or
interfered with; they are necessary, immutable, and eternal, not
subordinate to God, but independent of Him; they are, in short, nothing
less than Destiny or Fate, the same that Cudworth describes as the
Democritic, Physiological, or Atheistic Fate, which consists in "the
material necessity of all things without a God."[78] Now, we have no
jealousy of natural laws. We believe in their existence; we believe,
also, in their regular operation in the ordinary course of Nature; but
we deny that they must needs be _independent_ of a supreme will, and
affirm that, being subordinate to that will, they are not necessarily
_invariable_. They are expressly recognized and cordially maintained by
divines, not less than by men of science; but in such a sense as to be
perfectly compatible both with the doctrine of a primitive creation, and
also with the possibility of a subsequent miraculous interposition. The
Westminster Divines explicitly declare that "God, the First Cause, by
His providence, ordereth all things to fall out _according to the nature
of second causes_, either necessarily, freely, or contingently;" and
that "in His ordinary providence, He maketh use of means, but is free to
act without, above, and against them at His pleasure."[79] But M. Comte
will have no laws, however regular, unless they be also invariable, and
independent of any superior will. And, doubtless, if this were the sense
in which Science has established the doctrine of natural laws, it would
be at direct variance with Theology, both Natural and Revealed; and the
antagonism between the two might afford some ground for the belief that,
sooner or later, Theology must quit the field. But it is not the
existence of these natural laws, nor even their regular operation in the
common course of Providence, that is hostile to our religious
beliefs,--it is only the supposition that they are unoriginated,
independent, and invariable; and to assume this without proof, as if it
were a self-evident or axiomatic truth, or to apply it in a process of
historical deduction respecting either the past development or the
future prospects of the race, is such a shameless begging of the whole
question,--that we know of no parallel to it except in the kindred
speculations of Strauss, who assumes the same radical principle, and
gravely tells us that whatever is supernatural must needs be
unhistorical.[80]

There is absolutely no evidence, properly historical, that there is an