at the mercy of a host of agencies which have no intelligence of our conflicts, our trials, and our necessities, and no sympathy with our sufferings and our aspirations, compatible with the belief that we have a Father in heaven? To this notion, however, there is plainly but one alternative : in addition to everything that falls within the category of spiritual agency, all those forces which the phenomenal universe comprises, and which form one immense concatenation, we must assume to have been so constituted, and to be so disposed and governed, as to minister to the exercise of paternal care and discipline on the part of our Creator over all and each of His rational creatures, and to the fulfilment of the purposes for which he called them into existence. Whether the individual should be credited with such volitional freedom that his career may not be conceived as predetermined otherwise than with reference to the foreseen outcome of that liberty of choice, is an irrelevant question, and one that I need not here discuss: on any assumption which presupposes that Intellect and Goodness govern all things, his career is so ordained as to illustrate, if thoroughly understood, a purpose which has respect to his personal interests-a purpose which takes. account of these, as well as of larger considerations. But it is in part the issue of the physique with which he is born; signally, of the size and quality of his brain; and further, of subsequent series and combinations of experience, complex, intricate, and never to be unravelled, which his spirit owes to contact with its material environment. To furnish the wherewithal for these experiences Nature must be ever ready with the subsidies that will be exacted from her; and at every moment throughout the whole tissue of events and circumstances by which he will be in any way affected, as regards his mission in the world, his character, and his destiny, she must yield precisely the kind and the measure of influence which are due from her at that moment; and besides all this, she must grant without fail the successive openings and opportunities that are indispensable to the accomplishment of his predestined That Government whose seat is the foundation of all existence and all action is assuredly, in a sense that satisfies these imperious demands of our highest reason, Providential; it is the Government of a Providence whose career. "That man, I think, has had a liberal education, who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of Nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself. “Such an one and no other, I conceive, has had a liberal education; for he is, as completely as a man can be, in harmony with Nature. He will make the best of her, and she of him. They will get on together rarely; she as his ever-beneficent mother; he as her mouthpiece, her conscious self, her minister and interpreter" (Huxley's "Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews,” p. 39). It is with no little pleasure that I have transferred to my pages this striking passage, not only as admiring the beauty of the language, but also and still more because of the practical value of the pregnant suggestions with which it is replete. But as there are those who make Nature their God, and who might imagine they here find some encouragement for their idolatry, it is well they should be reminded that she is a treacherous friend, and a mother on whose natural affection no reliance can be placed. Not even the man who has the clearest title to her favour is safe in her hands. On a dark winter's night, perhaps, he is wending his way homeward, unsuspectingly looking forward, as usual, to his well-earned repose after a day of useful labour. But "his ever beneficent mother," foreseeing what his path would be, has spread a snare for him. As may easily happen through no fault of his, he is unprovided with a lantern; but if he has one, she blows eye nothing has ever escaped, and in whose scheme everything is subservient to the fulfilment of a sublimely out the flame, and takes good care that he shall not succeed in relighting it. On he goes with cautious steps, but suddenly he steps upon a sheet of ice he falls and fractures a limb. If, providentially, while lying helpless on the ground, but before vitality has succumbed to the freezing temperature, he is discovered, and is brought home, he will have reason to feel thankful. But assuredly he will be unable to say that for this welcome deliverance he is indebted to that Mother whom he has obeyed so dutifully and so intelligently as to deserve to be called "her conscious self.” Let it be supposed that he is making a voyage. He is engaged, it may be, in some enterprise which is likely to prove of incalculable benefit to his fellow-creatures. There is a general impression that he is almost indispensable to its success. All has gone on well hitherto, and there is good reason to expect that scientific explorers will soon have fresh cause to glory in Nature, and she in them. But it turns out that somehow she is far from pleased. She crushes the vessel between huge masses of ice, which, for as long a time as possible, she has carefully concealed with fogs. Or, perhaps, without the slightest provocation, she so furiously assails it with winds and waves that no skill can save it from foundering. Appreciating friends deplore the loss of a man who had the promise of a brilliant future as one of the interpreters of