seen the necessity that the spiritual life do put itself forth and actively lay hold on the environing God. Only thus can it be at once sustained and, at the same time, changed into the likeness of God.

But now, the further question arises, may the spiritual life be certain that on the part of this environing God there shall be toward it personal mindfulness, guidance, culture. Shall its prayer bring actually from God the precise help needed? Shall its necessity of discipline or delight call forth from the environing God personal and precise attention and supply? Is the relation between the spiritual life and the environing God general merely, like that of the leaf to the tides of atmosphere pushed past it by the Summer breezes; or, is that relation personal and particular, like that of the father to the child, appointing special culture for special development, special medicine for special sickness, special defense for special danger, special strength for special burden.

This is a very great question, and notwithstanding the constant insistance of the Bible upon just this specializing and particular relation between the spiritual life and the environing God, perhaps more at this point than at any other, a subtle but real skepticism strikes its chill to the vitals of a joyful certainty.

The great reason for this skepticism in these days, doubtless, is just this disclosure to men of the vast, unvarying, atom-grasping empire of natural law.

Also, the too common conception of a chasm incommunicable between the natural world and the spiritual world has had to do with it. If law is so vast and real and regnant, and then, besides, if there are two sets of laws, the one for the natural and the other for the spiritual world, how, in the first place, can there be any chance and room for such particular relation between man and God, and how, in the next place, can there be any other than a constant clash between the laws of the natural and the laws of the spiritual?

But this conception of natural law in the spiritual world removes at once all this objection of clash and disarrangement between the laws of the two worlds. There are not different laws for the two worlds; there are the same laws for both. The law that keeps the natural world in order is the law which keeps the spiritual world in order-the only difference being that, in the higher and spiritual, the law touches something higher than that which subsists in the lower and natural. That life can only come from life is as much a law for the spiritual world as it is for the natural; that life can only be sustained and modified by environment is a law for the spiritual world as it is for the natural. And so as well for other laws. sets of clashing and contradictory laws. and spiritual the same laws swoop down the natural. So that, in order to the operations of a particular Providence there is no necessity of any clash between varying sets of laws.

There are not two From the higher upon and control

And then, further, the objection that a particular providence can find no room for operation amid a rigid network of invariable law is met by the fact that while the law for laws is continuity, there is also another law for lawsnamely, domination by and manipulation toward special ends by higher laws.

Gravitation is a law for the realm inorganic as well as for the realm organic. But in the organic the vital law of growth so dominates the law which pulls every thing to the earth's surface, that the tree rises from the earth's surface, and yet is in all its parts held to the earth's surface by the law of gravitation. There is no fracture of the law of gravitation. That continuously acts and is also continuously dominated.

So, in the world of mind natural laws are dominated and used to special ends. They are not broken. They are dominated and used. And the ends are åttainable because they can be dominated and used. Mind comes down upon natural laws and specializes them to the locomotive, the tele

graph, the spectroscope.

But neither in the locomotive nor

the telegraph nor the spectroscope can you discover the slightest fracture of the laws of steam or electricity or light. The locomotive, the telegraph, the spectroscope were immediately impossible were there the slightest fracture of natural law.

Now this law of domination and use of lower law by higher is a natural law for all worlds. Vitality dominates gravitation in the organic world. Mind dominates physical law in the natural world, and dominates and uses all law in the spiritual world. God does not break laws. He, possessing infinite intelligence, will, love, power; he, the infinite person, dominates and uses law toward particular ends. And thus the environing God can move forth for the particular help, guidance, discipline, culture of the spiritual man, and not deny himself by the rude breaking of any law of any sort of his ordaining.

It is a scientific fact that the hairs of our heads can all be numbered. It is scientific fact that to any prayer along the courses of not broken, but of divinely manipulated, law the exact answer can come from the environing, personal God. "I spoke as I saw,

I report, as a man may of God's work,
All's love, yet all's law."

ARTICLE V.

THE MORAL ELEMENT IN PROVIDENCE.

BY HENRY M. KING, D. D.

THE topic chosen for consideration in this article is so broad that our examination of it must necessarily be partial and incomplete, and is so difficult and has to do with problems so intricate that the questions remaining unanswered will probably outnumber those which we shall be able to answer. Yet it is a topic which is forever thrusting itself upon our notice, and demanding consideration. Believing, as we do, that Providence is "the divine superintendence over all created beings and things," we are often unable to discover God's purposes, or the wisdom and righteousness of his ways. "Clouds and darkness are round about him.” "Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known." We look upon the face of a watch, and we see the hands move and the hour marked, but we see nothing of the internal mechanism, the complication of spring and wheel interlocking with wheel, whereby the external movement of the hands is produced, and they indicate to us the rapid flight of time. In like manner we often look only upon the face of God's movements. We see results produced, but we see nothing of the methods by which they are accomplished, nor are we able to read distinctly the divine purposes. The watch is shut, and sometimes our light is so feeble and the figures seem so dimly printed, that our gaze results only in painful perplexity and uncertainty.

Any just idea of God implies a moral Governor; that is, a Being who holds this world which he has made, still in his control, whose power is still felt in it, sustaining, over

seeing, governing both it and its creatures, who can not be separated from it, from its laws, its events, its inhabitants. This truth, which is so distinctly and emphatically taught in the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is theoretically one of the most reasonable of all truths, and commends itself to every man's conscience. The idea that God has made the world and set it flying through space, unnoticed and uncared for, and that he has peopled it with intelligent, moral beings, capable of knowing and loving him forever, and is utterly unmindful of their life and destiny, seems too irrational to be long indulged. Another has said: "Whoever believes in the existence of a personal God as the Creator of all things naturally, if not necessarily, believes the doctrine of his providence, understanding thereby that God continues the exercise of his power in the management, guidance, and control of the system which he originally made. No matter how he does it, whether through the medium of what are called the laws of nature, which are really nothing but his appointments, or rather divine methods of action, or by transcending those laws, the reality of his providence is alike a doctrine of reason and revelation. Nothing to human thought can be more absurd than the absolute self-regulation of an absolutely dependent system. The God who made it must be its ruler. Having admitted his existence and creatorship, we naturally proceed to his providence."

The fact of providence and its extent, whether it is general or particular, have, indeed, been matters of considerable discussion; but to most minds an all-inclusive superintendence of the world and its forces, of man and his affairs, has been a doctrine as well established as the existence of God, and a necessitated consequence from it. "Providence," says Fleming, "is a word which leads us to think of conservation and superintending, or upholding and governing. Whatever is created can have no necessary nor independent existence; the same power which called it into being must continue to uphold it in being, and if the