202 THE LIGHT OF DAT 



that his food ever nourished him in any other way 

 than it does now, that offspring were ever begotten 

 by any other method, or that the relations of men to 

 each other were ever essentially any different from 

 the present ? If God is not a constant and invariable 

 power he is nothing. Does gravity intermit ? Are 

 not the celestial bodies always on time ? Are not life 

 and death and generation always subject to the same 

 laws ? The moral and religious nature of man rises 

 and sinks ; he seems more conscious of God and of 

 divine things in some period of history than in others, 

 in some races than in others, but this is a fluctuation 

 doubtless governed by natural causes, if we could 

 penetrate them, and is not the result of any change 

 of plan or purpose of the Eternal. God walked and 

 talked with men in the patriarchal days, because men 

 interpreted their own thoughts, dreams, desires, mo- 

 tions, as the voice of God. We define and differen- 

 tiate things more nowadays, though probably the old 

 prophets were strictly correct, for is not man himself 

 a manifestation of God ? With the devout and re- 

 ligious habit of mind comes the boldness to ascribe 

 all our thoughts and promptings and happenings to 

 God. It is the not-ourselves that rules and controls 

 us and in which we live and move and have our 

 being, and whether we call it God or by any other 

 name the fact remains the same. The religious 

 mind gives it one name, the scientific mind another ; 

 the former makes it personal and sustains a personal 

 relation to it, the other makes it impersonal and 

 names it law or force. Indeed, the dispute between 



