Part 29

The widow's only son, in spite of her counsels and entreaties, becomes a vagabond upon the seas, and, at length, one of the crew of the battle ship. The perils of the deep and of vicious companions are enough to make that widow a daily and most earnest suppliant at the mercy-seat of her heavenly Father, for his protection and salvation. But, at length, war breaks out, and the perils of battle render his fate more doubtful. Still, faith in God buoys up her heart, and she cannot abandon the hope of yet seeing her son returned, reformed, and becoming a useful man. And at length, rescued from the storm and shipwreck, and the carnage of battle, and the yet more dangerous snares of sin, that youth returns, a renovated man, and cheers that mother's setting sun by an eminently useful life. Now, all this may have happened simply by the operation of natural laws. But it may also have been the result of divine interference in answer to prayer; and hard will you find it to convince that rejoicing mother that the hand of God's extraordinary providence was not in it.

The devoted missionary, at the promptings of a voice within, quits a land of safety and peace, and finds himself in the midst of dangers and sufferings of almost every name; _in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in weariness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness_. The furnace of persecution is heated, and he performs his duties with his life constantly in his hand. But he uses no weapon save faith and prayer. He feels that "he is immortal till his work is done." And, in fact, he outlives all his dangers, and, in venerable old age, surrounded by the fruits of his labor,--a reformed and affectionate people,--he passes quietly into the abodes of the blessed. Here, again, why should we hesitate to refer his protection and deliverance to the special interposition of his heavenly Father, in the manner I have pointed out?

On the other hand, the history of dreadfully wicked men is full of terrible examples of calamity and suffering, as the consequence of their sins. True, the evil came upon them apparently by the operation of natural laws; but shall we hence infer that God in no case has so modified these laws, by an agency among the hidden causes of events, as to make the result certain? He certainly could do this; and to say that he never has done it, is to remove one of the most powerful restraints that operate upon the wicked.

In several examples recorded in the Bible, both of deliverance for the virtuous and of punishment for the wicked, so many natural agencies are concerned, that we are left in doubt whether the events are to be regarded as miraculous or not. Let the deluge, the destruction of Sodom, and the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea, serve as examples. In the first, we find the flood imputed to a forty days' rain and the overflowing of the ocean; and its reduction to a wind. In the destruction of the cities of the plain, the phenomena described correspond very well with the effects of volcanic agency; and we find accordingly that the region where those cities stood shows marks of that agency. In the passage of the Red Sea, the removal of the waters, to allow the Israelites to pass, is imputed to a strong east wind all night. Nevertheless, the pillar of a cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night were a manifest and standing miracle in this transaction.

Now, may it not be that, in all these cases, so far as natural agencies were concerned, they were made to conspire with the miraculous in the manner which I have described, viz., by such a modification of some of the remote causes by which they were brought into action, as exactly to answer the divine purpose in the catastrophe of the deluge, of Sodom, and in the passage of the Red Sea?

_A third mode by which the purposes of special providence can be brought about without miracles is by such an adjustment of the direct and lateral influences on which events depend, that the time and manner of their occurrence shall exactly meet every exigency._

Although it expresses a truth to represent the second causes of events as constituting the links of a chain, it is not the whole truth. For, in fact, those causes are connected together in the form of a network, or, more exactly still, by a sphere filled with interlocked meshes; or, to speak more mathematically, the forces by which events are produced are both direct and indirect. It would be easy to calculate the effect of a single direct force; but if, in its progress, it meets with a multitude of oblique impulses, striking it at every possible angle, what human mathematics can make out the final resultant? Yet, in fact, such is the history of almost every event. The lateral influences, which meet and modify the direct force, are so numerous, and unexpected often, that men are amazed at the result, sometimes as unexpected as a miracle. "When an individual," says Isaac Taylor, "receives an answer to his prayer, the interposition may be made, not in the line which he himself is describing, but in one of those which are to meet him on his path; and at a point, therefore, where, even though the visible constancy of nature should be violated, yet, as being at the time beyond the sphere of his observation, it is a violation not visible to him." "And herein is especially manifested the perfection of divine wisdom, that the most surprising conjunctions of events are brought about by the simplest means, and in a manner that is perfectly in harmony with the ordinary course of human affairs. This is, in fact, the great miracle of providence, that no miracles are needed to accomplish its purposes."--_Nat. History of Enthusiasm_, p. 128.

