But now let us understand what is meant by a law of nature. Naturally, and indeed unavoidably, we employ such terms as order, constitution, arrangement, when we attempt to describe the world, the cosmos, the universe. And when we are pressed to explain what is implied in these terms we fall back upon a single term—Law. Law is the underlying and unifying principle. It is by conformity with law that a settled order is rendered possible.
1. Taken in the strictest sense of the word, the principle of law is this—that the same system of antecedents ‘will always, and everywhere, be followed by the same consequent. Expressed in more popular language, it declares that the same cause is always and everywhere followed by the same effect. The change of time or place, if it leave the antecedents unchanged, leaves the consequent unchanged also. This is the principle of law in its strictest sense.
A law of nature, then, is an assertion that, as far as experience goes, certain facts always have followed certain other facts, and that our experience is so great as to justify us in inferring that the sequence will always continue. To the facts that have invariably preceded we give the name of causes; to those that have invariably followed we give the name of effects. We sometimes talk loosely, as though one set of facts explained or created another. Finding also that this invariable sequence is apparently, in many cases, not to be disturbed by human efforts, and that, in such cases, when it comes into collision with human will, it constrains obedience, we give to this sequence the name of Necessity. The name is but a name. It merely represents a personification of the unpleasing side of invariability. Nor can we strictly say that causes produce or explain effects. What we call the causes teach us when to expect and how to bring about what we call the effects; but there is no creation or explanation. A stone unsupported in the air falls to the ground: explain that. Why does it fall? It may be replied that its fall is explained by the law of gravitation, which asserts that every particle of matter attracts every other particle.
But what is this law of gravitation except a reassertion of the original fact, viz., that the stone moves to the earth, including, besides, an assertion of many other similar facts which have led us to leap beyond our facts to a general assertion of invariability? For all purposes of explaining the stone’s fall, to talk about the law of gravitation is as useless as it would be to try to explain the death of a man by saying that all animate beings are mortal. We cannot fully explain, in the strictest sense of the word, any part of any process in the universe. All that we can do is, when we find an unusually vast gap between effect and cause, to fill up the gap by bringing to light unnoticed links of phenomena, themselves both effects and causes; thus we complete the chain to our satisfaction by assimilating the sequence of cause and effect to those ordinary sequences of nature which we call natural because we are accustomed to them. And when we have done all we can, we can say no more than this, that the sequence now resembles our ordinary experience of sequences. But as for the ultimate cause or creating source of any action, that gap has never yet been filled up, nor has any explanation been given of it. The sceptic must fall back upon the unknown and unknowable; the Atheist must say, “It is, because it is”; the theist, “It is, because God wills”. Upon the will of God, then, we must say, if we believe in a God, depends every part of every invariable process in the universe.
2. Accordingly, when we speak of a law of nature the question is: Are we thinking of some self-sustained invisible force, of which we can give no account except that here it is a matter of experience? Or do we mean by a law of nature only a principle which, as our observation shows us, appears to govern particular actions of the Almighty Agent who made and who upholds the universe? If the former, let us frankly admit that we have not merely fettered God’s freedom; we have, alas! ceased to believe in Him. For such self-sustained force is either self-originating, in which case there is no Being in existence who has made all that constituted this universe; or otherwise, having derived its first impact from the creative will of God, this force has subsequently escaped altogether from His control, so that it now fetters His liberty; and, in this case, there is no Being in existence who is almighty, in the sense of being really Master of this universe. If, however, we mean by law the observed regularity with which God works in nature as in grace, then in our contact with law we are dealing, not with a brutal, unintelligent, unconquerable force, but with the free will of an intelligent and moral Artist, who works, in His perfect freedom, with sustained and beautiful symmetry. Where is the absurdity of asking Him to hold His hand, or to hasten His work? He to whom we pray may be trusted to grant or to refuse a prayer, as may seem best to the highest wisdom and the truest love. And if He grant it, He is not without resources, even although we should have asked Him to suspend what we call a natural law. Can He not then provide for the freedom of His action without violating its order? Can He not supersede a lower rule of working by the intervention of a higher? If He really works at all; if something that is neither moral nor intelligent has not usurped His throne, it is certain that “the thing that is done upon earth He doeth it Himself,” and that it is therefore as consistent with reason as with reverence to treat Him as being a free Agent, who is not really tied and bound by the intellectual abstractions with which finite intellects would fain destroy the freedom of His action.
God is a person, and we cannot think of Him as less, it is absurd to suppose that He is unaffected or uninfluenced by our petitions. This at once disposes of the purely subjective doctrine of prayer, and the objection raised on the ground of a fixed and unalterable order. There can be no personal relation without reciprocal action, and it is useless to argue that God is untouched or unmoved by the supplications of those to whom He is related by the bonds of love and mutual affection. To say that God can only act in harmony with His own law and in accordance with His own mode of action is to deny the freedom that we ourselves possess to the great Personality of which we are the faint and imperfect copies. It is to raise abstract law and order above God Himself, and to place Him under a lower category of thought than His own being. It is not to honour God to think of Him as working His will through all obstacles, regardless of and indifferent to the disposition and the co-operation of His creatures, driven by resistless laws, and incapable of intervention in the order that He has once established. On the other hand, the power of self-limitation and the disposition to determine His own action in accord with the choice of the free beings that He has created argues for the greatness of the love that stoops to ask for loving service and co-operation. [Note: J. G. James, The PrayerLife, 73]
3. Does the introduction of God violate the law? It is no violation of the principle of law to assert that the introduction of a volition into one of two identical conditions of the human body determines a totally different result. There is a movement in the one case; there is none in the other; but the principle of law remains inviolate. So, too, it is no violation of the principle of law to suppose that the introduction of a Divine volition into one of two identical systems of antecedents should determine a wholly different consequent; and it is this, and nothing else, that is asserted by the doctrine of the efficacy of prayer. It is not asserted that, as a result of prayer, a different consequent follows from the same system of antecedents; but it is asserted that, as a result of prayer, a new antecedent appears, and that thus the consequent is changed. Whether this is really so is another question, but it certainly may be so without any violation of the principle of law.
If we see in the responsible agent back of all the workings of nature God Himself, then what are these various modes of action which are so regular and so immutable, and which we call Law, but expressions of God’s own will? Law is the expression of God’s will. It is the way God decides that force shall act upon matter. In itself it has no existence; it is simply our name for expressing God’s mode of working. It is the way God does things. The only thing science can say is, certain effects follow certain causes because they do: the Christian says they do because God provides for their so doing. In other words, “the thing that is done upon earth he doeth it himself”. Since this is true, where is the folly of asking God to control the forces of either the natural or spiritual world for the benefit of His trusting, praying children? Surely God would leave room for the freedom of His will without necessarily violating the order He established. More than this, who will dare say that God cannot, if He choose, without disaster, modify, suspend, or even change what we call a law? But to answer prayer no such heroic measures are necessary. Every result which even man produces is brought about by the combination and adjustment of forces existent about him. Science has proven beyond a shadow of doubt that every force in the world is wholly inoperative unless certain conditions are fulfilled, and that when these conditions are fulfilled that force begins to work its wonders. Shall the creature be privileged thus to utilize the forces which he found here at his coming and the like prerogative be denied the Creator who brought them into existence? Has man any good reason for believing that his will is more closely linked with these things than is the will of God? [Note: W. E. Biederwolf, How Can God Answer Prayer? 93.]
