universe, prayer becomes irrational and impossible.1 Secondly, God, however, although a person, may dwell far off in immensity, and have no intercourse with his creatures on earth. Prayer, therefore, assumes not only the personality of God, but also that He is near us ; that He is not only able, but also willing to hold intercourse with us, to hear and answer; that He knows our thoughts afar off ; and that unuttered aspirations are intelligible to Him. Thirdly, it assumes that He has the personal control of all nature, i. e., of all things out of Himself ; that He governs all his creatures and all their actions. It assumes that He has not only created all things and endowed matter and mind with forces and powers, but that He is everywhere present, controlling the operation of such forces and powers, so that nothing occurs with- out his direction or permission. When it rains, it is because He wills it, and controls the laws of nature to produce that effect. When the earth produces fruit in abundance, or when the hopes of the husbandman are disappointed, these effects are not to be referred to the blind operation of natural laws, but to God's intel- ligent and personal control. There is no such reign of law as makes God a subject. It is He who reigns, and orders all the operations of nature so as to accomplish his own purposes.
This does not suppose that the laws of nature are mutable, or that they are set aside. There is scarcely any effect, either in na- ture or in the acts of men, due to the operation of any one natural force. We produce effects by combining such forces, so that the result is due to this intelligent and voluntary combination. In like manner, in the ordinary operations of nature, God accom- plishes his purpose by a similar intelligent and voluntary com- bination of natural causes. When He wills that it should rain, He wills that all the secondary causes, productive of that effect, should be brought into operation. The doctrine of providence only supposes that God does, on the scale of the universe, what we do within the limited sphere of our efficiency. We, indeed, so far as effects out of ourselves are concerned, are tied to the use of
1 Philosophers, says Dr. Chalmers, "look on the Supreme Principle to be in every way as inflexible and sure as they have uniformly found of the subordinate principles ; and that He is as unfit to be addressed by a petition or the expression of a wish, as any fancied spirit that may reside in a volcano or a storm, in any other department of nature's vast machin- ery — that the cries of urgency and distress are of no more avail when sent up to Him who wields the elements of the world, as if they were only lifted to the elements themselves — that the same unchangeableness which pervades all nature, is also characteristic of nature's God: and so they deem to be an aberration from sound philosophy, both the doctrine of a special providence and the observation of prayer." Chalmers, Works, ed. New York, 1844, vol. ii. p. 319.
694 PART m. Ch. XX. — the means of grace.
secondary causes. We can act neither against them, nor without them. God is not thus limited. He can operate without second causes as well as with them, or against them. There seems to be no little confusion in the minds of many writers on this subject. They insist on the immutability of the laws of nature, and some- times speak of God as constantly controlling their operation by combining and directing their forces ; and yet they resolve all second causes into the divine efficiency ; that is, an efficiency di- rected by intelligence and will. " It is but reasonable," says Sir John Herschel, " to regard the force of gravitation as the direct or indirect result of a consciousness or will existing somewhere." * " It may be that all natural forces are resolvable in some one force, and indeed in the modern doctrine of the correlation of forces, an idea which is a near approach to this, has already en- tered the domain of science. It may also be that this one force, into which all others return again, is itself but a mode of action of the Divine Will." 2 It is a common remark that the only force of which we have any direct knowledge is mind-force, and hence that it is unphilosophical to assume any other. From this it is in- ferred that all the forces operating in nature are the energy of the one Supreme Intelligence. This doctrine, as shown when treat- ing of the doctrine of Providence, almost inevitably leads to pan- theism. But it is difficult to see how those who take this view can consistently speak of the immutability of law, or of God's be- ing free only within its limits. It is essential to the idea of mind- power, that it should be free ; that it should act when, where, and how it pleases. In the case of God, indeed, it cannot act unwisely or unjustly. But if all the forces of nature are only manifestations of the divine efficiency, what meaning can be at- tached to the proposition that He operates with, and through, and never independently of natural law ?
The Scriptural doctrine is that God is an extra-mundane, per- sonal Being, independent of the world, who has created it, and endowed all things material with their several properties or pow- ers, which He in his omnipresent, and infinitely wise omnipotence, constantly controls. This doctrine is presupposed in prayer ; for " prayer and the answer of prayer, are simply .... the pre- ferring of a request upon the one side, and compliance with that request upon the other. Man applies, God complies. Man asks a favour, God bestows it. These are conceived to be the two
i Outlines of Astronomy, 5th ed. p. 292.
* The Reign of Law, by the Duke of Argyle, 5th ed. London, 1867, p. 129.