252 PKOVIDENCE. 



in a similar way, he might cause a rarefaction of the atmo- 

 sphere in one locality, and a condensation in another, and thus 

 cause a current of wind sufficiently violent to cleave the waters 

 of a gulf, and afford a dry passage for a particular people 

 through whom he designed to affect great purposes. 



It will doubtless still be argued that such occurrences, if 

 they ever do take place, are results simply of the forces and 

 laws of nature. In a qualified sense, this is granted, as we 

 have shown before that all action, whether physical or 

 spiritual, is according to some laws ; but we insist that it is 

 an exceedingly superficial view of the laws of nature, which 

 supposes that they are self-generative and self-active, or that 

 they can exist for a moment as separate from that Divine 

 vitalizing and spiritual Principle which, in an earlier stage 

 of this work, we showed was necessarily self-existent and 

 eternal. 



But if this self-existent, and all generative, and vitalizing 

 Divine Principle may operate upon mundane forces and de- 

 velopments in the way just described, he may, in a similar 

 way, control, modify, and direct chemical and mineral, or 

 vegetable, or animal, or spiritual forces and developments, by 

 a voluntary graduation of those influences, proceeding from 

 himself, as adapted to either of these departments of his 

 creation. And all such operations would be instances of 

 direct providences. 



But while it would be impossible for God, consistently 

 with the fundamental, which we have presumed to be the 

 best possible plan of creation, to act directly upon any one 

 department of being, by forces specifically adapted only to 

 another (as, for instance, to act directly upon mind, by that 

 Degree of attractive force known as " gravitation," or to di- 

 rectly control planets by the motive forces of moral and 



