of His servant an important place in carrying into effect His thoughts of peace towards his penitent people, is it conceivable that He had no place in that scheme for the holy and spiritual efforts of the same servant? or that the aspirations of a sanctified spirit, the travailing of a soul intent upon the accomplishment of the Divine will and the manifestation of the Divine glory, should be less efficient or less essential in the execution of the Divine counsels, than the outward and ordinary agency of human actions? The whole tenor and the most explicit declarations of Scripture stand opposed to such a supposition; nor can I understand how a devout mind should have any difficulty in conceiving that it must be so. The agency of prayer is, indeed, a less obvious and palpable thing than that outward coöperation whereby mankind are rendered subservient to the accomplishment of the Divine purposes. But is it not an agency of an unspeakably loftier character? Is it not the cooperation of an immortal spirit, bearing the impress of the Divine image, and at the moment acting in unison with the Divine will? Is it not befitting the character of God to set upon that coöperation a special mark of His holy approbation, by assigning to it a more elevated place among the secondary causes which He is pleased to employ? And must there not be provision made, therefore, in the general principles of His administration, for fulfilling the special promise of His word, 'The Lord is nigh to all that call upon Him, to all that call upon him in truth.'”1

"We should blush," says Bishop Warburton, "to be thought so uninstructed in the nature of prayer, as to fancy that it can work any temporary change in the dispositions of the Deity, who is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. Yet we are not ashamed to maintain that God, in the chain of causes and effects, which not only sustains each system, but connects them

1 DR. ROBT. GORDON, "Sermons," p. 369.

all with one another, hath so wonderfully contrived, that the temporary endeavors of pious men shall procure good and avert evil, by means of that preëstablished harmony' which He hath willed to exist between moral actions and natural events."

"But should some frigid skeptic, therefore, dare

To doubt the all-prevailing power of prayer;
As if 't were ours, with impious zeal, to try
To shake the purposes of Deity;

Pause, cold philosopher, nor snatch away
The last, the best, the wretched's surest stay.
Look round on life, and trace its checkered plan,
The griefs, the joys, the hopes, the fears of man;
Tell me, if each deliverance, each success,
Each transient golden dream of happiness,
Each palm that genius in the race acquires,
Each thrilling rapture virtuous pride inspires,
Tell me, if each and all were not combined
In the great purpose of the Eternal Mind?

Thus while we humbly own the vast decree,
Formed in the bosom of Eternity,

And know all secondary causes tend

Each to contribute to one mighty end;

Yet while these causes firmly fixed remain

Links quite unbroken in the endless chain,

So that could one be snapped, the whole must fail,
And wide confusion o'er the world prevail;

Why may not our petitions, which arise

In humble adoration to the skies,

Be foreordained the causes, whence shall flow

Our purest pleasures in this vale of woe?

Not that they move the purpose that hath stood

By time unchanged, immeasurably good,
But that the event and prayer alike may be
United objects of the same decree."1

1 It is with melancholy pleasure that the author recalls and reproduces, after an interval of thirty years, the lines of his early college companion, -WILLIAM FRIEND DURANT,‚— a young man of high promise, removed, like his distinguished fellow-student, ROBERT POLLOCK, by what might seem a premature death, but for the prospect of immortality.

On the whole, we feel ourselves warranted, and even constrained, to conclude that the theory of "government by natural law" is defective in so far as it excludes the superintendence and control of God over all the events of human life, and that neither the existence of second causes nor the operation of physical laws should diminish our confidence in the care of Providence and the efficacy of Prayer.

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CHAPTER VI.

THEORIES OF CHANCE AND FATE.

WHEN We survey the actual course of God's Providence, by which the eternal purposes of the Divine Mind are carried into effect, we discern immediately a marked difference between two great classes of events. The one comprehends a multitude of events which are so regular, stable, and constant, that we feel ourselves warranted in reckoning on their invariable recurrence, in the same circumstances in which they have been observed; they seem to be governed by an unchangeable, or at least an established law. The other comprehends a different set of events, which are so irregular and variable that they occur quite unexpectedly, and cannot be reduced to any rule of rational computation; they appear,-perhaps from our ignorance, to be purely accidental or fortuitous.

In exact accordance with this difference between the two great classes of Providential events, there is a similar difference in our internal views or sentiments in regard to them. We are conscious of two totally dissimilar feelings in contemplating them respectively. We have a feeling of certainty, confidence, or assurance in regard to the one; and a feeling of uncertainty, anxiety, and helplessness in regard to the other; while for an intermediate class of events, there is also an intermediate state of mind, equally removed from entire certainty and absolute doubt, arising from the various degrees of probability that may