necessity; and, if we only keep our ideas of both distinct, we need feel no difficulty in reconciling both with foreknowledge, even as that is in the Divine mind.*

The great practical question will be found in the end to be this-what has the Great Dispenser determined as to the conditions on which He will act? Has He made His action in any degree dependent upon man's asking?

But this belongs to moral rather than to metaphysical science. It is clear that there is no physical or metaphysical difficulty in the way of such a suspension. The difficulties appearing to exist are purely imaginary, and the fruit of modes of reasoning whose defects are transparent the moment we take all the facts of the case into consideration. Here, as in many other matters, we find a defective science, or a defective logic rather, at the foundation of objections that look terribly formidable in their bearing against Christian truth. The flagrant fault is in the "science." Fault there is none in the Bible doctrine.

"A

At this point we come upon the question as to miracles. Is a miracle a suspension of natural law? Hume says, miracle is a violation of the laws of nature."+ It suits his purpose to say so. However clear our view is of God's agency as actual, and as to a certain extent depending in its acting on human action, we are strongly constrained to believe in His adherence to law. Consequently, when a careful thinker is told of a suspension or infraction of natural law on the part of the Divine Agent, he cannot help feeling as if a serious difficulty were thrown in his way. It is this which we think gives Hume's celebrated argument against miracles the power it has wielded over credulous minds. He says that "a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws." The fulcrum on which he rests his lever is what he thus calls "experience." And it cannot be

denied that, so far as history records the experience of man, it is no easy matter to find in it a recorded instance of suspension or infraction of a true natural law. If that history records anything it records miracles, but those miracles which it does record are neither suspensions nor infractions of either natural or moral law. Hume is not entirely free from all suspicion of dishonesty, however, in this. He confounds.

The best view of "Divine Prescience" I have seen, is given by Mr. Reddie in his Fresh Springs of Truth,-London: C. Griffin & Co. 1865 (pp. 168-179), a little volume of exceedingly courageous, yet cautious and valuable thought.-J. K.

+ Hume's Essays, Vol. II., pp. 120, 133, 138, Ed. 1800.

usage with law; or, rather, he reasons as if the usual course of nature observed by us were equivalent to natural law. The progress of being which we have already noticed is fatal to his mistake. If his argument, consequently, has any force, that force lies in our experience of law, and not of temporary usage. There is no violation of any law of nature in any of the miracles of the Bible, though there is in some of them a departure from usage.

Take the case of Christ walking on the Sea of Galilee, and enabling Peter to do the same. Is there in this any suspension or infraction of natural law? Does any one say that gravitation was suspended? Then what kept the two bodies from flying off from the surface on which they walked! If I wade through a stream, and, as I do so, I bear any object that I have with me above the surface of the water, do I suspend or violate the law of gravitation ? Clearly no. I only exert another force sufficient at the time to keep the object I am carrying above the surface. Take, again, the case of the "withered arm." When by an unusual exertion of power the Saviour made the living action pass through that arm, did he suspend or violate any natural law? We can see no such suspension or violation. We can see an exertion of force which is unusual, but that force is exerted in perfect accordance with all the laws which it ever follows in its most ordinary exertions. The "vis vita" of the materialist passes from the ganglions, along the various tissues, and affects arteries, veins, muscles, bones, skin, and all else, in perfect accordance with law. Take the dead body that had "lain four days" in the tomb, and let the same thing be done to that which is done in this withered arm, and where is either the suspension or infraction of any one law of nature? Hume's gathering up of his argument is in these words:"It is experience only which gives authority to human testimony, and it is the same experience which assures us of the laws of nature. When, therefore, these two kinds of experience are contrary, we have nothing to do but subtract the one from the other and embrace an opinion either on one side or the other, with that assurance which arises from the remainder." Who does not see that this vaunted argument goes to smoke, the instant we perceive that no real miracle involves the slightest deviation from natural law? If it shall be said that usage is violated, we have only to ask if it is contrary to human experience that it should be so? Is not every variation in nature a departure from usage? What was that leap which Sir Charles Lyell contemplates when he says, "We may also demur to the assumption that the hypothesis of variation and natural selection obliges us to assume that there was an

absolutely insensible passage from the highest intelligence of the inferior animals to the improvable reason of man."* The departure from usage in which a human being should be born of one of the lower animals would surely be departure enough from what Hume calls experience! And yet that is only an idea produced (in one who has had a very wide experience), by the departures from usage that are in nature. These, however, are no violation of law. Neither are the greatest of Scripture miracles. Take a case to our purpose in this inquiry as to prayer. "Elijah was a man of like passions with ourselves, and he prayed that it might not rain." What natural law did he wish suspended? Is the absence of rain the suspension of some natural law? Can Hume's experience, or that of any one else, point out the law of which it is either the suspension or the infraction? But Elijah prayed again that it might rain. And when that cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, at length rose on the horizon, was some natural law broken or suspended? There is not a shadow of a ground for saying so. Human experience of natural law was as perfect all through that famine, and at the close of it when the rain came, as it ever had been; but the miracle was not the less real on that account. That agent, by whose power the heavens give rain and withhold it, acted in this case, as in all cases, in perfect accordance with everything that can be called law, whether in the sphere of matter or in that of mind: so Hume's great argument is only a great blunder. Hume was fortified in his error by his ideas of "antecedence and consequence" as all that we know of cause and effect; but even here his foundation was a blunder as to fact. He took it for granted that man's "experience" of "antecedence and consequence" in nature has been that of uniformity, which, as we have already shown, is palpably and egregiously untrue. When we are asked, therefore, if we expect God to work a miracle in response to our requests, we may reply by asking-what if he should? If it is asked again, if we think He will violate His natural laws to answer us, we may reply that there is no need for any such violation. We can think of nothing we could for a moment desire that would call for his departure by the slightest conceivable degree from any one of these laws.

