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Does such infatuation come of the general law, which makes all anxiety embarrassing, and guilt especially blinding; or does it signify the special caie of an Almighty Gt)vemor that this or that man should be punished? We see the links of general causation more clearly in cases where our actions or prayers tend to realise themselves. Thus even small armies, when fervently devout as well as patriotic, have often vanquished disproportionate numbers ; and it is difficult for even any human force to conquer them. But does this in- domitableness come of a special blessing of Heaven upon the cause, or is it the offspring of men's minds, kindled by common prayer and exhortation, and having confidence in their cause and in each other? We seem at least in such cases to trace a general instrumentality by which faith removes mountains, or turns to flight the armies of aliens •. Yet I know not if we do not more readily conceive of the Divine forethought as guiding events, when they involve the destiny of nations. Thus when Spain, in her time of greatness, would have crushed the free faith of England, and the threatening Armada was shattered by storms, our own nation was not afraid to say, that *God had breathed, and His enemies had been scattered ;' for the occasion seemed worthy of a Divine interposition. So, if in a shipwreck * Hebrews xi. 31 — 34, where the sacred writer speaks of Faith in its most general or ideal sense. We destroy all his argument if we suppose him thinking of doctrinal details, or the partioulHTS of Christianity. 460 GENERAL OR SPECIAL PROVIDENCE. is an Apostle*, who has yet to cany the news of spiritual free- dom to many nations, we more easily believe that his life and that of his companions may be given him by the Ruler of sea and land. Yet it is difficult to say that anything human could be great in the sight of the Infinite God, if His goodwill did not make it so; and the same goodwill might magnify what concerns the least of us. It seems fanciful when we are told, in confla- grations, that the flames have halted at the sacred threshold of some church ; for if such respect for local sanctity came of law and thought, it would be regular ; but since it is exceptional, it seems to be fortuitous. Yet if a life, as of a child, is spared by some strange concurrence of things, as in sheltering for instance under two transverse beams in the downfall of a house, we hesitate to ascribe the escape to chance, for it seems not without thought and goodness. But again, if we say, everything good in the world comes of special arrangement by a supreme Governor, there are many terrible casualties of fire, and shipwreck, and pestilence, in which prayer goes up from hopeless agony, and which neither wit of man nor malice of devil can have devised, yet which we shrink from ascribing in each instance to the special ficA of a Divine Will. It seems to us more pious to believe, that such sorrows could not consistently with the large extent of our Maker's dealings and the fixity of His laws be prevented, and that while they themselves may be rendered tolerable by patience, the capacities which make them possible will be greatly overruled for good. There is a shortcoming, or a sinfulness, on part of all creatures, which leaves them no right of complaining that they are placed generally in a scheme ad- mitting of drawbacks ; yet there is a complicated fortuitousness in the happening of evils, which warns us not to think them indexes to any sentence of God. " Thus there seems to be a certain margin of chance, or of what comes to the same result, a complication which is the in- evitable accompaniment of fixed law ; and we seem intended to • Acta xxvii. GENERAL OR SPECIAL PROVIDENCE. 461 bring onrselves by free agency within tbe range of the currents and the sweep of the tides of Divine Providence, rather than to expect their course will be divested for our convenience. Many accidents of life and death happen, which men dispute whether they shall explain by the general operation of law, or trace in them a special design. All intellectual reasoning leads them to magnify general law; and they find laws in operation, which seem to embrace all things. But the feelings again, and the devouter instincts are thought to lead us back to a more special view, as if the Deity must regard each person and thing. The first view seems the wiser, the second the more devout. The first enlarges the domain of human action, and awakens the sense of duty; the second speaks more of resignation, and of gratitude for gifts. The first may go so far as to be in danger of forgetting Grod ; the second may pay Him unwise honour by neglecting our part in His scheme. That unblest activity which might seem akin to an atheistic philosophy, is the extreme ex- pression of one ; and the apathetic torpor which aims at no good, and remedies no evil, is the exaggeration of the other. Thus wholesome inventions in common life have often been frowned upon, and faquirs or saints both in the East and the West have thought it wrong to remove vermin from their bodies ; for do not such things, they say, and all mischievous agencies, as well as calamitous events, come of the Divine Will ? These, however, are wild extremes. But, amongst sober persons, there is an apt^ ness to look more, either on the idea of general law in the world, or on the possibility of special commands. Whichever is the inclination of a man's mind as he notices the signs of Providence in common things, will probably re-appear in his judgment of sacred revelation. If he finds the religion in some respects tem- porary, or the knowledge which accompanied it imperfect, he may ascribe this shortcoming to a general law, which made a certain view natural in given circumstances, or he may believe it to have been positively imposed for a time by some Divine utterance, and again as positively revoked. In the one case, Revelation 462 ANALOGY OF REVELATION. will seem a growth and an unveiling, in proportion as men coTild attain or see with fitness ; in the other case, it will be a succession of external oracles, with no steps of inherent con- nexion, and perhaps with no harmony, except from without. Thus, if we have rightly supposed that the religion of India has varied in different ages, and if such steps as polytheism, slaughter of men or horses, and then a higher conception of the Divine imity, with bloodless sacrifices, are found to have followed on each other, one interpretation of such changes would be, that an overruling Providence had thus trained men through rude awe, and thought, and thankftdness, into truer perceptions of religion ; while another view would be, that the Deity had by oracle re- vealed each of these stages, and then again annulled it. So again, if the * white-complexioned A'ryas ' overran India, their conquest of the aboriginal Dasyus will by some be thought a natural result of their higher intelligence, yet not therefore a thing without mission or duty ; while to others it may seem a direct response to the prayers for victory, which are recorded in the Rig- Veda. So that our answer to many questions about the theory of religion will depend somewhat on our conception of Divine Providence in the world at large. Are we, for ex- ample, to say that it proceeds by general law, or by firequent and special interferences? " I will try to answer this question, by asking if the two views may not be in a way reconciled? The more we know of nature, the more undeniable it becomes, that the forethought of the Deity proceeds by law on the grandest scale ; and that need of firequent meddling (or revocation as it were of orders), which we think a sign of infirmity in man, is least of all traceable in any work of the Highest Wisdom. Known unto Ood^ says an Apostle, are all His works from the heginnmg of the world. But this extension of the sphere of order in no way tells against the fullest consciousness in our Creator's mind of the operation of His own laws as regards the minutest thing. We have argued sufficiently, above, that the law in the creation is the thought of GENERAL LAW AND SPECIAL REGARD. 463 the Creator. But it would be strange, if by extending the sphere of thought we were to narrow the consciousness of the thinker. Without our heavenly Father, said our Master Christ, not a sparrow falls to the ground.