To illustrate this principle, let us imagine a few examples. Suppose the land visited by drought, and its pious inhabitants assemble to pray for rain. We know very well that the causes on which a storm of rain depend are very complicated. How easy for the divine Being, in answer to those prayers, to modify one or more of these secret agencies of meteorological change, that are concealed from our sight, so as to bring together the vapors over the land and condense them into rain! And yet that storm shall have nothing about it unusual, and it results from the same laws which we have before seen to be in operation. Still, it may have been the result of a special agency exerted by Jehovah in answer to prayer, yet in such a manner that no known law of nature is infringed upon, or even rendered more powerful in its action. Equally intricate and complicated are the causes of disease, and especially of those pestilences that sometimes march over a whole continent, with the angel of death in their train; and alike easy is it for God, in answer to earnest prayer, to avert their progress, or to cripple their power, or turn them aside from a particular district, without the least interference with the visible connection of cause and effect. The beloved father of a family lies upon a bed of sickness, and disease is fast gaining upon the powers of life. His numerous and desolate family, in spite of the cold suggestion that it will be of no avail, will earnestly beseech the Being in whose hands is the power of disease, to arrest the fatal malady. And could not their Father in heaven, in the way I have pointed out, give them their request, and yet their parent's recovery be the natural result of careful nursing and medical skill? imposing, however, upon that family as great an obligation as if a manifest miracle had been wrought to save him. The widow's only son, in spite of her counsels and entreaties, becomes a vagabond upon the seas, and, at length, one of the crew of the battle ship. The perils of the deep and of vicious companions are enough to make that widow a daily and most earnest suppliant at the mercy-seat of her heavenly Father, for his protection and salvation. But, at length, war breaks out, and the perils of battle render his fate more doubtful. Still, faith in God buoys up her heart, and she cannot abandon the hope of yet seeing her son returned, reformed, and becoming a useful man. And at length, rescued from the storm and shipwreck, and the carnage of battle, and the yet more dangerous snares of sin, that youth returns, a renovated man, and cheers that mother's setting sun by an eminently useful life. Now, all this may have happened simply by the operation of natural laws. But it may also have been the result of divine interference in answer to prayer; and hard will you find it to convince that rejoicing mother that the hand of God's extraordinary providence was not in it.