If we epitomize our discussion and follow out the sound principle on which all the facts of the case come under review, we find ourselves surrounded by a very clear atmosphere of thought as to our great subject. Minds everywhere we see

Antiquity of Man, p. 504, Ed. 1863.

have power to change material things. Minds have power also, to a certain extent, to change other minds, and so to change these other minds as to lead to the change of material things by their mediate agency. If we take any great work which has been effected by men, and go back into its real history so as to note the facts of that history, all this at least is irresistibly manifest. Say it is a great viaduct that now spans a valley, and we run rapidly back over all the occurrences that have issued as their combined result in this vast work, till we reach the first thought to which it can be traced in an individual mind we have in those facts, beyond all question, instances in which minds acted upon material things-instances in which minds acted on other minds so that these again acted on material things-and instances, moreover, in which chains of minds acted on each other and led to material, as the result of mental, changes. Among these facts we find askings as really as any other facts whatever-we find givings following those askings-we find receivings following those givings; we find no fact of any kind in the universe that is more real than those askings, givings, and receivings. There is no antecedence or consequence more evident, than that which holds good between those said askings, givings, and receivings. Not that the antecedence and consequence are uniform, for there are refusings following askings as well as givings; but with all the lack of uniformity, no one can doubt that in myriads of cases the giving follows the asking as its effect, and is as evidently that effect as is any other consequent the effect of any other antecedent whatever. But among the facts with which we find ourselves surrounded are askings directed to God. What is the sole element of difference in the case of these askings? Matter is matter in this case as in every other in which it is involved-mind is mind also in this case as in every other-only in this case one mind is perfect; in all others the minds asking and those supplicated are imperfect. Call this perfection infinite, absolute, anything you choose-your words make no alteration on that mind which has all possible qualities that go to make up a Perfect Being. And now comes the question-Is one of these qualities that of insensibility to askings? Beyond the possibility of dispute the askings are there the sensibility to the askings and the givings alone are denied. Man acts upon matter, and upon mind too, when requested to do so. Man refuses to act on matter, and also on mind, though requested to do so. Is it essential to his coming nearer perfection that he should always refuse? No one will say so. Is it essential, then, to the perfection of God that He should always refuse? Is deafness to entreaty a perfection?

Is the statue of a mother, to which the infant cries in vain, a more perfect being than the living mother who acts on the instant the wail reaches her ear? Would it be an element of perfection in God, to be like the statue and unlike the living mother? If true philosophy could annihilate the facts of asking, it might greatly alter the case. But it refuses to ignore or alter a single fact. Even a falsehood is a fact to a real philosophy; though its object is unreal, it is real itself, and should be weighed as carefully as any other fact. Consequently philosophy is intensely interested in these askings which we call prayers—THEY ARE FACTS. They point us irresistibly upward to the All-Perfect One, and compel us to believe either in His giving or in His refusing. He either acts as requested or He does not act. True science leads us to look to other fields of inquiry, and to ask what the facts which lie in them teach us as to His responding, or refusing to respond, to the movements of his creatures. If we till and sow, our labour is worthless, unless One who has command of sun and rain respond. Does He respond? Not so uniformly as to sanction the mechanical idea of His great universe-yet He does respond sufficiently to give perfect confidence to the good husbandman and to call forth the gratitude of every intelligent heart. If we ask, does He respond? Not so as to sanction the idea that asking is everything that is required in order to our receiving; but yet he has so responded, as to have kept asking alive in human beings through all the centuries of their stay on earth. Here, however, our work for the present closes. We have traced the outline of the relations to which we have directed attention in Metaphysical and Physical Science, leading along the path of those relations into that field of thought in which we find the needy suppliant asking of the Heavenly Father, and receiving from Him "that which is good." We have found that true science is in perfect accord with such asking, such giving, and such receiving, as are involved in the Christian Doctrine of Prayer. Instead of requiring to lay aside "reason" in behalf of "faith," we find the severest logic leading us on to that fellowship with God, which, as man is constituted, is impossible without that interchange of heart between the Divine Helper and the needy children of men, which takes place in sincere supplication on the one side and merciful and gracious giving on the other.

The PRESIDENT.-Ladies and Gentlemen, it is my duty to move a vote of thanks to the author of this paper, and to express to him our deep gratitude for the diligence, care, and profound thought exhibited in it. It would be presumption for me to say I could follow the paper throughout; but in the