550 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



effect this. Yet, this same objector, Mr. Tyndall, acknowledges, at another place 

 and time, that "it is no departure from scientific method to place behind natural 

 phenomena a universal Father, who in answer to the prayers of his children alters 

 the current of phenomena." Again, we are told every effect must have a cause, 

 and if the prayer of individuals could modify or change these causes, it would 

 destroy the uniform workings of Nature's laws, and then they would cease to be 

 laws. "The course of nature is deaf to prayer and entreaty." 



Such objections are based upon a short-sighted view of the question. We 

 have already admitted that uniformity is the order of nature and cheerfully add, 

 in the language of another, that " the regular order of nature is the house we live 

 in. It could not be disturbed by frequent miracles and be fit for the training of 

 rational beings." It is never thus disturbed without a sufficient cause. And, if 

 we seek a reason for such modification, we find it in the fact of man's free agency 

 and sin. As sin, a supernatural cause, has produced derangement and deformi- 

 ty in nature, miracles, also supernatural, are needed to undo its evil conse- 

 quences. As supernatural violations of the laws of health have brought disease 

 upon the human body, the remedies of a physician, also supernatural, are essen- 

 tial to a restoration of the system to its normal operations under Nature's laws. 



I have often seen an engineer start and stop his engine at irregular intervals, 

 cause it to move rapidly or slowly, to continue in motion for a long or for a short 

 time, to go backward or forward, at the will of another who was appointed to 

 direct his movements ; yet the engineer not once violated the law according to 

 which the engine operated. One can do this who knows but little about the 

 method of constructing the engine whose workings he modifies at will. And is 

 it not strictly in harmony with the highest reason to suppose that He who formed, 

 in minutest detail, the mechanism of nature, and upholds all things by the word 

 of his power, can and does modify the movements of this complicated machinery 

 at the confiding request of those whom he has commanded to pray and whose 

 prayers he has promised to hear and answer ? True, every event must have its 

 cause, and this direct cause is the effect of some more remote cause, and so on, 

 infinitely beyond the reach of human reason. The final, or first cause, of every 

 '.phenomenon is God working through this long chain of cause and effect. Prayer 

 ■effects a change at the first link, or staple, through God himself, and thus, a cor- 

 responding change through the entire chain ; therefore all is in accordance with 

 the laws of nature. 



Man can by his own acts interfere with the harmonious workings of nature. 

 He can cause rain by conflagration or cannonading or, more slowly, by the plant- 

 ing of trees. He can and does, by his interference with nature, modify the rigor 

 of the climate and increase or diminish the fertility of the soil. He is constantly 

 overpowering the force of gravitation. He can modify at will the chemical forces 

 and also those of heat, light, and electricity. He can act in numberless ways on 

 the chain of cause and effect from without, producing new results by new com- 

 binations of nature's laws ; yet he does not destroy or render ineffective these 

 laws. And not only can he induce disease or health in the animal system by 



