PRAYER AND NATURAL LAW. 39 



sity. A perpetual motion, then, is deemed impossible, be- 

 cause it demands the creation of force, whereas the principle 

 of Conservation is, no creation but infinite conversion. 



It is an old remark that the law which moulds a tear 

 also rounds a planet. In the application of law in Nature 

 the terms great and small are unknown. Thus the principle 

 referred to teaches us that the Italian wind gliding over 

 the crest of the Matterhorn is as firmly ruled as the earth 

 in its orbital revolution round the sun ; and that the fall of 

 its vapor into clouds is exactly as much a matter of neces- 

 sity as the return of the seasons. The dispersion, there- 

 fore, of the slightest mist by the special volition of the 

 Eternal, would be as much a miracle as the rolling of the 

 Rhone over the Grimsel precipices and down Haslithal to 

 Brientz. 



It seems to me quite beyond the present power of 

 science, to demonstrate that the Tyrolese priest, or his 

 colleague of the Rhone valley, asked for an " impossibility " 

 in praying for good weather ; but science can demonstrate 

 the incompleteness of the knowledge of Nature w r hich 

 limited their prayers to this narrow ground ; and she may 

 lessen the number of instances in which we " ask amiss," 

 by showing that we sometimes pray for the performance 

 of a miracle when we do not intend it. She does assert, 

 for example, that, without a disturbance of natural law, 

 quite as serious as the stoppage of an eclipse, or the rolling 

 of the St. Lawrence up the Falls of Niagara, no act of 

 humiliation, individual or national, could call one shower 

 from heaven, or deflect toward us a single beam of the sun. 



Those, therefore, who believe that the miraculous is still 

 active in Nature, may, with perfect consistency, join in our 

 periodic prayers for fair weather and for rain : while those 

 who hold that the age of miracles is past, will refuse to 

 join in such petitions. And if these latter wish to fall back 

 upon such a justification, they may fairly urge that the 