This complication of causes does not merely give variety to the works and operations of nature, but it enables God to produce effects which could never have resulted from each law acting singly; nor is there a scarcely conceivable limit to these modifications. Indeed, in this way can Providence accomplish all his beneficent purposes, and meet every individual case, just as infinite wisdom would have it met. "By this agency," says M'Cosh, "God can at one time increase, and at another time lessen, or completely nullify, the spontaneous efforts of the fixed properties of matter. Now he can make the most powerful agents in nature--such as wind, fire, and disease--coincide and cooperate to produce effects of such a tremendous magnitude as none of them separately could accomplish; and again, he can arrest their influence by counteracting agencies, or, rather, by making them counteract each other. He can, for instance, by a concurrence of natural laws, bring a person, who is in the enjoyment of health at present, to the very borders of death, an hour or an instant hence; and he can, by a like means, suddenly restore the same or another individual to health, after he has been on the very verge of the grave. By the confluence of two or more streams, he can bring agencies of tremendous potency to bear upon the production of a given effect, such as a war, a pestilence, or a revolution; and, on the other hand, by drawing aside the stream into another channel, he can arrest, at any given instant, the awful effects that would otherwise follow from these agencies, and save an individual, a family, or a nation, from the evils which seem ready to burst upon them.

"Guided by these principles and guarded by sound sense, the inquiring mind will discover many and wonderful designed connections between the various events of divine providence. Read in the spirit of faith, striking coincidences will every where manifest themselves. What singular unions of two streams at the proper place to help on the exertions of the great and good! What curious intersections of cords to catch the wicked as in a net, when they are prowling as wild beasts! By strange but most apposite correspondences, human strength, when set against the will of God, is made to waste away under God's indignation burning against it, as, in heathen story, Meleager wasted away as the stick burned which his mother held in the fire."--_Method of the Divine Government_, pp. 176, 203.

In many cases, the lateral streams of influence that flow in and bring unexpected relief to the pious man, and unexpected punishment to the wicked, or a marked answer to prayer, seem to the individuals little short of miraculous. Yet, after all, they can see no violation of the natural order of cause and effect. But the wonder is, how the modifying influence should come in just at the right moment. It may, indeed, have received a commission to do this very thing from the immediate impulse of Jehovah; yet, being unperceived by us, it is no miracle. Or the whole plan may have been so arranged at the beginning that its development will meet every case of special providence exactly. Which of these views may be most accordant with truth, may admit of discussion. Yet we think that all the modes that have been pointed out, by which miraculous and special providences are brought about, may be referred to one general proposition, which we now proceed to state.

_In the fourth place, the plan of the universe in the divine mind, at the beginning, must have embraced every case of miracles and of special providence._

From the nature of the divine attributes we infer with certainty that every event occurring in the universe must have entered into the original plan of creation in the mind of God. Surely no one will deny that he must have foreseen the operation of every law which he established, and, consequently, every event which it would produce. But there must be some ground for foreknowledge to rest upon; otherwise it is conjecture, not knowledge. And what could that basis be but the divine plan?

Equally clear is it that, whatever plans existed in the mind of God, when he brought the universe into existence, must always have been there. For to suppose that there was a point of duration when the plan was first conceived, would imply new knowledge in one confessedly omniscient; and that destroys the idea of omniscience.

Similar reasoning from the nature of the divine attributes leads us to the conclusion that God always acts according to law. That he does this in the ordinary operations of nature, all admit. But even when he introduces a miracle,--perhaps by a counteraction of ordinary laws,--he may still act by some rule; so that, were precisely the same circumstances to occur again, the same miracle would be repeated. Beforehand, we could not say whether God would conduct the affairs of the universe by one unvarying system of natural laws, or occasionally interfere with the regular sequence of cause and effect by miracle. But though the latter course should be adopted, as we have reason to think it is, even the special interference must be according to law; so that, in fact, there is a law of miracles as well as of common events. Again, if God sometimes alters one or more of the links out of sight, in a chain of second causes, in order to meet a providential exigency, or if he modifies for the same purpose some of the oblique influences by which events are affected, all this must be done by rule; that is, by law. Indeed, to suppose him ever to act without law, is to represent him as less wise than men, who, if judicious, are always governed by settled principles, which produce the same conduct in the same circumstances.

