products of His own wisdom, goodness, and power, and
endowed them with all their various properties for some great and noble
end, will ever cease to care for them, or deem them unworthy of His
regard. Yet, strong as is the proof arising from these and similar
sources, there have occasionally appeared in all ages, and especially at
a certain stage in the progress of philosophical speculation, men who
admitted, and even maintained, the existence of the Supreme Being, while
they denied, nevertheless, the doctrine of Providence and the efficacy
of Prayer.

In certain stages of philosophic inquiry, there is a natural tendency,
we think, or at least a strong temptation, to substitute the laws of
Nature in the place of God, or to conceive of him as somehow removed to
a greater distance from us by means of these laws. Every one must be
conscious, to some extent, of this tendency in his own personal
experience; he must have felt that when he first began to apprehend any
one of the great laws of Nature, and still more when he advanced far
enough to see that every department of the physical world is subject to
them, so as to exhibit a constant order, an all-pervading harmony, his
views of God and Providence became less impressive in proportion as the
domain of "law" was extended, and that he was in imminent danger of
sinking, if not into _theoretical_, at least into _practical_ Atheism.
"It is a fact," says Dr. Channing, "that Science has not made Nature _as
expressive of God_ in the first instance or, to the beginner in
religion, as it was in earlier times. Science reveals a rigid, immutable
_order_; and this to common minds looks much like self-subsistence, and
does not manifest intelligence, which is full of life, variety, and
progressive operation. Men in the days of their ignorance saw an
immediate Divinity accomplishing an immediate purpose, or expressing an
immediate feeling, in every sudden, striking change of Nature, ... and
Nature, thus interpreted, became the sign of a present,
deeply-interested Deity."[184] That the scientific study of Nature, and
especially of certain departments of physical inquiry, has often had the
effect of deadening our sense of a present and presiding Deity, of
obscuring or perplexing our views of the connection of God with His
works, and of virtually removing Him from all efficient control over the
creatures of His hands, is attested, not only by the published
speculations of some, but also by