REFLECTIONS ON P II AT EH AND NATURAL LAW. 343 



was the consequence, and sacrifice was offered to the 

 demons of earth and air. 



But observation tends to chasten the emotions and to 

 check those structural efforts of the intellect which have 

 emotion for their base. One by one natural phenomena 

 came to be associated with their proximate causes; the 

 idea of direct personal volition mixing itself with the 

 economy of nature retreating more and more. Many of us 

 fear this change. Our religious feelings are dear to us, 

 and we look with suspicion and dislike on any philosophy, 

 the apparent tendency of which is to dry them up. Prob- 

 ably every change from ancient savagery to our present 

 enlightenment has excited, in a greater or less degree, fears 

 of this kind. But the fact is, that we have not yet deter- 

 mined whether its present form is necessary to the life and 

 warmth of religious feeling. We may err in linking the 

 imperishable with the transitory, and confound the living 

 plant with the decaying pole to which it clings. My 

 object, however, at present is not to argue, but to mark a 

 tendency. We have ceased to propitiate the powers of 

 nature ceased even to pray for things in manifest contra- 

 diction to natural laws, in Protestant countries, at least, 

 I think it is conceded that the age of miracles is past. 



At an auberge near the foot of the Rhone glacier, I met, 

 in the summer of 1858, an athletic young priest, who, 

 after a solid breakfast, including a bottle of wine, informed 

 me that he had come up to "bless the mountains." This 

 was the annual custom of the place. Year by year the 

 Highest was entreated, by official intercessors, to make 

 such meteorological arrangements as should ensure food 

 and shelter for the flocks and herds of the Valaisians. A 

 diversion of the Rhone, or a deepening of the river's bed, 

 would, at the time I now mention, have been of incalcu- 

 lable benefit to the inhabitants of the valley. But the 

 priest would have shrunk from the idea of asking the 

 Omnipotent to open a new channel for the river, or to 

 cause a portion of it to flow over the Grimsel pass, and 

 down the valley of Oberhasli to Brientz. This he would 

 have deemed a miracle, and he did not come to ask the 

 Creator to perform miracles, but to do something which he 

 manifestly thought lay quite within the bounds of the 

 natural and non-miraculous. A Protestant gentleman who 

 was present tit the time smiled at. this recital. Ho had no 