From this reasoning we may safely infer two things: first, that the laws regulating miracles and special providences are as fixed and certain as those of ordinary events; and secondly, that those laws must have formed a part of the plan of creation originally existing in the divine mind. And hence, thirdly, we must admit that every case of miracle and special providence must have entered into that plan.

When he formed it, he foresaw every possible event that would result from its operation to the end of the world. He saw distinctly the condition of every individual of the human family, from the beginning to the close of life; all his dangers and trials, his sufferings and his sins; and he knew just when and where every prayer would be offered up. Nor can it be any more doubtful that, with infinite wisdom to guide him, and infinite power to execute his will, God could so have arranged and constituted the laws of nature, as to meet exactly every case that should ever occur, just in the way he would wish to have it met. Those laws might have been so framed and disposed that, after running on in one unvarying course for ages, a new one might come in, or the old ones be modified, and at once produce effects quite different, and then the first laws resume again their usual course. And the new or modified law might be made to produce its extraordinary or peculiar effects just at the moment when some miracle or special providence would be needed. Thus what would be to us a special or miraculous interposition of divine power, might be the foreseen and foreordained result of God's original purpose. And if we can conceive how such an effect could be produced once, we cannot doubt that infinite wisdom and power could in like manner meet every possible case in which what we call special and miraculous providence would be needed. With our limited powers, we are obliged, after constructing a complicated machine, to put it into operation before we can judge certainly of its effects; and then, if our wishes are not met, we must alter the parts, or in some other way meet the new cases that occur; and hence we find it difficult to conceive how it can be otherwise with God. But he saw the operation of the vast machine of the universe just as clearly at the beginning as at any subsequent period. He, therefore, can do at the beginning what we can do only after experience, viz., adapt the parts to every variety of circumstances.

If I mistake not, we are indebted to Bishop Butler for the germ of these views; but Professor Babbage has illustrated them by reference to an extraordinary machine of his own invention, called "The Calculating Engine." It is adapted to perform the most extensive and complicated numerical calculations, of course with absolute certainty, because its parts are arranged by certain laws. And he finds that precisely such effects, on a small scale, can be produced by this machine, as have been imputed above to the divine agency in creation. It is moved by a weight and a wheel which turns at a short interval around its axis, and prints a series of natural numbers,--1, 2, 3, 4, 5, &c.,--each exceeding its antecedent by unity. "Now, reader, let me ask you," says Professor Babbage, "how long you will have counted before you are firmly convinced that the engine, supposing its adjustments to remain unaltered, will continue, whilst its motion is maintained, to produce the same series of natural numbers. Some minds, perhaps, are so constituted that, after passing the first hundred terms, they will be satisfied that they are acquainted with the law. After seeing five hundred terms, few will doubt; and after the fifty thousandth term, the propensity to believe the succeeding term will be fifty thousand and one, will be almost irresistible. That term will be fifty thousand and one; the same regular succession will continue; the five millionth and the fifty millionth term will appear in their expected order, and one unbroken chain of numbers will pass before you, from one up to one hundred millions. True to the vast induction which has thus been made, the next succeeding term will be one hundred millions and one; but after that, the next number presented by the rim of the wheel, instead of being one hundred millions and two, is one hundred millions ten thousand and two.

"The law which seemed to govern this series fails at the one hundred million and second term. That term is larger than we expected by ten thousand. The next term is larger than was anticipated by thirty thousand. If we still continue to observe the numbers presented by the wheel, we shall find that for a hundred, or even for a thousand terms, they continue to follow the new law relating to the triangular numbers; but after watching them for twenty-seven hundred and sixty-one terms, we find that this law fails in the case of the twenty-seven hundred and sixty-second term. If we continue to observe, another law then comes into action. This will continue through fourteen hundred and thirty terms, when a new law is again introduced, which extends over about nine hundred and fifty terms; and this, too, like all its predecessors, fails, and gives place to other laws, which appear at different intervals. It is also possible so to arrange the engine, that at any periods, however remote, the first law shall be interrupted for one or more times, and be superseded by any other laws, after which the original law shall be again produced, and no other deviation shall ever take place.

