IN MODERN SCIENCE. 



41 



The stLpid notion — still lingering in certain 

 quarters — that when anything has been referred 

 to a natural law or to a secondary cause under 

 law, God may be dispensed with in relation to 

 that thing, is merely a survival of the supersti- 

 tion that divine action must be of the nature 

 of a capricious interference. The true theistic 

 conception of law is that already stated, of a 

 voluntary limitation of divine power in the in- 

 terest of a material cosmos and its intelligent 

 inhabitants. Nor is the permanence of law 

 dependent on necessity or on mere mechanical 

 routine, but on the unchanging will of the Leg- 

 islator ; while the countless varieties and vicis- 

 situdes of nature depend, not on caprice or on 

 accidental interference, but on the interactions 

 and adjustments of laws of different grades, and 

 so numerous and varied in their scope and ap- 

 plication and in the combinations of wljich they 

 are capable that it is often impossible for finite 

 minds to calculate their results. 



If, now, in conclusion, we are asked to sum 

 up the hypotheses as to the origin of natural 

 laws and of the properties and determinations 

 of matter and force, we may do this under the 

 following heads : 



I. Absolute creation by the will of a Supreme 



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