eration of
unvarying law.

To the adoption of the former a priesthood will always incline, since
it must desire to be considered as standing between the prayer of the
votary and the providential act. Its importance is magnified by the
power it claims of determining what that act shall be. In the pre
Christian (Roman) religion, the grand office of the priesthood was the
discovery of future events by oracles, omens, or an inspection of the
entrails of animals, and by the offering of sacrifices to propitiate the
gods. In the later, the Christian times, a higher power was claimed; the
clergy asserting that, by their intercessions, they could regulate the
course of affairs, avert dangers, secure benefits, work miracles, and
even change the order of Nature.

Not without reason, therefore, did they look upon the doctrine of
government by unvarying law with disfavor. It seemed to depreciate
their dignity, to lessen their importance. To them there was something
shocking in a God who cannot be swayed by human entreaty, a cold,
passionless divinity--something frightful in fatalism, destiny.

But the orderly movement of the heavens could not fail in all ages to
make a deep impression on thoughtful observers--the rising and setting
of the sun; the increasing or diminishing light of the day; the waxing
and waning of the moon; the return of the seasons in their proper
courses; the measured march of the wandering planets in the sky--what
are all these, and a thousand such, but manifestations of an orderly and
unchanging procession of events? The faith of early observers in this
interpretation may perhaps have been shaken by the occurrence of such a
phenomenon as an eclipse, a sudden and mysterious breach of the ordinary
course of natural events; but it would be resumed in tenfold strength as
soon as the discovery was made that eclipses themselves recur, and may
be predicted.

Astronomical predictions of all kinds depend upon the admission of this
fact--that there never has been and never will be any intervention in
the operation of natural laws. The scientific philosopher affirms that
the condition of the world at any given moment is the direct result
of its condition in the preceding moment, and the direct cause of its
condition in the subsequent moment. Law and chance are only different
names for mechanical necessity.

About fifty years after the death of Copernicus, John Kepler, a native
of Wurtemberg, who had adopted the heli