day, and been familiar with all the discoveries of Newton and Herschel, Davy and Faraday, Owen and Agassiz, he could not have chosen happier terms, or employed language more strictly and philosophically correct, for public instruction, than he actually did. Nothing that is contradictory, nothing that is at variance with the established facts of nature, is to be found in any of his sentiments, or illustrations, or inimitable parables. No candid eye however keen, no honest mind however searching, has ever detected a single discrepancy between the record of science and the record of the evangelists. This is what cannot be said of the sacred writings of any other religion than Christianity. "The Shasters of the Hindoos contain false astronomy, as well as false anatomy and physiology; and the Koran of Mohammed distinctly avows the Ptolemaic system of the heavenly bodies; and so interwoven are these scientific errors with the religions of these sacred books, that when you have proved the former you have disproved the latter. But the Bible, stating only facts, and adopting no system of human philosophy, has ever stood, and ever shall stand, in sublime simplicity and undecaying strength; while the winds and the waves of conflicting human opinions roar and dash harmlessly around, and the wrecks of a thousand false systems of philosophy and religion are strewed along its base."*

* Hitchcock's Highest Use of Learning, p. 36.

II. LAWS OF NATURE-THEIR RELATION TO PROVIDENCE.

FROM the numerous quotations made in the preceding part of this chapter, it is sufficiently evident that the New Testament Scriptures teach us, that the Great Creator exercises a Providence, a controlling and directing power, a care and superintendence, over all that exists or takes place in the world, and in the universe. This is one of the most prominent doctrines contained in them, and is set forth clearly, repeatedly, and in almost every varied form of expression. No fact or truth could be stated more definitely and emphatically.

It is further to be observed, that the doctrine of providence is not simply to be found among other things in this sacred volume, but is a component and essential part of the system of truth which it sets forth. It is interwoven with that system throughout. It underlies its predictions and promises, it is recognized in its admonitions and encouragements, it enters into the duties it enjoins and the hopes it inspires; it stands in vital connection with the offering of prayers and the expectation of an answer to those prayers. So that with this doctrine the whole of the Christian Religion must stand or fall.

Now, few readers need be informed, that the Materialists of the present day, a class of men who deify the Laws of Nature, hold that the universal and immutable reign of these laws, observed throughout the universe, admits not of the exercise of any such providence or government on the part of God. Divine agency or inter

position in the government of the world, such as providence implies, it is assumed, must necessarily be in conflict with natural laws--must occasionally, at least, interrupt or suspend their uniform operation.* But as no such interruption or suspension ever appears in any department or province of creation, it is inferred and boldly asserted that there can be no such providence as that taught by Christ and his apostles. The silent and undeviating march of natural order, discovered by science, we are told, leaves no room for personal agency; physical laws are unalterable in their action, and neither change nor bend, nor yield, either to accomplish or to defeat any result in which the interests of mortals may be involved. Accordingly we hear perpetually from this class of teachers of the fixed properties of matter-of the immutable forces of nature-of rigid and universal sequence, necessary, invariable-of unbroken chains of cause and effect, no link of which, in the nature of things, can be severed or dispensed with. Thus they can allow no place for Divine Providence, no room for prayer, no hope or comfort for the suppliant. Stoically it is asked

"Think we, like some weak prince, the Eternal Cause,

Pronę for his favorites to reverse his laws;

Shall burning Etna, if a sage requires,

Forget to thunder, and recall her fires;

On air or sea, new motions be impressed,

Oh, blameless Bethel, to relieve thy breast;

When the loose mountain trembles from on high,

Shall gravitation cease if you go by?"†

*See Comte's Philosophy of the Sciences, by Lewes, pp. 102, 103. † Pope's Essay on Man, V. 121-128.

Hence we see, that according to this school of cold and comfortless philosophy nothing is left but for all to accept their inevitable fate as determined by the relentless Laws of Nature.

Such views and sentiments as these are obviously in plain and direct opposition to those taught by the Great Master. And no true disciple of his can hear them announced without experiencing a painful shock through all the most sacred sensibilities of his soul. But do the established conclusions of science bind us to accept them? Do the demonstrated facts of nature all array themselves, as materialists would have us believe, against the doctrine of providence? Are we brought by the discoveries of the day where we must unresistingly yield to be thus stripped of what we have ever fondly believed to have been over us the care and protection of our Father in heaven? Are we hopelessly shut up to this dreary conclusion, that we are after all left to the mercy of inexorable laws, the helpless sport of blind and resistless elements? In the answer that may be given to these vital questions, every reflecting mind must feel an interest the most profound. And this is the point to the consideration of which we now advance.

It is true, indeed, that what are called the properties or forces of matter act according to uniform and invariable laws. Gravitation acts always and everywhere according to the same rule. Chemical combinations take place always and everywhere in the same inflexible proportions. The forces of light, heat and sound work always and everywhere after the same fixed and definite

modes. Magnetism and electricity operate always and everywhere in strict conformity to the same regulations. The searching investigations of philosophers have never detected one of these elements acting at variance with its established law; nor have scientific experiments been able to torture one of them for an instant, or in the slightest degree, to depart from its fixed rule. Each individual force of nature works under the same measures, weights, numbers and restrictions, in the deep sea and in the solid ground, in the rocky mountain and in the dancing mote, in the dew-drop and in the sand-grain, in the waves that restlessly rise and sink, and in the clouds that are rifted, or woven, or scattered before the wind.

All this is true; but it is only a part of the truth. While all this is admitted to be a fact, there is another fact quite as prominent and quite as certain, and which is this that these individual forces or laws, according as they are combined, or opposed, or balanced one against another, in their operations, are capable of producing results infinite in number, and infinitely diversified. No one law or force determines anything that we see take place or done around us. Every production, every result that we behold in nature is the effect of different forces nicely balanced against each other. And the least disturbance, in which any one force is allowed by other forces to tell in an operation, produces a total change in the result. While it is entirely true that every law or force is, in its own nature, invariable; yet it produces the same effect only when it works under the same conditions in reference to other laws or forces. When