crust the rocks at low tide, which are at once so fragile and so strong, which a blow can destroy, and which can yet resist the momentum of hugest billows, on the same principle which Stephenson empoyed in constructing the Menai bridge, so as to combine the maximum of strength and the minimum of weight. ^* Might not ten thousand similar examples be produced? When Professor Tyndall creates a bit of blue sky in a lecture-room, he does it just as nature does. When Armstrong makes his huge gun and thunders forth its volley, he has gone to work in the laboratory and workshop of nature, much as when Nature herself prepares and launches forth a thunder-bolt. "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work," said the Son of Man. Is not nature alike plastic under the hand of the Creator, and of Man whom the Creator made in His own image? page 20 There is manifestly a sense in which nature is not hard, but malleable—not rigid, but most pliable—not invariable, but ever new and ever changing—not inexorable, but most yielding, most willing, most serviceable, responding to every touch as the waters of the sea to the blowing of the wind: and yet nothing has been so much overlooked, no fact more obscured by many of the prevalent modes of speech. Is it, after all, so very hard to believe or understand that the world may be full of Law and yet full of Mind and Will?—all established and fixed, and yet all responding, like a living, thing, to the voice of the Eternal Spirit, who so knows it in its innermost essence?

The fact to which I am now calling your attention may be brought out again from yet another point of view. Looking again into the kingdom of nature, we see an almost boundless variety in the effects produced : no two things, however similar, are absolutely alike: and there is thus made upon us the impression of the working of a hand which moves with consummate ease and skill among most subtle and obedient elements. When we look more narrowly, it almost seems to us as if nothing were ever done twice, or ever done twice the same way, as if there were a ceaseless separation and new arrangements of properties and forces, and as if every effect was the result of an endless number of antecedents, the result of ten thousand concurrent causes inextricably inter-linked. Let us take a very familiar example of the way in which a result is brought to pass. A man goes out on a cold, raw, winter's night: he catches cold: the cold becomes pleurisy or fever, and he dies. We familarly say, His going out that given night was the cause of his death. But how many links lie between the cause and the effect? The temperature of the atmosphere from which he went out—the state of the body he was in—the food of which he partook—the medicine which he page 21 took or wanted—and innumerable other points, all lie between: and each one is as well entitled to be called cause as the actual going out or the actual disease, for probably had some one little link been a-wanting, he would not then have died. But speaking as we commonly do, that is, fixing our attention on the more prominent links in the chain, we have here an effect,—a man's death, caused by the concurrence of three things, a certain temperature of the atmosphere, a certain state of his body, and his going out. But if we ask, How came the atmosphere to be in that state? we are led on, and on, and on from link to link till we discover that it was the result of ten thousand causes acting through all past time and through the whole physical universe. Or, if we ask, How came he to be in that state of body? we are led in search of an answer, through all his past life and habits, through all the life and habits of his father and mother before him, on and on through all the circumstances and positions in which he has been placed—once again we are led through all past time and the whole physical universe for an explanation. Or, if we ask, How came he to go out that night? you will find on enquiry that that action was linked with all his past life and actions, with all the ramifications of his connections with other people, so that the likelihood is that had some utterly trivial thing been different some previous day, he would not have gone out, and—would not have died. Thus, the effect, the man's death, is organically connected with a myriad antecedent things, is the result, not of one cause, but of a myriad antecedents, each one of which is equally cause, for if any one thing had been different in the whole chain, ten thousand years back or ten thousand miles away, the result would have been different. Now, when we permit our minds to rest upon such an example of the way in which results are really brought to pass, a very different impression is produced upon page 22 the imagination than by ringing the changes upon expressions like 'The immutability of nature' and 'the inexorable course of law:' for we see at once that the system of nature is most wondrously plastic. Such an an example not only shows how extremely limited must ever be man's control over what we call the events of Providence, and how helpless we are: not only enables us vividly to realise what possible room there is for an interference, which would elude our vision, in a chain of cause and effect reaching through all space and time : but it most vividly shows us that nature is tender, subtle, yielding, variable to an incredible extent—that a touch or whisper or breath will produce differences of results sometimes of the greatest magnitude and importance. Nature hard and unbending as if built of blocks of granite! No! No comparison could convey an impression more at variance with facts. The volition of a child may influence the destiny of empires. Every time you plant your foot upon the ground it sends an echo through the universe. The falling of a leaf may exert an influence which propagates itself for ever in widening circles, as when a pebble is dropt into a lake. Nature is hard, rigid, and invariable only so far as the properties of things are fixed and the action of force uniform : but in all other respects elastic, as if it were a living spirit obedient to a living spirit. How pliable must all nature be in the hands of the great creative spirit! We shall wonder no more when we read in our Bibles how God produces results in nature and providence by His word, by His breath, by His look, by His touch. The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars. By the breathing of the Lord frost is given. He looketh on the earth and it trembleth. He toucheth the hills and they smoke. Ye looked for much, and lo! it came to little : and when ye brought it home, I did blow upon it. He shall blow upon them, and they shall wither

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3. I have now spoken concerning the density of human ignorance, showing how we do not know what matter is, or what force is, or what the true cause of anything is, how we live and move and have our being is an inscrutable mystery: and I have shown how misleading many of our current expressions are in regard to nature, diverting our attention from the fact that nature is most yielding and plastic, and the laws of nature most pliable and serviceable to mind and will. Admitting that we have not yet fully resolved the difficulty with which we are confronted, yet we feel as if it were already less formidable, and were indeed slowly dissolving. We do not feel that Christ's voice makes so very extravagant a demand upon our reason after all, and are less afraid to advance to closer quarters.

