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of them to practice; that if in the exercise of this practical wisdom he acts in accordance with these laws, he will escape all disasters and perils; but that if he neglect or violate them, they will work on with crushing and resistless force for his destruction. If this be so, there is no room for providential interposition, no answers to prayer, nothing but the execution of natural and inevitable laws. These views have been enforced with much show of logical argumentation and philosophical profundity, in some of the popular treatises of the day. It would be an easy task to expose their fallacies and sophisms in detail; to do so, however, would occupy far more space than our pages can afford. It will be sufficient to point out the three following insuperable difficulties by which such a theory is beset.

1st. The word of God distinctly, emphatically, and repeatedly asserts the fact of a special providence, and declares that God does continue to watch over and care for the creatures he has formed. Whilst it condemns the presumptuous neglect of means, it teaches us that second causes are but instruments in the hands of God, and that the laws of nature are but the manifestations of his Divine will. It adduces

numberless instances in which his servants, who have been brought into circumstances of danger, have been delivered by his special and direct intervention, sometimes by the temporary suspension of natural laws, sometimes by the interposition of other secondary causes and instrumentalities, yet always by the agency of Him for whose power nothing is too vast, nothing too minute. These theorists, then, who deny the fact of a special providence, must be prepared to prove the Scriptures a cunningly devised fable-must confute and overthrow the overwhelming amount of evidence which attests their Divine origin, before they can prove the truth of their speculations.

2nd. The universal instincts of mankind testify to the reality of Divine providence. The belief of some supreme Being presiding over the affairs of men, hearing their prayers, supplying their wants, and guarding their lives, has been universal. The most polished and refined nations have not risen above this conviction-the most barbarous and degraded have not sunk below it. For three thousand years atheism in its various forms has endeavoured to uproot it, but in vain. Beyond the narrow limits of a superficial school, this cold and

cheerless negation has been unable to propagate itself; and men have clung with firm tenacity to the belief that "there is a God that judgeth in the earth." Even the scoffers at providence have commonly been heard to pray when in sorrow or danger. The laws of nature are felt to be too numerous, intricate, and vast for our feeble powers to explore and grasp; man sinks down appalled at the mighty, mysterious forces at work all around him, and he flies by a necessity of his being to some supreme Power who cares for his frail erring creatures. In all ages and nations men have endeavoured to avert calamity and to secure prosperity by prayer. The universality of this tendency points to some fundamental law of our moral being, equally universal with itself. But this is a fact which needs to be accounted for, Whence sprang this universal conviction? How can its existence be explained, save on the supposition of the reality of the fact which it asserts ?

3rd, Experience establishes the doctrine of Divine providence on the sure, solid foundation of fact. There are innumerable events an. conjunctures in the history of the world which the supposition of blind chance or of blind law

are powerless to explain; in which we are compelled to admit the action of some overruling and designing agency, controlling and directing the affairs of men. This is peculiarly obseryable in tracing back to their first small beginnings the great movements which have affected the destinies of humanity, or in studying the biography of those individuals who have originated or guided those movements. We discern that circumstances altogether beyond their control, and of the design and influence of which they were not aware, have turned them from one course or impelled them into another, checked them, directed them, and "led them by a way that they knew not." A careful examination of these seeming accidents will discover in them such minute and exact adaptations, such evident tokens of design, and results so unexpected, yet so momentous, that every candid mind must admit that there was in them something more than the action of accident or of law, and will confess with the Egyptian magicians, "This is the finger of God."

Let us look, for instance, at the career of Luther. Among the many incidents in his eventful life which illustrate this truth, we will

only advert to that decisive one which led him to abandon a secular life and enter a monastery. He is returning from Mansfeld; the death of Alexis has greatly affected him, and made him feel the vanity of life and the nearness of death more than he has ever done before. Erfurth is near, when he will again have to plunge into studies and pursuits for which these thoughts have given him a distaste. A thunderbolt bursts from the sky, flashes by him, and buries itself in the earth at his feet. His decision is at once taken. He asks himself what his condition would have been if that bolt had struck him. He shudders at the thought, and thenceforward determines to devote himself to a life of religion and to a preparation for eternity. How different would the history of the world have been had the life of Luther ended there, or if it had not been turned into a new channel! Had his course been different, ours must have been so too. Yet on how many contingencies and chances did it seem to depend ! That he should have got just to that spot and no farther; that the bolt should have fallen just where and when it did, and not struck him; that it should have descended just at the moment when his mind was opened to receive

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