Insufficient. 66 individual instances. That is to say, the notion of general laws does not supersede a particular Providence. Ridicule has, indeed, been sometimes cast upon what has been contemptuously called a carpenter theory" of creation, upon the notion of "a clock-making divinity," who is always interfering to carry out the plans of his own administration. Why, it is said, should not all this have been provided for by a single original act through the medium of general laws? Perhaps this may, after all, have been so. But who shall apply absolutely to the Infinite Mind' (when we know so little of our own), notions drawn solely from human experience, and limited by human imperInappli- fection; or distinguish in such a case to little our notions purpose between an eternal ordinance and the Mislead ing. cable to of the Divine Being. individual application of it? To Him there can be no measure of time, but as an eternal present; (which, to speak exactly, forms no part of time); incompatible alike with human modes of thought or with secular succession.3 1 See Comte, Phil. Pos., IV. 664, with the quotation from Père Malebranche. 2" M. Bayle sait fort bien que l'entendement Divin n'a point besoin de temps, pour voir la liaison des choses. Tous les raisonnements sont éminemment en Dieu, et ils gardent un ordre entre eux dans son entendement aussi bien que dans le nôtre; mais chez Lui ce n'est qu'un ordre et une priorité de nature, au lieu que chez nous il y a une priorité de temps."-Leibnitz, Théod., p. 563. 3 "Mentis quippe aspectu omnem mutabilitatem ab æternitate sejungo et in ipsâ æternitate nulla spatia temporis cerno. Quia spatia temporis præteritis et futuris rerum motibus constant. Nihil autem præterit in æterno et nihil futurum est, quia et quod præterit esse desinit, et quod of provi operation. § 6. The presence in time and place of surround- The area ing phenomena, their relations accordingly to dential man's action as objects of desire, or as conditions in whatever manner of his conduct, and of the consequences of his conduct; these constitute the field of Providential operation,' and lie beyond the compass of any known Law. This is the work in time of the Eternal Spirit. "I have seen," writes the Preacher, "the travail which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it. He hath made everything beautiful in his time: also He hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end." What is temptation but the presence or possibility under given circumstances of a presumed object of desire? The desire is uniform, the opportunity of its operation contingent and variable. What, again, is the lesson of futurum est nondum esse cœpit; æternitas autem tantummodo est, nec fuit quasi jam non sit, nec erit quasi adhuc non sit. Quare sola ipsa verissime dicere potuit humanæ menti-Ego sum qui sum-et de illâ verissime dici potuit-Misit me, qui est.”—Augustin. de Ver. Rel., c. xlix. ὁ χρόνος οὐ δοκεῖ συγκεῖσθαι ἐκ τῶν νῦν.—Arist., Phys., IV. X. Tò dè vûv éoti ovvéxela xpóvov.—c. xiv. See Leibnitz, Works, p. 615. Compare Dr. Mozley, B. L., p. 157. 2 1 "Conditrix ac moderatrix temporum Divina Providentia."-Augustin. "Ainsi le tout revient souvent aux circonstances, qui font une partie de l'enchaînement des choses."-Leibnitz, Théod., p. 530. kaipòs ñávτwv yvóμas oxe.-Soph., Philoct., 837. There is a singular passage in Legge's Confucius (§ 100) to the same effect: "How does Heaven speak? The four seasons have their course. The hundred things, what speaks He? No; Heaven speaks not: by the course of events He makes Himself understood; no more." 2 Eccles. iii. 10, 11. Observ course of able in the affairs. human affairs if not the need of energy, genius, For, however superior their powers, they must confessedly be in harmony and relation with their times. Their very greatness, some would hold, comes of their temperament, and that temperament is the result of many antecedents. Mental as well as physical attributes may be transmissible by inheritance; and a "creational law" may be imagined to explain their commencement. Some .... 3 1 "The laws," says Bp. Butler, "by which persons born into the world at such a time and place are of such capacities, geniuses, tempers are so wholly unknown to us, that we call the events which come to pass by them accidental; though all reasonable men know certainly that there cannot in reality be any such thing as chance.”