ironment, the victims of a merciless determinism,
and death would be the inevitable result of the violation of the
slightest physical or physiological law. But we are all given power to
live above environment, and a beneficent healing power is constantly
intervening to save us from the consequences of our errors, healing our
wounds and curing our diseases, in this giving us an object lesson of
the forgiveness of sin and a promise of our ultimate conquest over all
its power. We are all ineluctably bound about by countless chains of
second causes, "awful with inevitable fates," until we see through them
all the close providential working of our Creator, who is also our
Saviour, and who is in no way shackled by His own laws, but conducts all
things according to the counsel of His own will.

The Bible teaches us of a Creation as a definite act, completed at a
definite period in the past, and it gives us the Sabbath as the divine
memorial of this _completed_ Creation. We have seen how science also
points backward along the various diverging lines of the great
perspective of the ages to the vanishing point whence they all begin,
the birth-day of the world; and we say that thus science confirms the
Bible record of Creation. But we also know that when Christ was being
examined by the Sanhedrin for healing on the Sabbath, He defended
Himself by saying, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." That is,
although "the works were finished from the foundation of the world," and
second causes are now largely operative in nature all around us, still
there is everywhere manifest an active energy, a presence, an
Intelligence, "in Whom we live, and move, and have our being."

That we cannot comprehend all this, that we cannot set definite
boundaries to these seemingly conflicting views, is not at all
surprising; for we are but finite.[55] Even His universe partakes so much
of His prerogative of infinity that it is utterly beyond the compass of
our finite minds. Indeed, if either the Bible or the book of nature
contained nothing beyond what we could easily comprehend, would it not
diminish our reverence and awe for the One behind them, Whom we now
regard as infinite in power and in wisdom?

True, the natural human heart cannot bear this thought of the direct
acting throughout nature of the infinite Creator. It brings us too close
beneath His gaze in our sinful shortcoming and nakedness.

[Footnote 55: A recent clever writer likens some