Nature; but she heeds not their grief, and shows no more compunction for the mischief she has wrought, than if she had crushed a fly. It will of course be understood that I am not impeaching Providence, but I wish to know how Nature is to be cleared from the imputation of treacherous spite and utterly wanton cruelty. Her mood at times is like that of an Oriental tyrant, who, if one of the rules he has made is broken, rests not until he has wreaked his displeasure upon some one-an inadvertent offender, it may be, or even an absolutely innocent victim,—and has consigned him and forty of his kindred to an appalling death. She sometimes takes a fancy to destroy cities by earthquakes or inundations, or to bury them beneath showers of volcanic ashes or streams of molten lava. What matters it to her if she thereby destroys one of her most dutiful sons? She may give some notice of her intention beforehand, but he cannot reckon upon receiving it in time to save even his life, much less can he feel sure that she will allow him to carry off his possessions. Did she ever show herself affected by the untimely death of a good man? Yes, once when the Ideal Man was crucified before her eyes she darkened the land with her frown, she shook the ground with her agitation, she Paternal purpose-a scheme which is doubtless too vast to be comprehended, and too deep to be fathomed, by any finite mind, but which must needs be worthy of the Father "who spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all." b 3. Even were we, however, to shut out of view the interests of individuals, and confine our attention solely to those of the human race considered as a whole, it would still be evident that there is a superintending Providence which determines the career of each member of the body, watching over his life, and overruling all the events that befall him, and, in so doing, compelling the forces of the physical world to subserve its purposes. The wonderful drama of which our planet is the stage presupposes actors to whom parts have been severally assigned: these diversi rent in twain the vail of that temple where fanatics of a kind she holds in utter contempt would shortly be glorifying God for what they had done and thanking Him they were not as other men were. But ask her why she came not to the rescue-why she permitted the perpetration of the atrocious deed? Let scientists ply her with their questions; let them experiment incessantly upon protoplasm, let them rack her with all the biological tests which their ingenuity can devise, until they have extorted from her some reply. We shall be ready to listen, the moment they are prepared to tell us what Nature has to say; but in the mean time we must be excused if we decline to put our trust in Nature, and it must be allowed that they have shown no cause why we should be accounted imbeciles, if we remain rooted in the belief that we have already found a sufficient Friend, and One who has a right to claim from us unlimited and everlasting confidence. In order that the two representations here opposed to one another might appear in sharper contrast, I have followed Mr. Huxley's example and personified Nature. And now, from the lively evidence thus submitted to the reader, I leave him to judge whether she fully deserves the character Mr. Huxley has ascribed to her, or the fact is that the enthusiastic scientist has pourtrayed her as she may now and then be seen in the most pleasing of her ever-variable moods. Rom. viii. 32. fied parts are essential to the plot, and upon the fulfilment of the conditions under which they are respectively played its working out of necessity depends. The events which constitute the fortunes of the human race the actions of individual men contribute, among other causes, to bring about, and to the performance of every such action the concurrent operation of natural forces is evidently indispensable. There is a tradition that Mahomet, when hotly pursued by his enemies, having taken refuge in a cave, a spider wove a web across the opening by which he had entered, and that they, on coming up and observing the gossamer threads, concluded that they might spare themselves the trouble of searching the cave, and therefore passed on. Let it be supposed that, instead of eluding his pursuers, he had fallen into their hands and lost his life: all attempts to conjecture definitely what might have happened on such a supposition would of course be idle; yet, but for the spider and its providential web, the history of the world for the last twelve centuries and a half would have been very different from what it has been. Although the incident alluded to is by no means intrinsically incredible, the story may be apocryphal. Be it so my argument loses nothing of its force; for the preservation of every life from day to day is dependent upon coincidences and concatenations of circumstances such as appear to have their predetermination involved in the constitution and order of the physical world. Mahomet would have died in infancy, indeed he would not even have seen the light, had it not been that in his case the course of nature, instead of admitting any, excluded every one of the numberless mischances by which human life is liable to be nipped in the bud. I instanced his escape from his pursuers, simply because of the dramatic liveliness with which such an adventure in the career of such • "The Life of Mahomet," by William Muir, vol. ii. p. 257, note. |