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immutable laws. Now that seems to me to be the very gist of the whole 
paper. I do not go into the question of the evidence or the proof of the 
thing ; but the object of the paper is of that healthy character to show in its 
moral bearings a rational and logical basis for believing that it is possible for 
immutable laws to exist, and yet for God to have a mental purpose subserving 
them and at the same time governing them to carry out limited designs in 
full concurrence with those immutable laws. I think the paper states this 
well, where Mr. Henslow says it is unprofitable to explain the way in which 
the Deity has brought about the modes in question, but that the recognition 
of their possibility is very important, and that though it may appear impossible 
to materialists and atheists, the fact itself may be a logical necessity. Now 
I fully concur in that, and as philosophers we should strive to show that it is 
possible to believe in the concurrence of those two things. May I be allowed 
by way of supplement to this paper, or as an illustration, to give you from 
mathematics, what has struck me as an interesting piece of evidence on this 
subject. There is a certain curve called the hyperbola, and a line drawn in a 
certain direction approaching it is called the asymptote, and the property of 
that curve is that, when continued indefinitely, it shall always be drawing 
nearer to the line but yet it shall never touch it. You may say it is 
impossible, and that the two lines must meet if they are carried far enough, 
and must intersect each other. Yet the two lines will go on for ever, always 
approaching each other, but never coming in contact. Now it strikes me 
that that is an illustration which is exactly to the point. It is conceivable to 
my mind that there may be an immutable law expressed by the curve, and 
God’s designs expressed by the line, and that they may be going on together 
almost parallel ; and though you would say “ they must intersect each other 
somewhere,” yet each may remain intact. I put this forward merely as an 
illustration of an interesting point brought out by the paper. In the second 
part of the paper, Mr. Henslow speaks of accidental or chance circumstances 
in reference to God’s government of the world under physical laws, or where 
those laws pass into God’s moral government of the world. I am willing to 
allow, and indeed we must all allow, that there may be such things as chance 
circumstances. If by any chance this tumbler were too near my hand, and 
fell down and was broken, we should say that that was chance. It would be 
pushing the doctrine of Providence to an absurdity to say that God ordained 
everything, down to the smallest and most trivial of occurrences. (Hear, hear.) 
But while I admit that, I do think that we ought to distinguish between the 
possibility of it and the universality of it ; there are many things in the history 
of the world which I believe are not the result of chance or accident, and we 
must look this fairly in the face in relation to the question of prayer, which 
forms the subject of the last portion of the paper. As I understand it, the 
full discovery of the working of God’s moral government belongs to a higher 
sphere of thought — of more recondite and subtle thought — than the working 
of His physical laws, and it is utterly impossible for the mind of man 
thoroughly to penetrate it. In his best state, and when he is in possession 
of the profoundest genius, he must acknowledge that he is but an ignorant 
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