We know also that this compliance extends to the alteration, within certain limits, of the current of events on earth. With this suggestion offered by our experience, it is no departure from scientific method to place behind natural phenomena a universal Father, who in answer to the prayers of his children alters the currents of phenomena. Thus far theology and science go hand in hand. The conception of an ether, for example, trembling with the waves of light, is suggested by the ordinary phenomena of wave-motion in water and in air; and in like manner the conception of personal volition in nature is suggested by the ordinary action of man upon earth. I therefore urge no _impossibilities_, though you constantly charge me with doing so. I do not even urge inconsistency, but, on the contrary, frankly admit that you have as good a right to place your conception at the root of phenomena as I have to place mine."[482] If this concession is made in good faith, and really means any thing at all, it covers the whole ground. It is neither unscientific nor irrational to place behind natural phenomena a universal Father who alters the current of phenomena in answer to prayer. But this is not the conception which Dr. Tyndall places behind the phenomena of nature. His conception is that of a _permanent force_, which is "under the circumstances _necessary_," producing "an unerring order which in our experience knows no exception." This brings us to the third and last question. 3. How can the scientific conception of the _force_ which is manifested in the phenomena of nature be brought into harmony with the idea of _God_ as revealed in the religious consciousness? We are now in the very heart of what we have characterized as the debatable ground which lies between science and religion, where questions are mooted concerning the relation between God and nature. On the one side we have the facts of external sensible experience--the _statical_ phenomena of nature as mass, extension, position, and distance--conditions essential to the action or manifestation of force; then the _dynamical_ phenomena of nature as rotatory, vibratory, pulsatory, gyratory, and transitive motion, which to our reason, not to our senses, are manifestations of force. Science observes the uniformity of relations among these phenomena--uniformities of resemblance, co-existence, and succession, and calls these uniformities _laws of nature_. This is all that science can do, all that men of exact science claim to be able to do.