"Now, it must be remarked that the law that each number presented by the engine is greater by unity than the preceding number, which law the observer had deduced from an induction of a hundred million of instances, was not the true law that regulated its action; and that the occurrence of the number one hundred million ten thousand and two at the one hundred million and second term was as necessary a consequence of the original adjustment as was the regular succession of any one of the intermediate numbers to its immediate antecedent. The same remark applies to the next apparent deviation from the new law, which was founded on an induction of two thousand seven hundred and sixty-one terms; and to all the succeeding laws, with this limitation only, that whilst their consecutive introduction at various definite intervals is a necessary consequence of the mechanical structure of the engine, our knowledge of analysis does not yet enable us to predict the periods at which the more distant laws will be introduced."--_Ninth Bridgewater Treatise._

The application of these statements to the doctrine of special as well as of miraculous providence is very obvious. If human ingenuity can construct a machine which shall exhibit the introduction of new laws, after the old ones had been established by an induction of a hundred million of examples, and these new ones be succeeded by others, how much easier for the infinite God to construct the vast and more complicated machine of the universe, so that new laws, or modifications of the old ones, shall be introduced at various periods of its history, to meet every exigency! How easy for him so to adjust this machine at the beginning, that the new laws and new modes of action should be introduced, precisely at those points where a special providence would be desirable, to reward the virtuous and to punish the wicked, and then the old law again assume its dominion! And how easily, in this way, could the case of every individual be met, from the beginning to the end of the world! I mean, how easy would this work be to infinite wisdom and power!

But if all events, miraculous as well as common, may depend upon unbending law, how does such a view differ from the one I am now opposing, viz., that the constancy of nature's laws precludes the idea of any special interference on the part of God, in human affairs? The main point of difference, I reply, is, that the advocates of the latter view will not admit any such thing at the present day as special interference, on the part of the Deity, with nature. They admit only uniform and ordinary laws, which they suppose are never interrupted. This I deny; and endeavor to show, not only that the contrary may be a fact, but that God purposed it originally, and determined the laws by which it might be accomplished. The fact that he did this beforehand, even from eternity, no more precludes his agency, than the special interference of a father to help his child through a dangerous pass is disproved, because he foresaw the danger and provided the means of defence even before the child was born. If the father was actually with the child, as he went through the danger, and held out to him the requisite help, what difference could it make, though the father purposed to do so a long time previously? And if we admit that God's efficiency alone gives power to the ordinary laws of nature, we shall admit that in every special law he is as really present with his energy, as a father who should lead his child by the hand through the dangerous path. So that, practically at least, the difference between these two views of the subject is very great; the one removing God far away, and putting law in his place; and the other bringing him near, and making him the actual and constant agent in every event. The one view is practical atheism, although often adopted by religious men; the other is practical Christianity.

By the principles of physical science, then, the scriptural doctrines of miraculous and special providence are proved to be in accordance with philosophy. The miracles of revelation are shown to have been preceded by the miracles of geology; and are, therefore, in conformity with the principles of the divine government. The modifications which God can make in the causes of events out of human view, or the changes which he can produce by lateral influences upon the final result,--all, it may be, in conformity to an eternal plan, reaching the minutest of human affairs,--enable him to execute every purpose of special providence so as to satisfy every exigency.

The sceptic may say, that we cannot prove by facts that God does so modify and arrange the laws and operations of nature as to adapt his dealings to the case of individuals. But, on the other hand, neither can he show that God does not thus interfere with nature's uniformity. It is enough to show that he can do it without a miracle, in order to establish the doctrine of special providence. How often he exercises this power, we cannot know; but we may be sure as often as is desirable.

A most important application of these principles may be made to the subject of prayer. For in answering prayer, God is, in fact, merely executing some of the purposes of his special providence; and it is gratifying to the pious heart to see how he can give an answer to the humblest petitioner. No matter though all the laws of nature seem in the way of an answer,--God can so modify their action as to conform them to the case of every petitioner. War, famine, and pestilence may all be upon us, yet humble prayer may turn them all aside, and every other physical evil; and that without a miracle, if best for us and for the universe. Tell a man that the only effect of prayer is its reflex influence upon himself, in leading him to conform more strictly to nature's laws, and you send a paralysis and a death chill into all his moral sensibilities. Indeed, he cannot pray; but tell him that God will be influenced, as is any earthly friend, by his supplications, and his heart beats full and strong, the current of life goes bounding through his whole system, the glow of health mantles his cheek, and all his senses are roused into intense and delightful action.