THE MESSAGE AND PROMISES TO MANKIND. 227 



inculcate upon himself, which the religion of Islam 

 prescribes as its central precept, which Christianity 

 supplicates from heaven, becomes almost for the first time 

 a possible and natural frame of mind to man ; the lesson 

 of science being borne in upon his mind from all sides 

 and by countless instances, that the course of nature, the 

 laws of the universe, and the laws of life, from which 

 certain evils must result, are fixed and unalterable. It 

 is natural, when we know that the order of the world is 

 carried on under laws which will not change for our 

 wishes or our prayers, to be resigned to the special evils 

 which the general laws bring with them. It is natural 

 to try to be resigned to the inevitable in any case, and it 

 is wise ; but when we learn that some of the inevitable 

 ills are the result of general laws which bring a greater 

 sum of good ; that others of our ills are not inevitable, 

 but reducible in amount through the beneficial help of 

 these very invariable laws and the unchanging nature 

 of things and properties of matter ; and that finally both 

 the greater good, and the continual diminution of evil 

 within limits, are only obtainable on the twofold condi- 

 tion of the invariability of the laws joined to our know- 

 ledge of them ; then the spirit of resignation to the order 

 of things, which is demanded from us on account of the 

 residuum of evil, becomes tempered with gratitude on 

 account of the larger good. 



When we reflect that the particular e'vils from which 

 we suffer and from which no deliverance can be obtained, 

 are natural effects of the general order, parts of the total 

 chain of cause and consequence which binds the cosmos 

 together : and that to ask for an exception in the opera- 

 tion of natural law, for a single remission of the result in 

 our special favour, would be tantamount to asking for 

 the abolition of law and for the dissolution of the 



