any 'form of existence' when we believe that the Creator is infinite wisdom, and infinite power, and perfect righteousness? If, in the face of the evidence that this is the case, we repudiate it, we might indeed ask 'whether it was reverence, or whether it was not the reverse.'

The same confusion of ideas is evidently manifest in the following: While in one breath religion has asserted 'that the cause of all things passes understanding, it has 'with the next breath asserted that the cause of all things 'possesses such and such attributes, can be in so far ' understood.'* But because all recognise that the Creator is, in essence, like the essence of mind generally, past our understanding, is it any contradiction to say that we may know some of the attributes of the First Cause by the manifestation of that Cause in its effects, just as we also may know the attributes of other minds. by their effects? Where is the anomaly in attributing infinite wisdom or infinite power to the First Cause, although both, in their infinity, pass our understanding? 'Our duty,' he says, 'is to submit ourselves with all humility to the established limits of our intelligence.' Just so. Therefore we should seek to attain that relative knowledge of the Creator, through those works of which He is the Cause, and which manifest to us His eternal power and Godhead.'

Mr. Spencer calls on us to observe that the agent which all along has effected the purification of religion has been science.' But was it science or Christianity which overthrew the polytheism and superstition of paganism ? And when Christianity had readopted many of those superstitions, was it science, or was it the truer knowledge of Christianity itself, which again overthrew their influence, and released science itself from the trammels with

First Principles,' p. 101.

+ Ibid., p. 102.

which superstition had restrained it? The only thing that modern philosophy-not science-has endeavoured to do, is to reduce religion to a negation. Mr. Spencer admits, indeed, that, instead of a power which we can regard as having some sympathy with us, he would have us contemplate a power to which no emotion whatever can be ascribed,' and this he calls a' change from a lower to a higher creed.' Is it, then, a higher creed,'-that which substitutes for the influence of a God of righteousness and love, an unknowable something, who cannot influence us at all? If even a good father and a good man are influences for good, then the loss of the influence of a God of righteousness must be great indeed!

6

For the effect of regarding the Creator as unrelated' and unknowable,' and therefore a being who is indifferent to human actions, and is neither the rewarder of good nor punisher of evil, here or hereafter, must be to cast men back on themselves, and to cause a prudential selfishness, modified in some degree by natural affection, to be the sole rule of their actions, as pointed out in Section I., chapter v., The Nature of Sin.' And in that case conscience,' and 'right,' and 'wrong,' in their moral sense, must be expunged as unmeaning from the vocabulary of human language.

APPENDIX C.

PRAYER AND MIRACLES.

INTIMATELY Connected with the conclusions of agnosticism are the sceptical assertions of the uselessness of prayer, and the impossibility of miracles; and as the moral principle involved in each is the same, they may be considered together.

It is regarded as absurd to suppose that the Creator will alter His preordained arrangements for the sake of the prayer of an insignificant human being; for if He is infinitely wise, those arrangements must be for the best, and if, for the sake of this or that person, it is better that they should be altered, then He is not infinitely wise. On the other hand, if, foreseeing the prayer, He has so arranged circumstances that they should be in accordance with the suppliant's prayer, then those circumstances would take place whether the prayer was made

or not.

With regard to the latter argument, it may be pointed out that, if all things are of God, then the prayer, as well as the circumstances, must have been preordained. True prayer is due to the influence of the Spirit of God on the spirit of man; and therefore it is said that 'the spirit of grace and supplication' is from above (Zech. xii. 10), and that the preparations of the heart in man and the answer of the tongue is from the Lord' (Prov. xvi. 1). Therefore it would not be true that the circumstances.

would be the same whether the prayer was made or not; and if a person was to conclude that prayer would make no difference, and therefore did not pray, it would be clear that neither the prayer nor the answer to it were foreordained.

Nevertheless, if this was the only way in which prayer was answered, and the person in need was certain that no alteration of circumstances would really take place in consequence of his prayer, but that all was foreordained, he might endeavour to go through the form of prayer, so that the required combination of prayer, and the event prayed for, might take place; but it is clear that the belief that all that was to be, was fated to be, would take from prayer the spirit of supplication or entreaty, which is only possible on the assumption that prayer may influence the mind of the person entreated, and induce him to do that which otherwise he would not have done.

Therefore, although we may conceive that persons, ignorant of the future, and believing that the course of events might be altered through their prayer, would truly pray, while the Creator, having foreordained their prayer, had also foreordained the course of events to be in accordance with their prayer, yet, if this was the only way in which prayer could be answered, those who recognised the fact could never truly pray at all.

Prayer, therefore, presumes the possibility of the Creator's interference in, and alteration of, the course of events, although He had foreordained them to take place in a certain way.

That He could do so if He chose is, of course, manifest. All force must have its ultimate origin in His will, and the same will which set in action all the forces of nature could, without interfering in the slightest degree with the general action of any one force, suspend or overcome its action in any particular case, as, for instance, by arrest

ing the action of gravitation in some particular body. The mind of man has the most remarkable power over the body, even to the extent of causing or curing a disease, suspending the action of certain functions, and increasing the activity and powers of others to an abnormal extent, as illustrated by the phenomena of hypnotism, mesmerism, catalepsy, etc. How much more must the mind and will of God be able to act directly on every portion of His material creation, and even produce results as wonderful as those produced by His existing laws, and yet in no way due to those laws, and which we should therefore call miracles.

'Grant that there is a God and miracles are possible' was the admission of John Stuart Mill. The point of the sceptical objection to miracles is not that He who is the Cause of all things is unable to cause a miracle, which would be absurd, but that it is inconceivable that He should in any way interfere in that existing order of which He was the Cause and Designer.

It is not, however, necessary to suppose that an actual miracle must be performed every time that a prayer is to be answered. The various occurrences that take place in nature are the result of innumerable combinations of forces, and other influences, crossing, counteracting, and modifying each other. The most trivial circumstance may set free some force, or so change the direction of another, as to produce the greatest results, and if such results were those to be produced in answer to prayer, it would not be necessary for the Creator to interfere directly, even to produce the trifling initial circumstance which is the primary cause of those results; for the world is full of creatures of every degree of intelligence. who, at the bidding of His Spirit, may become His agents; and thus even the action of a fly on a human being, by producing a trifling delay in his intentions, may change the whole current of events.