One of these objections is the one just brought to notice,--that of its extreme absurdity and practical impossibility. It does not require a great mind, but only a reflecting one, to see that no rational conception of the Supreme Being could render it practicable for one mind, however boundless in knowledge and infinite in power, to be so divided as to look after the interest of each individual of a countless number, scattered over a world of more than a hundred and seventy-five thousand millions of miles in extent. A scientific investigation of the operations of nature has settled the conviction in every scientific mind that the life, actions, and destiny of every human being are under the control of fixed and immutable laws, which need only to be studied and observed to guard him effectually from personal accidents, and those physical disasters to which he often falls a victim through ignorance of the proper means of avoiding them. It is now patent to all critical observers that the serious disasters and numerous causes of physical suffering to which the larger portion of the human family were so frequently subjected in past ages, have largely diminished, and are constantly decreasing as the march of science dispels the ignorance of the people,--such as the sinking of ships, attributable to imperfect mechanical construction; pestilential diseases, caused by the general ignorance of the causes of and means of preventing; the explosion of steam-boilers on rivers, railroads, &c. And, from the present rates of improvement in these respects, we may reasonably calculate that the time is not far in the future when such disasters will be unknown. Then we will have no need of "special providence" to save the people from the fatal consequences of their ignorance. The conviction seems now to be generally established in the public mind, that when a boat is wrecked, or a locomotive strays from the track, and a few persons escape with their lives from the general wreck and ruin, it is to be ascribed to the interposition of the hand of Providence. But common sense would suggest, that, if Providence had any thing to do with it, he should have commenced a little sooner, and put some more brains or common sense into the heads of the managers of these cargoes of human beings, or kept the whiskey out of their stomachs till they reached their point of destination. In the thousands of cases annually reported of Providence interposing his aid to save some reckless mariners, or some heedless passengers on a pleasure-boat, from a watery grave, or rescuing a few persons from the wreck of a railroad bridge, or some similar calamity, the disasters might all have been avoided by Providence simply acting upon the wisdom of the proverb, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." It would be considered an act of criminal neglect on the part of a father who could stand by and see his children, from ignorance of