PRINCIPLE OF CONTINUITY 163 



the plausibility of the reasons advanced in the name 

 of science for rejecting the doctrine of man's primitive 

 righteousness and grace. 



We must believe that nothing happens capriciously, 

 but that the whole sequence of events is rationally 

 determined by laws which cannot be broken. There 

 are no real violations of this principle. Every event 

 is the result of causal antecedents; and if the sequence 

 of causation ever seems to be broken, we feel compelled 

 to assume that the seeming is to be disregarded, and 

 that unknown factors have operated, rather than that 

 the principle of continuity has been violated. This 

 principle is postulated in all scientific inquiry; for, if 

 events occur in a haphazard and disconnected manner, 

 there is obviously no intelligible basis for scientific 

 induction. Nature, under such circumstances, would 

 consist of nothing but an unintelligible stream of 

 phenomena. To reject, or even to neglect, the prin-' 

 ciple of continuity in our argument is to plead guilty 

 of unintelligence, of irrationality. The last person in 

 the world who can consistently make such a blunder is 

 the Christian believer in God. If the course of things 

 is controlled by infinite wisdom, and with reference to 

 one ultimate purpose and event, as Christians main- 

 tain, then the principle of continuity is as fundamen- 

 tal to theology as it is to physical science. This 

 being so, we are logically constrained to confess that, 

 whenever a theological proposition is proved to be 

 inconsistent with the continuity of events, it is also 

 shown to be irrational and incredible. There is no 



