we have of the constitution of our own minds, which requires us to trace
up every change among material objects to _the energy and will of a
person_ capable of planning and effecting the change. To refer us to the
law of gravity is not to give us a cause for the motions of the heavenly
bodies, but only a _name_; for law is only _a rule of action_. We demand
a lawgiver--an agent--a _force_, capable of producing effects. When the
law of projectiles makes a cannon-ball, and projects it, we will believe
that the law of gravity made the worlds, and moves them.

"Descending within the mind's interior chambers, I find no conviction so
sure of the existence of an external world, as is my belief in the
reality of _power_--of something that sustains succession, and causes
order. Again, then, whence this idea, and what is it? What this
attribute with which I endow material laws, and raise them into
_forces_? Now, in my apprehension, the strictest scrutiny can not obtain
for these inquiries any reply save one; we _primarily_ connect the idea
of _power_ with no change or movement, except an act or determination of
the FREE WILL; but from such acts, that idea is inseparable. If,
therefore, in order to explain the progress of material things, we
require the agency of _efficient causes_, is not this a direct and
solemn recognition--through all form and transiency--of the necessity of
an _ever-present creative power_; a power requisite and necessary to
uphold--to renew the universe every moment--or, rather, to prolong
creation by the persistence of the creative act? And, in very truth,
startling though it be, such is the only and ultimate scientific idea of
the divine omnipresence. Law is not even the Almighty's minister; the
order of the material world, however close and firm, is not merely the
Almighty's ordinance. The _forces_, if so we name them, which express
that order, are not powers which he has evolved from the silences, and
to whose guardianship he has committed all things, so that he himself
might repose. No! above, below, around, _there_ is God; there his
universal presence, speaking to finite creatures, in finite forms, a
language which only the living heart can understand. In the rain and
sunshine; in the soft zephyrs; in the cloud, the torrent, and the
thunder; in the bursting blossom, and the fading branch; in the
revolving season, and the rolling star; there is the infinite essence,
and the mystic development of HIS WILL