— Anal., II. c. iv. Comp. Augustin., Civ. D., IV. xxxiii.: “Neque hoc temerè; . . sed pro rerum ordine ac temporum occulto nobis, notissimo sibi; cui tamen ordini temporum non subditus servit, sed eum Ipse tanquam dominus regit moderatorque disponit.” φορὰ γὰρ τίς ἐστιν ἐν τοῖς γένεσιν ἀνδρῶν, ὥσπερ ἐν τοῖς κατὰ τὰς χώρας γιγνομένοις.—Arist., Rhet., II. xv.; and Pol., V. xii. 8. 2 Guizot has some just remarks on this subject, Civ. en France, Lec. xx.: "The activity of a great man is of two kinds. First, he understands better than others the wants of his time; its real, present exigencies," &c. 3 See Comte, Phil. Pos., IV. 373, 397. 66 Comp. Dr. Mozley, B. L., p. 319. Mr. Herbert Spencer, First Pr., p. 123. "These superior powers of reason or fancy," says Gibbon, c. xxxviii., are rare and spontaneous productions." "Est casus aliquis," says Bacon, non minus in cogitationibus humanis quam in operibus et factis.”—N. O., Aph. cxxii. correspon would persuade us to believe that with all their capacities, and aspirations, and beliefs, they are still no accident indeed, yet a product of their time. But what shall account for the harmony of In the the given antecedents; for their coincidence and dence of correspondence; for the melody' which pervades and antetheir combination; for the co-proportions and correlations, for the co-existence and co-ordination of these births of Time? Non hæc sine numine Divûm occasion cedent, bination of Do they not of themselves call for the notion of Divine superintendence and of absolute appointment, even if the expression of interposition be objected to? The method of Nature, even in and comphysical matters, is nowhere the predominance of agencies. any single principle, but the joint-presence and self-correcting union of several. We ask not for a world governed by isolated acts of special intervention, of perpetual and arbitrary interference, 1 "Dieu est tout ordre: il garde toujours la justice des proportions: il fait l'harmonie universelle."-Leibnitz, Théod. In Ver. Rel., c. xxii., Augustine works out at length the metaphor of a harmony or strain pervading the administration of the world. Cf. Prom. V., 556, ovttute τὰν Διὸς ἁρμονίαν θνατῶν παρεξίασι βουλαί. When these prodigies Do so conjointly meet, let not men say 'These are their reasons, they are natural. Julius Caesar. This argument is carried out by means of an example very ably in 2 "Is not the universe pervaded by an omnipresent antagonism, a fundamental conjunction of contraries, everywhere opposite, nowhere independent?"-Whewell, Nov. Org. Renov., p. 270. An ele ment scien admissible. 1 irreconcilable with general laws, and turning history, as has been aptly said, into an almanac. We acknowledge the results of that power of abstraction in the mind of man, which, growing with education, terminates in annihilating all personification of phenomena, and closes what has been called "the mythical period of history." But, on the other side, this view of life and being, which sees in all things the present controlling hand of God, cannot be charged with being incapable of proof. It rests upon and is an illustration of the tifically Method of Residues, so well known in the Logic of Induction. For it represents an element of causation, a surplus of unassigned effect, which survives all analysis or explanation of natural events. But if the element thus indicated enters as a necessary antecedent into a scientific account of things, being one which, though not itself otherwise determinable, is an uniform condition of phenomena; who shall set limits to its operation, or regard any the smallest event as beyond the providential arrangeThe bor- ment of the Almighty? True, the natural here the natu- merges in the supernatural; a special providence, it has been rightly said, is an invisible miracle; it is of the same order as the miracle of creation.3 der line of ral and supernatural. 1 See Mr. Lecky, Hist. Eur. Mor., I. 375. 2 See Mill's Logic, III. viii. 5; Herschel's Discourse, § 158; and Mr. Fowler's singularly clear treatise on Inductive Logic, p. 163. 3 The very preservation of the universe being a continued creation. See Leibnitz, Works, pp. 152,615. "Dieu n'agit que par des lois générales, Je l'accorde; mais à mon avis cela ne suffit pas pour lever les miracles: |