And now speculative philosophy steps in and endeavors to reduce these concepts of science and religion to an ultimate unity. It endeavors to construe in thought the nature of that relation between the force manifested in nature and the moral Ruler revealed in conscience. Therefore it asks the questions, What is force? What is life? What is mind?
If we say that force is as inherent and essential to matter as extension and inertia are, and that life and mind are but modes of force, we are on the high-road to mechanical Deism, if not material Atheism. If we say that matter is itself only a function of force, and that force is the ultimate of all ultimates, then the distinction between finite existence and the infinite Being is a merely verbal distinction, and we must yield to the seductions of Pantheism, which under this aspect of it is but another name for Atheism. But if we say that Spirit is the originator and matter the recipient of force, or "the recipient of impulse and energy," and that the immanent God is the life of all nature, we are pure Theists. We have now a "workable theory" by which we can satisfactorily interpret the universe.
This, however, is not the conception of Dr. Tyndall. The power which he sees in nature is a force which is inherent and essential to matter, and "in that matter he sees the promise and the potency of all terrestrial life," but not of all life, for "religion is life." The Power which is revealed as the object of the "religious emotions" is a Power which works for "righteousness," and is "intelligent" as well as "ethical." This Power he seems to regard as distinct from the force which produces the necessary phenomena of nature. But whence does he obtain this conception of force? He writes as though he had seen force, or cognized force, by some one of the senses. We claim that force is "a subtile mental conception, and not a sensuous perception or phenomenon;"[483] it is a metaphysical idea, "a postulate of reason applied to nature." We venture the assertion that the physicist has not the remotest conception of force except as a datum of consciousness. The senses give us only phenomena. All we perceive is motion, change, succession. "All we know or see is the effect; we do not see force."[484] So say all physicists as well as all metaphysicians. "Experiences of force are not derived from any thing else,... and the force by which we ourselves produce changes, and which serves to symbolize the cause of changes in general, is the final disclosure of all analysis."[485] Whenever, therefore, Dr. Tyndall attempts to account for motion and change in external nature by assuming the existence of invisible, imponderable forces, he is interpreting nature in terms of consciousness—we mean that consciousness of personal causation which we have when we put forth effort with an intention thereby to accomplish an end. Force is known to us by immediate consciousness as a function of our own mind—that is, mind acting in will is conscious of itself as a force. We are able to conceive of force in no other way. "Force dissociated from personality and will must be forever incomprehensible by us, because it would be something contradictory to our consciousness."[486] If we may not regard will-force as "the type of all the force in nature," then the physicist knows nothing about it, does not know there is any force, and the only consistent course is to unite with Comte in eradicating the word from the vocabulary of science.
In the only case in which we are admitted into any immediate personal knowledge of the origin of force, we find it connected with volition, with will, with motion, with intellect, and with all the attributes of mind in which personality consists.[487] We must, therefore, conclude that all force is mind-force, is spirit-force, and that the forces which animate nature are spiritual. Either the force manifested in the universe is the force of a self-existent and self-determining Intelligent Will, or we can form no conception of it whatever.
When we have once arrived at the conception of force as an expression of will, which we derive from our experience of its production, "the universal and constantly sustaining agency of the Deity is recognized in every phenomenon of the universe."[488] "The laws of nature are the laws which God in his wisdom prescribes to his own acts. His universal presence is the necessary condition of any course of events. His universal agency the only origin of all efficient force."[489] The persistence of force is the permanence of the Divine agency, and the deepest ground of our faith in the uniformity and changelessness of natural laws is the immutability of God.
We come, then, at last, to this, that the Power which is manifested in nature is the God who is revealed in consciousness, and that He is at once a God of power, of righteousness, and of love. In prayer, the intelligent believer does not invoke a different Power from that which is manifested in all the forms of physical energy which were manifested in nature; he does but invoke the same Power and the only Power which is the source of all causation and produces all the processions of phenomena.
The perpetual immanence and ceaseless action of God in nature is the source of all force and all law. There is no force and no law besides and apart from this. All our conceptions of necessity and uniformity, of special providence and miracle, are merely relative conceptions which result from our imperfect vision. These are all swallowed up and lost in the Divine Immensity. God is Power. God is Law. God is Love. Love is the motive, Law is the method, and Power is the hand manifested in all the changes of the universe. "The devout feel that wherever God's hand is, there is miracle; and it is simply an undevoutness which imagines that only where miracle is can there be the hand of God."
Let us say with Goethe, "Nature is the living garment of God," which at once reveals and conceals his mysterious splendors. In our days of darkness and sorrow and danger there are vouchsafed to us clearer gleamings of the Creative Spirit through the veil of nature in answer to prayer. These we may call "special providences," and even "miracles," if we please, but let us not fall into the error of supposing that we have seen more of God than in the budding of the leaf or the blooming of the flower in the time of spring. "There are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all."[490]