"We should blush," says Bishop Warburton, "to be thought so uninstructed in the nature of _prayer_, as to fancy that it can work any temporary change in the dispositions of the Deity, who is 'the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.' Yet we are not ashamed to maintain that God, _in the chain of causes and effects_, which not only sustains each system, but connects them all with one another, hath so wonderfully contrived, that the temporary endeavors of pious men shall procure good and avert evil, by means of that 'preestablished harmony' which He hath willed to exist between _moral actions_ and _natural events_." "But should some frigid skeptic, therefore, dare To doubt the all-prevailing power of prayer; As if 'twere ours, with impious zeal, to try To shake the purposes of Deity; Pause, cold philosopher, nor snatch away The last, the best, the wretched's surest stay. Look round on life, and trace its checkered plan, The griefs, the joys, the hopes, the fears of man; Tell me, if each deliverance, each success, Each transient golden dream of happiness, Each palm that genius in the race acquires, Each thrilling rapture virtuous pride inspires, Tell me, if each and all were not combined In the great purpose of the Eternal Mind? * * * * * Thus while we humbly own the vast decree, Formed in the bosom of Eternity, And know all secondary causes tend Each to contribute to one mighty end; Yet while these causes firmly fixed remain-- Links quite unbroken in the endless chain, So that could one be snapped, the whole must fail, And wide confusion o'er the world prevail; Why may not our petitions, which arise In humble adoration to the skies, Be foreordained the causes, whence shall flow Our purest pleasures in this vale of woe? Not that they move the purpose that hath stood By time unchanged, immeasurably good, _But that the event and prayer alike may be United objects of the same decree._"[216] On the whole, we feel ourselves warranted, and even constrained, to conclude that the theory of "government by natural law" is defective in so far as it excludes the superintendence and control of God over all the events of human life, and that neither the existence of second causes nor the operation of physical laws should diminish our confidence in the care of Providence and the efficacy of Prayer. FOOTNOTES: [181] CICERO, "De Natura Deorum," lib. I. c. 44. [182] HOWE, "Works," I. 104. CUDWORTH, "Intellectual System," I. 120, 144. [183] M. COMTE, "Cours," VI. 149, 247, 295. SPINOZA, "Tractatus Theol.-politicus," pp. 57, 102, 122, 144, 150, 319. [184] DR. CHANNING, "Memoirs," II. 439. ROBT. BOYLE, "Free Inquiry into the Notion of Nature," p. 7. [185] PROFESSOR SEDGWICK, "Discourse," fifth edition, p. CLIII. MR. COMBE, "Constitution of Man," p. 417.