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the objects that surround them, as well as in their own 
bodies. 
35. The human will, however, which is not merely influ- 
enced by circumstances, but derives motives from reason, and 
is finally self-determined, and not only uses the energies of 
nature unconsciously, but employs them to fulfil man's own 
purposes, with a knowledge of the laws of their action, yet 
without altering in the least their amount — in other words, in 
perfect conformity with physical laws, — is a proof of the power 
of the will to determine the outcome of physical energies 
which has been often urged, and is of itself abundantly 
conclusive. Sometimes, indeed, the analogy is pressed too 
far, and it is forgotten that the will, the efficacy of which 
throughout the universe we assert, is the will of Him who is 
Eternal as well as Infinite. But those effects of will which we 
every day experience leave no excuse for the argument that 
law excludes will. On the contrary, while we conclude from 
various indications that law without will could not have 
created the universe as it is, we are further assured that since 
that will, from the nature of the case, must be the will of 
Him who is infinite in power and in knowledge, and who fills 
all space and time with His presence; therefore the Divine 
will must be the ruler of law in all its manifold operations, so 
that no single event in heaven or earth can be independent 
of that will;* and although in most of these events the 
operation of law alone may be apparent, and the designs 
of will are concealed, whilst in others, as in those which we 
call miraculous, it is the express pui’pose to exhibit the power 
of the will of God, while the law by which it works may be 
hidden from us ; yet in both classes of events it is equally 
certain that will directs law, and that the Divine will and the 
Divine order are in perfect harmony. 
36. It appears then that neither on the plea of being the 
exponent of reason and the teacher of necessary truth, nor on 
that of establishing some general principle contradictory to 
the supremacy of the Divine will, is physical science at all 
competent to control or interfere with religious belief. The 
conclusion is that we must relegate science to its legitimate 
position as one of the modes of regarding God's universe ; 
one of the utmost value so long as it confines itself to its 
proper sphere, but which, when it claims a supremacy to 
* This argument does not, of course, include that which is a much deeper 
mystery than the relation of Will to Law, — the quostion of the relation of the 
Divine to the human. 
