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causation belongs only to Him. While mind alone is cause, 
mind everywhere is cause in so far as it is truly mind. The 
immense importance of this truth will be seen when we come, 
as we shall soon do, to apply these principles which we are 
thus working out to the Christian doctrine of prayer. Losing 
sight of the fundamental idea of true will in man as well as 
in God, produces the most disastrous confusion in all that 
relates to a thorough religion, and in no department more than 
in that in which we have to do with supplication. 
We are now prepared for the statement that mind has power 
to move and change that which is material ; and here again 
we repudiate the test of congruity or incongruity with what 
are called “ our natural conceptions/* To one*s <{ natural 
conceptions/* as he chooses to call his mere ordinary notions, 
or habits of thought, it is congruous that matter should rule 
over mind,— to another*s habits of thought it is congruous that 
mind should rule over matter. Such things ought never to be 
intruded as arguments into science of any kind. When acting 
scientifically we look for what is — not for that which may most 
easily be conceived. We endeavour to infer legitimately from 
the field of fact all that may be so inferred. Nor do we look 
vaguely on that field of fact, but take up the individual occur- 
rences, scrutinizing each in turn, and gathering the general 
truth from a comparison of the whole so far as thus scrutinized. 
Say that we are desirous to know the true cause of the great 
tidal waves that sweep over the surface of the ocean. We do 
not look vaguely at that ocean, nor loosely reason by looking 
at individual tides on any particular part of a coast, nor do 
we look even at particular waves that follow each other, making 
by inches or losing by inches on the strand. W e begin with 
a portion perhaps of seawater and experiment till we have a 
somewhat clear idea of its nature. It is fluid — that is, it can 
be made to flow — but is utterly incapable of spontaneous move- 
ment. We then legitimately infer that the ocean is not to have 
the tides ascribed to itself as their cause. We must look for that 
cause elsewhere. If it is not a tide of seawater whose move- 
ments we would explain, but a shoal of fishes coming along 
like a sea of life, and we are desirous to know the immediate 
or efficient cause of their progress, we take the individual fish 
and soon find its capability of spontaneous movement. We 
legitimately infer that this vast shoal is the cause of its own 
movement. We may look for conditions of that movement 
there, or for its “ antecedents ** if you will, but not for its 
cause. We have found that, which in the case of the passive 
fluid of the ocean, we had not found. As we rise in the scale of 
