could speak of the power
which the heathen worshipped as the "Prince of the powers of the air,"
and it is also evidenced by the abundant notions of this kind which have
survived from the Middle Ages among the more ignorant part of the people
even in lands called Christian.

While, however, the Bible affirms the atmosphere to be subject to law,
it does not carry this into the domain of physical necessity, and
affirm with some modern materialistic philosophers that it is useless
to pray for rain. It is God who gives rain from heaven and fruitful
seasons, and what he gives he can withhold. Perhaps no part of our
subject can better than this illustrate the rational distinction
between a mere physical fatalism, or a mere superstitious fear of
capricious nature, and that belief in a divine Lawgiver which lies
between these extremes. Modern science may smile at the poor Indian,
who in his fear invokes Hurakon or Tlaloc or the terrible
Thunder-bird, and may even despise that nobler worship of the great
Phoenician Sun-god, the source and fountain of all light and life;
against which, though it was the grandest of all the old idolatries,
Elijah waged war to the death. But may it not equally deride the faith
of Elijah himself, when, after three years of drought, he prayed in
the sight of assembled Israel for rain? It may do so if physical law
amounts to an invariable necessity, and if there is no supreme Will
behind it. But if natural laws are the expression of the divine will,
if these laws are multiform and complicated in their relations, and
regulate vastly varied causes interacting with each other, and if the
action and welfare of man come within the scope of these laws, then
there is nothing irrational in the supposition that God, without any
capricious or miraculous intervention, may have so correlated the
myriad adjustments of his creation as that, while it is his usual rule
that rain falls alike on the evil and on the good, he may make its
descent at particular times and places to depend on the needs and
requests of his own children. In truth the belief in law is essential
to the philosophical conception of prayer. If the universe were a mere
chaos of chances, or if it were a result of absolute necessity, there
would be no place for intelligent prayer; but if it is under the
control of a Lawgiver, wise and merciful, not a mere manager of
material machinery, but a true Father of all, then we can go to such
a being with ou