The Religion of Geology and Its Connected Sciences

by Edward Hitchcock

In several examples recorded in the Bible, both of deliverance for the virtuous and of punishment for the wicked, so many natural agencies are concerned, that we are left in doubt whether the events are to be regarded as miraculous or not. Let the deluge, the destruction of Sodom, and the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea, serve as examples. In the first, we find the flood imputed to a forty days’ rain and the overflowing of the ocean; and its reduction to a wind. In the destruction of the cities of the plain, the phenomena described correspond very well with the effects of volcanic agency; and we find accordingly that the region where those cities stood shows marks of that agency. In the passage of the Red Sea, the removal of the waters, to allow the Israelites to pass, is imputed to a strong east wind all night. Nevertheless, the pillar of a cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night were a manifest and standing miracle in this transaction.

Now, may it not be that, in all these cases, so far as natural agencies were concerned, they were made to conspire with the miraculous in the manner which I have described, viz., by such a modification of some of the remote causes by which they were brought into action, as exactly to answer the divine purpose in the catastrophe of the deluge, of Sodom, and in the passage of the Red Sea?

A third mode by which the purposes of special providence can be brought about without miracles is by such an adjustment of the direct and lateral influences on which events depend, that the time and manner of their occurrence shall exactly meet every exigency.

Although it expresses a truth to represent the second causes of events as constituting the links of a chain, it is not the whole truth. For, in fact, those causes are connected together in the form of a network, or, more exactly still, by a sphere filled with interlocked meshes; or, to speak more mathematically, the forces by which events are produced are both direct and indirect. It would be easy to calculate the effect of a single direct force; but if, in its progress, it meets with a multitude of oblique impulses, striking it at every possible angle, what human mathematics can make out the final resultant? Yet, in fact, such is the history of almost every event. The lateral influences, which meet and modify the direct force, are so numerous, and unexpected often, that men are amazed at the result, sometimes as unexpected as a miracle. “When an individual,” says Isaac Taylor, “receives an answer to his prayer, the interposition may be made, not in the line which he himself is describing, but in one of those which are to meet him on his path; and at a point, therefore, where, even though the visible constancy of nature should be violated, yet, as being at the time beyond the sphere of his observation, it is a violation not visible to him.” “And herein is especially manifested the perfection of divine wisdom, that the most surprising conjunctions of events are brought about by the simplest means, and in a manner that is perfectly in harmony with the ordinary course of human affairs. This is, in fact, the great miracle of providence, that no miracles are needed to accomplish its purposes.”—Nat. History of Enthusiasm, p. 128.

This complication of causes does not merely give variety to the works and operations of nature, but it enables God to produce effects which could never have resulted from each law acting singly; nor is there a scarcely conceivable limit to these modifications. Indeed, in this way can Providence accomplish all his beneficent purposes, and meet every individual case, just as infinite wisdom would have it met. “By this agency,” says M’Cosh, “God can at one time increase, and at another time lessen, or completely nullify, the spontaneous efforts of the fixed properties of matter. Now he can make the most powerful agents in nature—such as wind, fire, and disease—coincide and cooperate to produce effects of such a tremendous magnitude as none of them separately could accomplish; and again, he can arrest their influence by counteracting agencies, or, rather, by making them counteract each other. He can, for instance, by a concurrence of natural laws, bring a person, who is in the enjoyment of health at present, to the very borders of death, an hour or an instant hence; and he can, by a like means, suddenly restore the same or another individual to health, after he has been on the very verge of the grave. By the confluence of two or more streams, he can bring agencies of tremendous potency to bear upon the production of a given effect, such as a war, a pestilence, or a revolution; and, on the other hand, by drawing aside the stream into another channel, he can arrest, at any given instant, the awful effects that would otherwise follow from these agencies, and save an individual, a family, or a nation, from the evils which seem ready to burst upon them.

“Guided by these principles and guarded by sound sense, the inquiring mind will discover many and wonderful designed connections between the various events of divine providence. Read in the spirit of faith, striking coincidences will every where manifest themselves. What singular unions of two streams at the proper place to help on the exertions of the great and good! What curious intersections of cords to catch the wicked as in a net, when they are prowling as wild beasts! By strange but most apposite correspondences, human strength, when set against the will of God, is made to waste away under God’s indignation burning against it, as, in heathen story, Meleager wasted away as the stick burned which his mother held in the fire.”—Method of the Divine Government, pp. 176, 203.

In many cases, the lateral streams of influence that flow in and bring unexpected relief to the pious man, and unexpected punishment to the wicked, or a marked answer to prayer, seem to the individuals little short of miraculous. Yet, after all, they can see no violation of the natural order of cause and effect. But the wonder is, how the modifying influence should come in just at the right moment. It may, indeed, have received a commission to do this very thing from the immediate impulse of Jehovah; yet, being unperceived by us, it is no miracle. Or the whole plan may have been so arranged at the beginning that its development will meet every case of special providence exactly. Which of these views may be most accordant with truth, may admit of discussion. Yet we think that all the modes that have been pointed out, by which miraculous and special providences are brought about, may be referred to one general proposition, which we now proceed to state.

In the fourth place, the plan of the universe in the divine mind, at the beginning, must have embraced every case of miracles and of special providence.

From the nature of the divine attributes we infer with certainty that every event occurring in the universe must have entered into the original plan of creation in the mind of God. Surely no one will deny that he must have foreseen the operation of every law which he established, and, consequently, every event which it would produce. But there must be some ground for foreknowledge to rest upon; otherwise it is conjecture, not knowledge. And what could that basis be but the divine plan?

Equally clear is it that, whatever plans existed in the mind of God, when he brought the universe into existence, must always have been there. For to suppose that there was a point of duration when the plan was first conceived, would imply new knowledge in one confessedly omniscient; and that destroys the idea of omniscience.