208 THE EEV. CHANCELLOR LIAS, M.A., ON 



pelled to ask, tvhose will, and liow governed and directed? 

 And tliis leads us to the idea of a reason or mind, the ultimate 

 cause of all that is, of the existence of which even the course 

 of physical nature affords no slight presumption. Thence 

 we rise to the conception of a higher order than the physical, 

 an order which the whole course of the visible universe is 

 intended to subserve. This order is the moral order, an order 

 which can only have reference to intelligent and thinking 

 beings such as man. But this order has reference almost 

 entirely to conduct, and must be administered under the 

 influence of purpose, that purpose being presumably the 

 idtimate perfection and happiness of the rational beings who 

 live under the dominion of moral law. Moreover, on scientific 

 principles alone ^ve are entitled to claim that the existence 

 of forces outside the visible order has been actually demon- 

 strated. The human will is a force of this kind. It most 

 demonstrably exercises power over nature,* and it is an 

 intrusion into the realm of nature of a force which, if 

 not supernatural, is certainly cvtranatnYoi, the law or laws 

 of which no scientific observer has been able to discover. 

 Life is another such force, the source of which is utterly 

 unknown, and the laws of its action only very partially 

 discovered. That will is a force not natural simply, but 

 largely moral, i.e., that it has to do with questions of right 

 and wrong, is a scientific fact which cannot be disputed. 

 That life is largely influenced by conduct, and is therefore a 

 force belonging at least to some extent to the moral order, is 

 another undeniable fact. Thus the intrusion of extranatural 

 forces into the realm of nature is no mere hypothesis. It is 

 simple, demonstrable fact, and fact, moreover, of every-day 

 experience. There is therefore the strongest probability, 

 amounting to practical certainty, that if there be an ultimate 

 cause of all that is, and if He have subordinated physical laAvs 

 to moral principles, there will be, whenever His purposes may 

 seem to need it, modifications of the ordinary results of 

 physical forces, brought about in precisely the same way as 

 man's Avill brings about such modifications. 



* Since writing my pajier, I have read our President's Gifford Lectures 

 on Natural Theology. I select from them some most valuable confir- 

 mations of my argument. " I feel I have the option of moving my hand 

 to the right or to the left ... of course I may wish to do a thing 

 which I have not the power to do, but that is a different matter alto- 

 gether. . . . Such an inability does not in the least militate against 

 our consciousness of free will. We cannot deny to man's Maker this 

 power which man himself possesses" (p. 23). 



