^ Chance or Providence ! Chance : or Wisdom — one with nature and man ; reaching from end to end, through all time and all existence, orderly disposing all things, according to fixed periods — as he describes it, in terms very like certain well-known words of the book of Wisdom — those are the " fenced opposites " of the speculative dilemma, the tragic embarras, of which Aurelius cannot too often remind himself as the summary of man's situation in the world. If there be such a provident soul " behind the veil," truly, even to him, even in the most intimate of those conversations, it has never yet spoken with any qiiite irresistible assertion of its presence. Yet that speculative choice, as he has found it, is on the whole a matter of will — " 'Tis in thy fower," again, here too, "to think as thou wilt." And for his part he has made his choice, and is true to it.^
^ I remember a small boy of six saying to his father, who was entertaining him with a tale, " God always knew — long before ever you were in the world — that you would make that up for me some day." Well, perhaps so; but did God also foreknow and foreordain that some hapless human being, as yet unborn, should some day commit such and such a crime, and sufier the
* "Wftlter Pater, Marius the Epieurewn.
PROVERBS XVI. 33 285
dire penalty for it? Are we really, in the Persian poet's phrase —
But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays Upon this Chequer-board of Nights and Days;
Hither and thither moves, and cheeks and slays, And one by one in the Closet lays ?
In that case, shall we not have to continue in the same strain, and address Him thus —
O Thou who didst with Pitfall and with Gin Beset the Path I was to wander in,
Thou wilt not with Predestined Evil round Enmesh, and then impute my Fall to Sin ?
If we believe in Providence to this full extent, are we not brought back to the conclusion that it is no use trying to be or do one thing rather than another, since we can be or do only what He ordains — and " who withstandeth his will " ? ^
11.
The Lokd.
" But the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord."
But now, let us see what the wise man says. Does he say that all that comes to us in life comes by chance ? Does he say that any event whatever is wholly a matter of luck ? On the contrary, he says that "the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord." Whatever we believe about the freedom of the will, we must believe that we are in the hands of God, and that just as much in the small as in the great things.
^ Would the Eternal be so great as He is, if by reason of His greatness He necessarily lost sight of the little ? Could the world justly be called a masterpiece of art if the same artist whose hand is visible in the vast did not also show itself in the minute ? I never see one of those ancient cathedrals — where even the lowest edge of the groundsel is elaborated in the same spirit and with the same affectionate pains as the tower which shoots aloft into the heavens — without perceiving in it a likeness to the
* J. Warachauer, The Way of Understanding, 327.
286 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF PROVIDENCE
work of the great Architect of the world. Here, too, it may be
said —
If imaged in the smallest part it be,
You then the beauty of the whole will see.
No ; He must be great in what is little as well as in what is large.
The daisy on the mountain sod,
Withdrawn from human view, Was planted by the hand of God,
The hand that fashioned you.
That flower His care protects whose call
Did countless worlds create; By condescending to the small,
He proves that He is great.*
1. This world cannot be the plaything of accident, because obviously it is not the outcome of accident. There is nothing chaotic, capricious, unreliable about the operations of the forces of nature. The millionth combination of the same chemical sub- stances in the same proportions will yield the same result as the first. The eclipse predicted by astronomers for a certain date comes neither a day too soon nor a day too late. The filaments of all the thousand varieties of snow-crystals form angles of exactly 60 to 120 degrees, neither more nor less. That does not look like arbitrariness or want of control at the centre of things. But there is more than that. All we have learnt of the world's past history shows us not only order but purpose at work, a steady progress towards something more and better. What science calls evolution is only another term for the unceasing action of Provi- dence on a cosmic scale, a deliberate working towards a foreseen and predetermined aim, the gradual unfolding of a vast and majestic design.
*[| Slowly but surely the old deistic theory of the world has been undermined. The one absolutely impossible conception of God, in the present day, is that which represents Him as an occasional Visitor. Science had pushed the deist's God farther and farther away, and at the moment when it seemed as if He would be thrust out altogether, Darwinism appeared, and, under the disguise of a foe, did the work of a friend. It has conferred