We have already said that the difficulty about Providence and Prayer when reduced to a precise statement is just this—that if God hears prayer He must be perpetually working miracles; but inasmuch as God does not work miracles, we may rest certain that He does not hear prayer. If we ask, How do you know for certain that there is no other way of hearing prayer but by working miracles? we commonly get no answer but one which seems to beg the question. If we ask, How do you know that God never works miracles still? we are probably met by a stare of bewilderment which means How can any man imagine such a thing? If we press home our assurance that even if obliged to suppose that God still works miracles we should in no way be appalled, we shall probably be told that the working of miracles supposes violations, disturbances, and contradictions of the order of nature, and that as none such occur, no miracles are ever wrought. Into such confusion has the idea of a miracle fallen!

Certainly a miracle has frequently been defined as an inversion or suspension of the laws of nature, and such a definition has naturally enough suggested the page 24 idea that if miracles are wrought there must be up-heavings in nature and commotions in human affairs. It is hard to understand how such ideas can ever have existed alongside of the Scripture narratives of Christ's miracles Christ's action in working miracles was soft and gentle as nature's action in her sweetest course. When Christ healed the leper, was the leper conscious of any unnatural convulsion of his frame? Probably never less. When Christ stilled the storm did nature quake as if her balance were overthrown? When Christ raised Lazarus from the grave, did the sun stagger on its course? Christ so linked on his supernatural power to nature's course, that even in his most stupendous acts, his power was soft and noiseless like the falling of the dew. Supposing then that God still wrought miracles when he heard our prayer, what disturbance would follow? He might work ten thousand miracles, and you would not know it: He might introduce a force direct from His will into the course of nature, and not a leaf quiver.

We have no wish, however, absolutely to identify a miracle and an answer to prayer, and we assent, although not without qualification, to the statement sometimes made that God hears our prayer but does not work miracles. We call an event miraculous when we see and note the point at which the supernatural force enters. Thus the stilling of the storm was not in itself miraculous, for storms frequently abate suddenly: but we call it a miracle because we here see a common event linked with a supernatural cause—a spiritual force emanating from a will. Conversely, we call an event miraculous which simply transcends all known phenomena : for example, the darkening of the sun at noon, without an eclipse, although we do not see the point at which the supernatural force entered. Or again—we have the highest class of miracles when we see a supernatural event page 25 immediately linked with supernatural power: as when Christ cried, 'Lazarus, come forth!' and he that was dead came forth. Popular attention is too exclusively fixed on the idea of a miracle as a wonderful event, whereas the essence of the miracle lies in the cause—and a quite common event may be as truly miraculous as the most tremendous prodigy. A miracle is an effect, whether common or uncommon, whether sometimes happening in ordinary course or never so happening, wrought by a force, beyond all known forces which are under man's control, and entering nature from above and from without—a force issuing from Mind and Will. We do not, therefore, hesitate to say that answers to prayers may be classed among miracles: for we suppose that, when God hears prayer, He sends a force straight from His living will which enters the realm of nature to produce a new result, exactly as Christ did when he raised up Peter's wife's mother, or stilled the storm: and we know, not only that this can be done without violations of the order of nature, but also in such a way that we shall never know it.

It will make our meaning clearer to take an example or suppose a case. Let us take the case of the son of the nobleman of Capernaum. He is lying ill of fever: life is ebbing away: his pulse beats slowly and fitfully. The physician is standing over him. He fears 'the patient is dying. He may recover—he may die. An hour or two will decide. Meanwhile, at a distant place, the word was gone from the lips of Christ,' Thy son liveth!' He has launched a force from His will which rushes straight to the seat of life in the young man's body. The physician knows nothing of all that: it is as much unknown to him as what God is doing in heaven is unknown to us. He is standing watching as life trembles in the balance. He perceives some more hopeful symptoms. There is a quickening of the page 26 pulse. He opens his eyes. The fever abates. The crisis is past. It is striking, but he has seen such a thing happen before in a young healthful frame; and he takes his leave, uttering some words of congratulation to the family. To the physician, it has all happened in the course of nature he had a similar case last week in the adjoining street: but to the father it is a miracle. The father had seen the point at which the Divine will launched a force into the course of nature: the physician had not seen it. We are now, relatively to what transpires in Providence, exactly in the position of that physician. How do we know to what extent what transpires may have a miraculous background, that is, be a result of the immediate will of God veiled by the very way in which it links itself to nature's course? Is that possible? Is it hard of belief? I find it, of all things, the easiest to believe it.