When he formed it, he foresaw every possible event that would result from its operation to the end of the world. He saw distinctly the condition of every individual of the human family, from the beginning to the close of life; all his dangers and trials, his sufferings and his sins; and he knew just when and where every prayer would be offered up. Nor can it be any more doubtful that, with infinite wisdom to guide him, and infinite power to execute his will, God could so have arranged and constituted the laws of nature, as to meet exactly every case that should ever occur, just in the way he would wish to have it met. Those laws might have been so framed and disposed that, after running on in one unvarying course for ages, a new one might come in, or the old ones be modified, and at once produce effects quite different, and then the first laws resume again their usual course. And the new or modified law might be made to produce its extraordinary or peculiar effects just at the moment when some miracle or special providence would be needed. Thus what would be to us a special or miraculous interposition of divine power, might be the foreseen and foreordained result of God's original purpose. And if we can conceive how such an effect could be produced once, we cannot doubt that infinite wisdom and power could in like manner meet every possible case in which what we call special and miraculous providence would be needed. With our limited powers, we are obliged, after constructing a complicated machine, to put it into operation before we can judge certainly of its effects; and then, if our wishes are not met, we must alter the parts, or in some other way meet the new cases that occur; and hence we find it difficult to conceive how it can be otherwise with God. But he saw the operation of the vast machine of the universe just as clearly at the beginning as at any subsequent period. He, therefore, can do at the beginning what we can do only after experience, viz., adapt the parts to every variety of circumstances.