things. To God is assigned another sphere. Nature is near but he is afar. Nature may be treated with under certain conditions, with assured results, but he perchance may not be treated with at all, or if he may, as he has freedom he may have the capriciousness which our experience leads us to associate with the use of freedom. There is trust in the return of the seasons and in the fruitfulness of the earth; such trust that the conditions upon which a good harvest depends are cheerfully complied with. There is belief that they who sow may reap, and they who sow know the quality of the seeds they scatter, but in the field of religious life many tread the furrow with weak and measured pace while they plant unwinnowed seeds.

Under the habit of conceiving of two sources of power and of two spheres of their operation, nature is sometimes assumed to be in antagonism to God. It is the wicked and consenting material that forms the weapons with which scientists assail or seem to imply an assault upon his special revelation to man. Looking at nature as an efficient power, they admit that in some departments at least it is sufficient for the production of phenomena, and they practically admit and are not prepared theoretically to deny, that it embraces the promise and potency of all substantial things. While admitting that the Creator established the laws of nature, and the forces that work in their channels; they imagine he gave to them propulsion and has since left them to work out their inexorable results as a machine does its work, while he seldom or never touches them

that they were all finished in the long-ago; and whereas there is now no necessity for his presence and activity, therefore he is not present and active-that his creative power has ceased even if it is not exhausted and his presence being superfluous is not to be expected unless exceptionally and at rare periods. As a consequence of such convictions "he is not in all their thoughts," or, in all their thoughts he is not. doctrine of the omnipresence of God is accepted as a dogma that it is not expedient to deny, but being an incomprehensible fact it is permitted to be nearly as ineffectual as a rejected theory.

The

Devout teachers sometimes say of the Creator that he cannot

do so and so, referring to the limitations "in the nature of things." Such statements may express absolute truth. The opposite of them may be inconceivable. They seem to imply that he will be exalted by having his subjection to nature's laws proclaimed and proven, or at least that he will thus be made more acceptable to minds familiar with science. There seems to be an impression that nature or nature's laws were anterior and superior to God himself—that he made all things in conformity and in subordination to those laws—that he is environed by necessities and limitations. Probably there is often the confused process of an attempt to conceive of the contradictory condition of an existence prior to the First and of a power superior to the Almighty. All expressions intimating, or habits of thought admitting that truth or necessity or nature is in any wise prior or superior to him, suggest limitations upon him, and they imply that he is not supreme. By such processes in many minds the infinite and omnipresent One is superseded; and having no relish for atheism, such minds accept only an anthropomorphic deity, into whose presence they hope the future may lead them. Upon such an unstable foundation the superstructure of conviction and character is weak, and a comparison makes atheism tolerable.

How may the foundation be amended?-At some point the mind must consent to surrender itself to the fact of an eternal and infinite being, though he is incomprehensible to finite faculties; and to abandon its pursuit of the beginning; for it can neither conceive of a beginning nor of no beginning.

Man with his highest endowment of moral freedom has allowed his will and imagination to become subject to his animal nature; to multiply its requirements by complex contrivances and indulgencies, until it has obtained the mastery; and it keeps his perception and his freedom impaired. His moral nature may be emancipated and developed to a high degree of utility and felicity if he may be led to admire and to imitate a perfect character. But he is not inclined to do this; and gratitude is the only bond that will lead him and hold him to such a course; and none short of his Creator is entitled to the requisite degree of gratitude or admiration; and his Creator is an invisible spirit;-and alas, man can have no conception of a

mode of existence, nor of the operation of character above such as he may form out of the poor material of his own experiences. He must have aid provided in accommodation to his weakness, his limitations and his abnormal disposition. Without such aid for him there is a chasm between need and supply that has no parallel and no analogy. Suitable aid is possible only through the divine man, God manifest in the flesh.

These two distinct processes of mind at least are involved in accepting God as he is revealed. First, assent to the fact that he is and is eternal, and is infinite in power, wisdom and pres ence; and second, such conception of his character and disposition as may be found in considering the person and the works of Jesus of Nazareth illustrated by all other attainable knowledge. The first process is the acceptance of facts that cannot be perceived by the senses nor grasped by the imagination, and which are therefore liable to be transient and evanescent to the mind.

