256 
life, this power of self-motion, and through that the power of 
moving and changing merely material objects, becomes more 
and more evident. 
When we consider the extent to which man changes the 
material world from the most gigantic of his works to the most 
minute of his experiments in the laboratory itself, there can be 
no truth more evident than that mind moves and changes 
matter — even that frail mind which constitutes the man. It 
is no drawback to this argument to say that matter resists and 
often overwhelms man, because that proves only that man's 
power to move and change matter is limited. It tells us of a 
measure to the power, but no one will imagine that the measure 
of a thing annihilates the thing itself. Finding that in the 
human, and even in the animal sphere, the living spirit moves 
and changes matter ; and that with man matter is to so great 
an extent at his will as Grove says, we are irresistibly led up 
to the infinitely greater mind in God, at Whose rule its move- 
ments and changes must lie infinitely more fully than they are 
at the will of man. It is not easy to look at a piece of 
matter and say what change man may not make on it. But 
when such is the case with the incalculably inferior mind, who 
shall rationally say what are, and what are not, the possibilities 
of movement and change in matter which lie at the will of the 
Infinite One ? If we trace the history of human discovery as to 
matter, we find ourselves in a region of facts in which we con- 
stantly seem to be about to reach a limit beyond which human 
dominion over matter can go no farther, but the horizon is 
constantly receding. The more we discover the more wide the 
possibilities seem to be of future discovery. Who shall say what 
even man may not yet do, in the way of adapting the material 
universe to himself and to his happiness ? But all that he can 
ever do will be necessarily only an infinitesimal part of what 
that mind can do, to whose originating/ai we are compelled to 
trace the very being of the universe ; and this we are compelled 
to do from the moment when we infer that matter cannot move 
or change, far less create itself. When we have got thus far we 
have made a great step in the philosophy of prayer. We are 
now in that field of control within which He is a free and 
Almighty agent who is requested to act in all cases of true 
prayer for such things as involve material changes. Here, 
however, we only glance at that which will appear more fully 
afterwards. 
It is at this point that we come upon the Very important 
subject of “ natural law.'* When we see clearly that mind is 
efficient cause^ and that all minds are such causes, we occupy 
