3d. This sensible order is always stable and permanent in itself and in its objective state, but in its application to particular bodies is subject to variation when this variation is demanded by a superior order, or by the universal order of the cosmos.
The reader will observe, after what we have said, how futile is the argument of rationalists that a miracle is impossible because the laws of bodies are immutable. Certainly, if the laws exist in the bodies. But the laws of bodies, as we have said, are nothing more than the order marked out in the mind of God, according to which he acts in and directs them, and, this order being universal and objective, is never changed or altered. Only its application in particular bodies on a particular occasion is not made, or made in a contrary sense, because such is the requirement of the universal order. If this be kept in view, every difficulty will vanish in reference to this matter; for this is exactly that which prevents rationalists, from understanding the possibility of miracles—their want of perception that it is God who acts in every single body. They imagine a general principle, as if it were self-existing, which pervades all the bodies, which ought to be destroyed to permit the exception. Now, this is a mere phantom. It is God, we repeat it, who applies the order marked in his mind in every single body, which in his mind only is universal and objectively immutable, but subjectively, in its application, it need not be constant, except so long as no exception is required. Our natural philosophers of the rationalistic school imagine the law of bodies to be a sort of demigod, stern and immutable, particularly loth of and averse to being disturbed, and consequently cannot see the possibility of a miracle.
The second truth which follows from the attributes of the supernatural moment, is that prayer governs the universe.
Prayer, taken in its strictest acceptation, is the universal mode of action of spirits elevated to the supernatural moment. To understand this rightly, it is necessary to observe that every moment of the action of God, considered in its term, is possessed of a particular mode of action resulting from and befitting its essence and attributes. Thus, substantial creation, or the whole aggregate of being included in this moment, acts as it were by apprehension and volition. In spiritual beings, this manner of acting is strictly and properly so; in inferior beings, like the brutes, it is less so, but bears a great resemblance to it, for the animal has apprehensive faculties, though wanting in the power of generalization and abstraction, and confined within the concrete and in the individual; and he has also instincts and tendencies leading toward the object apprehended. The vegetable kingdom acts according to the same manner, though more materially; for it apprehends the elements required for its growth from the earth and the atmosphere, and, assimilating them to itself by an interior force, is able to develop itself. Every one is aware that the general laws of matter are those of attraction and repulsion, which bear a resemblance, though a faint one, to the law of apprehension and volition.
Now, the particular mode of acting in persons elevated to the supernatural moment is by prayer, which is composed of various elements according to various relations under which it is considered.
It may be considered in itself, its essence and nature, and in the persons to whom it has reference. The persons are the infinite and the finite. In itself, prayer is divided into two moments—a deprecatory moment, and a life-giving moment.
A deprecatory moment—because the effect of the prayer, resting absolutely on the free will of the infinite, cannot be claimed by the finite as a right, but as an effect of an infinite, goodness yielding to a supplication; and in this sense it implies the following elements on the part of the finite:
1st. An acknowledgment, theoretical and practical, of the infinite as being the absolute and universal source of all good; and of the absolute dependence of the finite upon the infinite in all things; this acknowledgment arising in the finite from the consciousness and feeling of its finiteness both in the natural and the supernatural order.
2d. A gravitation, natural and supernatural, on the part of this finite toward the infinite, as the origin and the preserver of the being in both orders, as the mover of its natural and supernatural faculties, and as the final complement of both.