226 G. MACLOSKIE, D.SC, KTC, ON COMMON ERRORS 



that the less science you find in things, the more Divinity 

 belongs to them. Some have seemed to think that Provi- 

 dence is less providential, and miracles are less miraculous, 

 if natural causation enters in any degree ; that " all events 

 truly miraculous" are produced '• b\ tlie simple volition of" 

 God without the intervention of any subordinate cause."' 

 We do not pretend to explain miracles as embraced in 

 scientific causation ; but we find in our Bible that winds, 

 rain, hail-stones and floods are employed in the perform- 

 ance of His mighty acts, and that the Bible does not 

 trouble itself to say whether the acts are miraculous or 

 only providential, and never gives a hint of the difference 

 between primary and secondary miracles, which the theo- 

 logian is careful to note. As to matters of Providence, the 

 error appears on opposite sides ; the naturalist is so deeply 

 impressed by natural laws that he says, " Hands ofi"! " to the 

 supernatural ; the Providentialist proves his faith in the divine 

 working by disparaging scientific explanations. Many of our 

 worthy Christians have been grieved to find one part of nature 

 after another rescued from chaos and subjected to natural 

 law ; and to see that every step forward in science involves 

 a mechanical, or more properly physical, explanation : so 

 that now all inorganic nature, and in large measure the 

 organic world, even the actual cronstitution of the human 

 body, are reduced to physical causation. The old doctrine 

 of " vital force " is now superseded ; all the force in plants 

 and animals has come into line with the doctrine of " conser- 

 vation of energy," and life itself has come to be regarded as 

 only a directive immaterial principle, just as in a more 

 exalted sense God is not a force, but the Author and 

 Director of all the forces of the universe. In the organic 

 world the difficulty of applying physical explanations to 

 all the phenomena is very great. Darwin's attempt to 

 apply these was, we think, worthy of commendation, 

 though his success was very partial. Comyilcte success 

 would not, so far as we can see, involve the dethronement 

 of Providence. The more advanced our theory of nature as 

 a physical system, the more firmly established is our convic- 

 tion of its origin from, and continued subjection to, the Avill 

 of God. The investigator who does not see God, and who 

 derives all his stock from human experience of antecedents 

 and consequents, is often unable even to see causation, and 

 S(jmetimes fails to perceive either his own existence or tlie 

 objective existence of the world: all is to liim a pluiiom- 



