It is therefore absolutely chimerical to expect of science the establishment of any miracle whatever.... Miracle, according to the only tenable definition, and this is the ancient and traditional one, is a positive intervention of God in the phenomenal order and at a particular point. Now science knows only second causes. How could it ever seize in the course of these causes the immediate action of the First Cause? Is God a phenomenon that the eye of man can ever perceive in any phenomenal series? And is not this the reason why science despairs of ever proving scientifically the existence of God? It recognises itself to be impotent to step out of the relative, to resolve anything outside space and time, and it has removed from its domain all questions as to origin and aim, because it has no means of reaching them. To perceive God and the action of God in the human soul and in the course of things is the business of the pious heart (Matt. v. 8). The affirmation of piety is essentially different from scientific explanation. It places us in the subjective and moral order of life, which no more depends on the order of science than the scientific order depends on piety. There cannot be conflict between these two orders, because they move on different planes and never meet. Science, which knows its limits, cannot forbid the act of confidence and adoration of piety. Piety, in its turn, conscious of its proper nature, will not encroach on science; its affirmations can neither enrich, impoverish, nor embarrass science, for they bear on different points and answer different ends. My child is ill; I procure for it the best advice and the best remedies; but confiding in God's mercy, I beg of Him to spare me my child, or, in any case, to help me to accept His will. The child recovers. What savant will forbid me to thank my heavenly Father? Will this be because my thanksgiving will be a denial of the science of the physician? Certainly not, for my gratitude will include the fact of the doctor, the medicine, the care bestowed, the whole series of second causes that have contributed to the recovery of my child. Was not this the piety of Jesus when He taught us to pray: "Our Father which art in Heaven: Thy will be done: Give us our daily bread"? Was He ignorant of the fact that in order to have bread we must sow wheat? No; but none the less He asked His food from God, because He knew also that, in the last resort, it is the will of God that makes the substance and the order of things, that it is He who clothes the lilies of the field, feeds the fowls of the air, makes His sun to shine upon the evil and the good, and sends upon the labourer's soil the early and the latter rain.