95 
and complexion that it will be advisable to consider them, with 
their respective answers, quite apart. 
The first form of the objection, then, avowedly ignores 
all considerations of Theology whatever, and deals with the 
matter on purely naturalistic and physical grounds. Scientific 
investigation it is said, plainly shows that every department of 
Nature is under the control of laws the most exact and inex- 
orable, and, so far as our knowledge can reach, has ever been 
and must ever be so. The whole course of Nature is a chain 
oi antecedents and consequents bound together by a necessary 
and absolutely certain connection, entirely beyond the reach of 
interruption or alteration ; every event that happens in Nature 
is the inevitable result of the laws and properties of matter and 
rorce, which can neither be violated, modified, or suspended • 
and beyond these laws and properties Nature knows no other 
rule; they are alone and supreme. To assert, therefore, that an 
event, or series of events, occurred which are contrary to this 
uniformity, which are not the result of these laws and pro- 
perties, but opposed to them and incompatible with them, is 
abs aS d Grfc the ° CCUrrence of an im P°ssibility, and is simply 
The. answer to this form of the objection is commonly a 
reducho ad absurdum. Plainly and on the surface it denies the 
existence of God; that is, of a personal Being ruling Nature 
possessed of a proper spiritual existence, unlimited supremacy, 
and will. It involves, therefore, either atheism or, which 'is 
the same thing in other words, materialistic pantheism. And 
its consequent absurdity may thus be easily demonstrated. But 
further; it is said, push the argument home, and it involves 
also the denial of all spiritual existence whatever. It is certain 
that man has the power of modifying at his will the course of 
external Nature, causing things to happen which would not 
have happened but for his influence and interference. If, then, 
the principle be sound that every event in Nature is the result 
solely and absolutely of physical laws and causes, it follows 
manifestly that this will of man is itself also but a physical 
cause ; that its apparent freedom is purely delusive, it being in 
reality as rigidly and passively the subject of law as any other 
cause ; that, in fact, he has no more real intelligence or inde- 
pendence than a calculating machine or an automaton. From 
this barren and repulsive materialistic fatalism most objectors 
may be expected to shrink instinctively ; and, of course, the 
admission once made, that there are spiritual existences inde- 
pendent of physical law, yet capable of influencing Nature, and 
the argument for the impossibility of miracles from their in- 
volving such non-physical agency falls to the ground. 
