GOD IN NATURE 173 



monious action. Nay, rather, it may be compared to 

 a series of machines, each running independently, like 

 the trains of a railway, but all regulated and connected 

 by an invisible guidance, which determines the times 

 and distance of each, and ordains which shall wait 

 and give place to others. Even this simile, how 

 ever, gives us the faintest possible conception of the 

 countless interactions and interdependencies of natural 

 laws. Thus the conception of natural law rightly 

 understood becomes the highest evidence of power 

 and divinity, and the highest realisation of the plans 

 of superhuman intelligence. 



The notion that when anything has been referred 

 to natural law the action of God may be dispensed 

 with in relation to that thing, is merely the survival 

 of a superstition that God must be capricious and 

 changeable. On the one hand, while by natural law 

 God limits His freedom of action in the interest of 

 the Cosmos and of its intelligent inhabitants, and 

 while He permits us as rational beings to understand 

 and utilise in our limited way portions of His plans, 

 the interactions and adjustments of laws of different 

 grades are so varied and complex in their scope and 

 application, and in the combinations of which they 

 are capable, that it is often impossible for finite minds 

 to calculate their results, while it is entirely beyond 

 human power to interfere with their majestic action. 

 Hence the will, the power, and the divinity of the 

 Creator and His absolute mastery over His creatures 



