251. We think it may be concluded from all these passages that the doctrine of a particular providence is taught in the Scriptures. Nevertheless it is one of the hardest things to understand how this doctrine can be made consistent with the working out of general laws which, so far as we can study them, appear to have no reference whatever to individuals. This was a difficulty intensely felt by the late John Stuart Mill. He says, in a work published after his death:— ‘For how stands the fact? That, next to the greatness of these cosmic forces, the quality which most forcibly strikes every one who does not avert his eyes from it is their perfect and absolute recklessness. They go straight to their end without regarding what or whom they crush on the road. Optimists, in their attempts to prove that “whatever is, is right,” are obliged to maintain, not that Nature ever turns one step from her path to avoid trampling us into destruction, but that it would be very unreasonable in us to expect that she should. Pope’s “Shall gravitation cease when you go by?” may be a just rebuke to any one who should be so silly as to expect common human morality from Nature. But if the question were between two men, instead of between a man and a natural phenomenon, that triumphant apostrophe would be thought a rare piece of impudence. A man who should persist in hurling stones or firing cannon when another man “goes by,” and, having killed him, should urge a similar plea in exculpation, would very deservedly be found guilty of murder. In sober truth, nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another are Nature’s every-day performances.’ This objection to belief in the reality of the government of God has been clothed in very eloquent language in a sermon by the Rev. James Martineau:—‘The battle of existence’ (he tells us, putting himself for the moment into the position of Mill and his school) ‘rages through all time and in every field; and its rule is to give no quarter—to despatch the maimed, to overtake the halt, to trip up the blind, and drive the fugitive host over the precipice into the sea.’ In very beautiful language the poet Tennyson, after proposing the same riddle, replies to it thus:— ‘Are God and Nature then at strife That Nature lends such evil dreams? So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life; * * * * * “So careful of the type”? but no. From scarped cliff and quarried stone She cries, A thousand types are gone: I care for nothing: all shall go. * * * * * O life as futile, then, as frail! O for thy voice to soothe and bless! What hope of answer or redress? Behind the veil, behind the veil.’ In another passage of equal beauty the same poet expresses his conviction