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pain and anguish, ask for a solution from all? From the 

 patriot who thinks he sees the cause of justice fall for ever when 

 his own blood-stained banner is trampled in the dust, to the 

 workman who, in the bitterness of his heart, says, " If there is 

 a God he is the God of the rich man,^' is there any situation 

 in which from time to time we are not tempted to ask, what is 

 the action of God on the world and on our own life ? If, as I 

 said, Fatalism was the prevalent belief of antiquity, it is in a 

 scarcely less practical sense the faith of our own times. Some 

 adore it blindly, others curse it in useless revolt ; but over all, 

 whether openly avowed or secretly felt, it exercises a sinister 

 and baneful influence. Even when under the sharp stroke of 

 sorrow or the acute sense of injustice, man bends the knee to 

 it, and foolishly repeats the words of Asaph, How doth God 

 know ? is there knowledge in the Most High ? ^' Now to deal 

 with these objections in succession, first as to the sceptic's 

 arguments in favour of necessity to be inferred from the in- 

 flexibility of Nature^s laws. The Christian escapes the difficulty 

 by belief in a living God who is above the laws he has made. 

 True, we see no more miracles ; the physical world in which we 

 live is governed by fixed and unyielding natural laws, which, 

 if we resist, crush us beneath their awful power. 



Why should it not be so? God is a God of order. He has 

 attested more than once that He is Nature's master. But can 

 He be expected to change the mighty order of His works, to 

 interrupt the marvellous concatenation of cause and effect to 

 satisfy Welshes, that, if so easily gratified, would too soon 

 degenerate into caprices ? He could, no doubt, grant each 

 prayer, intervene in every event of life, to punish or to bless. 

 But what result would follow ? All would serve him by self- 

 interest or fear; for punishment or reward would immediately 

 follow each action. There would, in such a dispensation, be no 

 place for love, and God would neither be served by mercenaries 

 nor slaves; He wills that man, as a moral agent, should walk 

 by faith, not by sight. He hides Himself from sight, to reveal 

 Himself to faith. Sight shows us those general laws according 

 to which His sun rises on just and on unjust alike, the laws by 

 which Nature pursues her changeless course ; but faith unveils 

 to us, amid this general connection of cause and eflPect, the 

 delicate operation of His all-watchful care in the existence of 

 each individual, by which He knows all our thoughts, and by 

 which no sigh of ours is hid from Him. Judging by sight, all 

 is fated and predestined, or the result of chance, — the same 

 accidents, the same griefs happen to all alike; but judging by 

 faith, there is in each existence a plan, by virtue of which all 

 that seems accidental and fortuitous, irremediably fixed, serves 



