REFLECTIONS ON PRAYER AND NATURAL LAW. 5 



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 vapour into clouds is 

 exactly as much a matter of necessity as the return of 

 the seasons. The dispersion, therefore, 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, down the valley of Hasli to Meyrin- 

 gen and 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 ' impossi- 

 bility ' in praying for good weather ; but Science can 

 demonstrate the incompleteness of the knowledge of 

 nature which limited their prayers to this narrow 

 ground ; and she may lessen the number of instances 

 in which we ' ask amiss,' by showing that we some- 

 times 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 

 river Niagara up the Falls, no act of humiliation, 

 individual or national, could call one shower from 

 heaven, or deflect towards 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, if they be consistent, refuse to join in these 

 petitions. And these latter, if they wish to fall back upon 



