(_a_) Lower forces and laws in nature are frequently counteracted and transcended by the higher (as mechanical forces and laws by chemical, and chemical by vital), while yet the lower forces and laws are not suspended or annihilated, but are merged in the higher, and made to assist in accomplishing purposes to which they are altogether unequal when left to themselves. By nature we mean nature in the proper sense—not “everything that is not God,” but “everything that is not God or made in the image of God”; see Hopkins, Outline Study of Man, 258, 259. Man’s will does not belong to nature, but is above nature. On the transcending of lower forces by higher, see Murphy, Habit and Intelligence, 1:88. James Robertson, Early Religion of Israel, 23—“Is it impossible that there should be unique things in the world? Is it scientific to assert that there are not?” Ladd, Philosophy of Knowledge, 406—“Why does not the projecting part of the coping-stone fall, in obedience to the law of gravitation, from the top of yonder building? Because, as physics declares, the forces of cohesion, acting under quite different laws, thwart and oppose for the time being the law of gravitation.... But now, after a frosty night, the coping-stone actually breaks off and tumbles to the ground; for that unique law which makes water forcibly expand at 32° Fahrenheit has contradicted the laws of cohesion and has restored to the law of gravitation its temporarily suspended rights over this mass of matter.” Gore, Incarnation, 48—“Evolution views nature as a progressive order in which there are new departures, fresh levels won, phenomena unknown before. When organic life appeared, the future did not resemble the past. So when man came. Christ is a new nature—the creative Word made flesh. It is to be expected that, as new nature, he will exhibit new phenomena. New vital energy will radiate from him, controlling the material forces. Miracles are the proper accompaniments of his person.” We may add that, as Christ is the immanent God, he is present in nature while at the same time he is above nature, and he whose steady will is the essence of all natural law can transcend all past exertions of that will. The infinite One is not a being of endless monotony. William Elder, Ideas from Nature, 156—“God is not bound hopelessly to his process, like Ixion to his wheel.” (_b_) The human will acts upon its physical organism, and so upon nature, and produces results which nature left to herself never could accomplish, while yet no law of nature is suspended or violated. Gravitation still operates upon the axe, even while man holds it at the surface of the water—for the axe still has weight (_cf._ 2 K. 6:5-7).