24 ADDRESS OF 



formation of rain and electricity, were not understood, so here 

 Jupiter had a chance to work unseen by man. When the mode in 

 which clouds were formed was once understood, the god of thunder 

 left his seat upon Mount Olympus for a more distant abode. From 

 the earliest historic times the man who took a large dose of poison 

 has died, as a matter of course ; neither good nor evil spirit had 

 anything to do with it. But if brain disease bereft him of reason, 

 the malevolence of an evil spirit was called in to account for the 

 result. 



Now, I beg you to notice that in all these cases, the only dis- 

 tinction we can make between, those effects which were supposed 

 to be produced by natural causes, and those which were produced 

 b} 7 the will of some higher power acting with a scrtuable end in 

 view, is this : in the first class of cases we can clearly see the ef- 

 fect to have been produced by the action of natural causes, and in 

 the second we cannot. This distinction, depending as it does 

 upon the extent of our knowledge, cannot be regarded as a logical 

 one. Yet, in so far as a belief in that class of final causes which 

 we have been considering exists at the present day, I see no other 

 definition of the limits within which these causes are supposed to 

 act. Let us take an illustration from the plague now desolating 

 our southern cities. No one would believe that under any circum- 

 stances any superior power'would build a yellow fever hospital, and 

 supply it with the best medicines. If we should sny that the 

 prayers of the whole nation for the immediate erection of such 

 buildings would have no effect whatever, we should not be accused 

 pf unbelief or irreverence in any quarter, for every one would 

 fully agree with us. But there are great numbers of people who 

 believe that, if the whole nation should pray for frost, frost might 

 be sent in answer to the prayer when it would not have come oth- 

 erwise. And to many who do not share this belief, the denial of 

 any possibility of an influence of this kind would seern to savor 

 much more strongly of unbelief, irreligion, or irreverence, than 

 the denial that Providence would build a hospital without human 

 hands. 



And yet, if the scientific philosoph}^ be correct, the providential 

 production of frost would be as miraculous and as incredible as 

 the providential erection of a hospital in a single night without 

 human hands. The temperature of the air and the amount of 



