86 The Course of Nature, [January, 
of cases we can clearly see the effedt to have been produced 
by the adtion of natural causes, and in the second we cannot. 
This distinction, depending as it does upon the extent of our 
knowledge, cannot be regarded as a logical one. Yet, in so 
far as a belief in that class of final causes which we have 
been considering exists at the present day, I see no other 
definition of the limits within which these causes are sup- 
posed to adt. Let us take an illustration from the plague 
now desolating our southern cities. No one would believe 
that under any circumstances any superior power would 
build a yellow fever hospital and supply it with the best 
medicines. If we should say that the prayers of the whole 
nation for the immediate eredlion of such buildings would 
have no effedf whatever, we should not be accused of un- 
belief or irreverence in any quater, for everyone would fully 
agree with us. But there are great numbers of people who 
believe that, if the whole nation should pray for frost, frost 
might be sent in answer to prayer when it would not have 
come otherwise. And to many who do not share this belief, 
the denial of any possibility of an influence of this kind 
would seem to savour much more strongly of unbelief, 
irreligion, or irreverence, than the denial that Providence 
would build a hospital without human hands. And yet, if 
the scientific philosophy he corredt, the providential pro- 
duction of frost would be as miraculous and as incredible as 
the providential eredtion of a hospital in a single night 
without human hands. The temperature of the air, and the 
amount of moisture, it shall have in any given place, a day, 
or month, or year from the present time, is as completely fixed 
by the present state of things, and by the laws of evapor- 
ation, condensation, and motion of gases, as is the position 
of the heavenly bodies. The first deposition of frost will be 
determined by forces now at play, and any deviation from 
the inevitable adtion would be a miracle of the same kind 
as pieces of timber hewing themselves into shape, and put- 
ting themselves together, untouched by man. Please notice 
that this similarity between the two states of things is 
entirely independent of any philosophical theory of natural 
causes. All we claim is that the laws which determine the 
motion of the air, the formation of clouds, the fall of rain, 
and the deposition of frost, are, with respedt to their 
certainty of adlion, of the same class with those which 
determine the position, the movements, and the cohesion of 
a stick of timber. If you claim that both classes of causes 
are the adfs of the Creator, we have nothing to say against 
it; all we say is that you must interpret his adts in the 