The second process is the appropriation of material which has been furnished to meet human need. For direct effects upon practical life and character the use of this material is necessary and it may seem to be the most important. Yet a firm adherence to this will be best secured by an intelligent and constant use of the other. The appreciation of the person, life and mission of the Christ who came and has gone away, should not be allowed to depreciate the fact nor obscure the conception of the presence of the infinite Creator. Regarding the relation of the Creator to the works of his power, the character of the Christian will be invigorated if he will believe and affirm that wherever in nature efficient power operates, that power is God. This belief should not exhibit itself in obtru sive cant, but it should be infused in fundamental teaching and cherished in habitual thought. It need not operate to supersede the terms ordinarily used to describe the relations of things, but it should affect the significance of those terms. It should by no means seem to constitute matter, or force, or any ordinary conception of nature a substitute for an intelligent Creator, but it should always present distinctly to the mind the fact that God is every where Almighty-though he is revealable to man and to be comprehended by him only in the form

and character of humanity, yet is partially perceived as the mover in every motion of everything-invisible but not absent from any soul or any atom or point of space. The scriptures represent him as performing the work which we attribute to nature. May not such representations be accepted, not merely as poetry, nor as truth only by liberal construction, but rather as truth substantial in philosophy and in theology? The first requisite with which to meet and repel unbelief or doubt, is thorough theism.

If we claim that atheists attribute to matter power that it does not possess; and if we admit that Christians often do but little better in their conception of the functions of the laws of nature; and if we find that in pursuance of consistency Christians should habitually recognize the operative presence of God; we have only arrived at a familiar doctrine, with no special prescription to secure its practical observance. In pursuance of an amendment or reform in the ordinary conception. of the relation of the Creator to his works, let there be a statement of certain deductions and inferences that flow from the fundamental doctrines of religion.

God is Omnipotent, Omnipresent, Omniscient and Eternal. It follows: Firstly, that the will of God operates directly upon and within every particular molecule or atom as well as upon and within the aggregate masses of the matter of the universe; now and from all the past to all the future; eternally. He not only has planned the proceedings and established the laws of nature, but he executes them. Secondly, in other words, chemical motions, gravitation, inertia, electricity, light, and heat, and all manifestations of power in and upon matter, and all forces whether latent or active, in their minutest subdivisions, as well as in their accumulated energies and results, are none other than the effect of the will of God in perpetual, direct and consistent activity. Wherefore,

Thirdly, there is no power in nature's laws nor in any force using such laws as channels, delegated from God, to effect his will. Fourthly, we cannot know that the relations between antecedent and consequent phenomena are necessary relations. We can only know that they are certain to be continued or repeated. We do know that under given conditions given re

sults will certainly follow, but we do not know that such certain results are also necessary results. We cannot know that the conditions of conditional things are not all arbitrary appointments, chosen to be as they are in pursuance of freedom and wisdom.

It is not intended here to offer an argument, but merely to make suggestions of a mode of expression, and of some indications of its utility. These suggestions are thrown as a mite into the mass of material that is under agitation, with the hope that so far as they have any effect or tendency they may tend to clarify and not to confuse.

The first three parts of the statement are substantially the same; and they are only partial definitions of the preceding admitted doctrine. The third and fourth seem naturally to follow the other two, and only the fourth will meet with objections from those who accept the fundamental doctrine. If as a whole it is a radical form of statement, nevertheless it seems that nothing short of it will uproot the habit of thought that has grown upon the use of terms which imply that nature is an automatic power.

It may be worth while to notice briefly some of the most obvious objections that may be made to it.

It presents difficulties. It is safe to assert that no new difficulty occurs, and if it renders difficulties conspicuous, they are made so only in so far as they are beheld from a new point of view.

The effort to conceive of a person so diffused excludes all idea of giving to or receiving from him any sympathy or other emotion. Very true. Accept the fact however because it is a useful one to hold, and then turn with the imagination to the embodiment that has been given-given in order to express to us and to call from us the best emotions. It is at variance with the language in use with regard to science and phenomena, and would create confusion by diverting from terms their ordinary import. To this it may be replied that science and philosophy deal with the facts of the existence and relations of phenomena, and as no new thing nor new relation of things to one another is presented by this form of statement so no new terms are required to express such relations, and no disturb