When we have once arrived at the conception of force as an expression of will, which we derive from our experience of its production, "the universal and constantly sustaining agency of the Deity is recognized in every phenomenon of the universe."[488] "The laws of nature are the laws which God in his wisdom prescribes to his own acts. His universal presence is the necessary condition of any course of events. His universal agency the only origin of all efficient force."[489] The persistence of force is the permanence of the Divine agency, and the deepest ground of our faith in the uniformity and changelessness of natural laws is the immutability of God. We come, then, at last, to this, that the Power which is manifested in nature is the God who is revealed in consciousness, and that He is at once a God of power, of righteousness, and of love. In prayer, the intelligent believer does not invoke a different Power from that which is manifested in all the forms of physical energy which were manifested in nature; he does but invoke the _same_ Power and the _only_ Power which is the source of all causation and produces all the processions of phenomena. The perpetual immanence and ceaseless action of God in nature is the source of all _force_ and all _law_. There is no force and no law besides and apart from this. All our conceptions of necessity and uniformity, of special providence and miracle, are merely relative conceptions which result from our imperfect vision. These are all swallowed up and lost in the Divine Immensity. God is Power. God is Law. God is Love. Love is the motive, Law is the method, and Power is the hand manifested in all the changes of the universe. "The devout feel that wherever God's hand is, _there_ is miracle; and it is simply an undevoutness which imagines that only where miracle is can there be the hand of God." Let us say with Goethe, "Nature is the living garment of God," which at once reveals and conceals his mysterious splendors. In our days of darkness and sorrow and danger there are vouchsafed to us clearer gleamings of the Creative Spirit through the veil of nature in answer to prayer. These we may call "special providences," and even "miracles," if we please, but let us not fall into the error of supposing that we have seen more of God than in the budding of the leaf or the blooming of the flower in the time of spring. "There are diversities of operations, but it is the _same_ God which worketh all in all."[490] CHAPTER X. MORAL GOVERNMENT. I. ITS GROUND.--THE CORRELATION BETWEEN GOD AND MAN. "That they may seek the Lord, and truly feel after Him and find Him, though He is not far from any one of us, for in Him we live and move and are; as certain of your own poets have said, '_For we are his offspring_.'"--ST. PAUL. "Jove's presence fills all space, upholds this ball; All need his aid, his power sustains us all-- For we his offspring are."--ARATUS.