' A. Tholuck, Hours of Christian Devotion, 146,
PROVERBS XVI. S3 287
upon philosophy and religion an inestimable benefit, by showing us that we must choose between two alternatives. Either God is everywhere present in nature, or He is nowhere. He cannot be here and not there. He cannot delegate His power to demigods called " second causes." In nature everything must be His work or nothing. We must frankly return to the Christian view of direct Divine agency, the immanence of Divine power in nature from end to end, the belief in a God in whom not only we but all things have their being, or we must banish Him altogether. It seems as if, in the'providence of God, the mission of modern science was to bring home to our unmetaphysical ways of thinking the great truth of the Divine immanence in creation, which is not less essential to the Christian idea of God than to a philosophical view of nature. . . .
No doubt the evolution which was at first supposed to have destroyed teleology is found to be more saturated with teleology than the view which it superseded. And Christianity can take up the new as it did the old, and find in it a confirmation of its own belief. It is a great gain to have eliminated chance, to find science declaring that there must be a reason for everything, even when it cannot hazard a conjecture as to what the reason is.^
2. Every free action is surrounded by and dovetails into events absolutely determined by law. The presence of a man in the place where a flood happens, or his owning property there, may have a little chance in it. But the flood itself has a chain of causes which fully account for it. There may be some chance in the dis- covery of a gold-mine. But there was none in the formation of the gold or in its being deposited where it was found. That tree which fell so disastrously had the direction of its fall determined a century ago when it was bent as a sapling. Forces under law mingle with all that seems free, catch it up, and deal with its results. So that " nothing walks with aimless feet." God is con- stantly reducing even human life to order. As we develop there is found less and less of the incalculable in us. " The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord." So are those of an evil man. Now to the extent to which human action becomes blessedly or cursedly automatic, to that extent chance is eliminated.
^ When Napoleon was returning from Egypt to France, Nelson was on the watch for him, and even lay for a while with his whole fleet close to the two ships of the fugitive. A thick fog, however,
^ Aubrey Moore, in Lux Mundi.
288 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF PROVIDENCE
settled down between them ; and had it not been for that fog, the state of the world would have been different from what it now is. In solemn grandeur the ancient avalanches lie couched on the icy mountain-tops, and repose from year to year, until, perhaps, the wing of a bird, as it flies quickly past, touches them, and by their fall some thousands of human beings lose their lives. It is true that little touches do not make great revolutions, and that as little do trivial incidents hinder them. It is true that the avalanche must have been accumulating for many a year if it was to destroy the city, and that Napoleon must have been the man he was if the fog was to change the condition of the world. Still the touch of the bird's wing and the curtain of fog were likewise necessary to bring about the issue.^
^ Of all the old superstitious stories, I think one of the most interesting is that told by Cicero, because it not only illustrates the habit of mind, but throws a curious sidelight upon the pronuncia- tion of Latin. He was at Brundisium, I think, about to start by sea for Greece. A vendor came along the quay, crying Caunean figs for sale. " Cauneas ! Cauneas ! " " Of course," said Cicero, " I decided at once not to go, and took measures accordingly." The fact is that Cauneas was the usual pronunciation — thus much is clear — of the Latin words. Gave ne eas (" Mind you don't go "). But the odd thing is that it does not seem to have occurred to Cicero to warn his fellow-passengers of the prognostication. He only considered it as a sign which he had been fortunate enough to be able to interpret. And this is very characteristic of the general attitude. Providence is regarded, not as a just dispenser of good and evil, but as powerless to avert a catastrophe, and only able to intimate to a favoured few, by very inadequate means, the disasters in store ; and it is this that makes the whole thing into rather a degrading business, because it seems to imply that there is a whimsical and malicious spirit behind it all, that loves to disappoint and upset, and to play men ugly and uncomfortable tricks, like Caliban in Setebos.
Loving not, hating not, just choosing so.'
(1) God does not intervene in the detailed use we make of His gift of freedom — else were it not freedom at all. Our liberty is pro- videntially bestowed, but not the employment we choose to make of it. It is foolish to charge Heaven with man's misdeeds, foolish to imagine that our sins and the evil we inflict upon ourselves