6. It is consistent with natural law that created minds should affect the inertia of certain forms of matter directly. 7. It is not inconsistent with natural law that Divine mind should affect the inertia of other forms of matter directly. * * * * * The bearing of these conclusions upon prayer, in so far as it affects physical conditions, may now be briefly shown. It has been argued that, in the light of modern discovery, prayer ought to be restricted to spiritual objects, and that at all events it can have none but spiritual effects. It has for example been asserted that to pray for fine weather, for bodily health, for removal of any plague, for averting of any corporeal danger is asking God to change the laws of Nature for our benefit, that this is what He never does, what would produce endless confusion if He should, and consequently what He certainly will not do. But if in point of fact God can confer on us all these gifts which we ask from Him without breaking a single law by which Nature is bound, we are restored to the older confidence that He will, provided that such gifts are at the same time consonant with our spiritual good. Now as it has been shown that God can affect matter to the full extent for which we ever petition by means of Nature's own laws, set in operation by no other agency than the mere communication of motion to matter, it has been shown that He will break no law in giving what we ask. For example, what is fine weather? It is the result of the due motion of the winds, which bear the clouds on their bosom, and carry the warmth of equatorial sunshine to the colder north. It is still as true as eighteen hundred years ago, "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and ye hear the sound thereof, but cannot tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth." But if it be no breach of law to give motion to the air, it is in God's power to bring us favourable winds. But the winds we wish are not necessarily moved immediately by God's breath. They depend probably on certain electric repulsions, which make the colder or the warmer current come closer to the surface of the earth. And electricity is motion. It may be directly, it may be indirectly, through electricity; it may be by some cause still further back, that God sends forth the winds; but, if He can give motion, He can direct their currents, and by such agency give to His creatures the weather best suited for their wants.