Why should not he, who taught his disciples that God numbered the very hairs of their heads, do what his Father is constantly doing--still storms--bring peace out of uproar? Of course, if the storm was stilled, it came about by natural causes--that is, by such as could still a storm. That anything should be done by unnatural causes, that is, causes not of the nature of the things concerned, is absurd. The sole question is whether Nature works alone, as some speculators think, or whether there is a soul in her, namely, an intent;--whether these things are the result of thought, or whether they spring from a dead heart; unconscious, yet productive of conscious beings, to think, yea, speculate eagerly concerning a conscious harmony hinted at in their broken music and conscious discord; beings who, although thus born of unthinking matter, invent the notion of an all lovely, perfect, self-denying being, whose thought gives form to matter, life to nature, and thought to man--subjecting himself for their sakes to the troubles their waywardness has brought upon them, that they too may at length behold a final good--may see the Holy face to face--think his thoughts and will his wisdom! That things should go by a law which does not recognize the loftiest in him, a man feels to be a mockery of him. There lies little more satisfaction in such a condition of things than if the whole were the fortuitous result of ever conflicting, never combining forces. Wherever individual and various necessity, choice, and prayer, come in, there must be the present God, able and ready to fit circumstances to the varying need of the thinking, willing being he has created. Machinery will not do here--perfect as it may be. That God might make a world to go on with absolute physical perfection to all eternity, I could easily believe; but where the gain?--nay, where the fitness, if he would train thinking beings to his own freedom? For such he must be ever present, ever have room to order things for their growth and change and discipline and enlightenment. The present living idea informing the cosmos, is nobler than all forsaken perfection--nobler, as a living man is nobler than an automaton.