Before the days of the guillotine in France, when the criminal to be executed sat in a chair and was decapitated by one blow of the sharp sword, an observer declared that the blood spouted up several feet into the air. Yet this great force is exerted by the heart so noiselessly that we are for the most part unconscious of it. The power at work is the power of God, and we call that exercise of power by the name of preservation. Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 130—“We do not get bread because God instituted certain laws of growing wheat or of baking dough, he leaving these laws to run of themselves. But God, personally present in the wheat, makes it grow, and in the dough turns it into bread. He does not make gravitation or cohesion, but these are phases of his present action. Spirit is the reality, matter and law are the modes of its expression. So in redemption it is not by the working of some perfect plan that God saves. He is the immanent God, and all of his benefits are but phases of his person and immediate influence.” II. Proof of the Doctrine of Preservation. 1. From Scripture. In a number of Scripture passages, preservation is expressly distinguished from creation. Though God rested from his work of creation and established an order of natural forces, a special and continuous divine activity is declared to be put forth in the upholding of the universe and its powers. This divine activity, moreover, is declared to be the activity of Christ; as he is the mediating agent in creation, so he is the mediating agent in preservation.