No Accidents in Nature

Here is another interesting answer to the question below.

Question: " Do you believe that there are no accidents in Nature?" Is everything pre-determined, decreed, and over-ruled to occur just as and where it does? Some persons deny everything of the kind, while others insist that the events of earth, and even of individual life, result from the direct pleasure of God. What is your opinion?"

Answer : It is our present impression that the Universe is intrinsically, vitally, organically unchangeable and orderly throughout. The omnipotent attraction of the central Soul is irresistible, and unto it the humblest as well as the mightiest beings instinctively yield all power and praise.

All ends are involved in all beginnings, and nothing hangs loose over the abyss of uncertainty. The minutest consummation of things is secured by the irrefragible logic of unchangeable laws.

The sublime harmony of the universe is not jeopardized by the presence of unfriendly accidents or by chaotic possibilities. The attributes of the central Soul are illimitable.

They sweep with omnipotent force through the stupendous machinery of this beautiful and harmonious system of Cause and Effect. And the unerring lines and the fixed courses of the interwoven series of mutual dependencies are sufficiently perfect to comprehend and accomplish the least with the greatest ends.

Therefore, although we may believe that slight impulses and trifling contingencies are not decreed or preordained, yet the spiritual philosopher cannot resist the intuition that every event, that each item of earth or life, is provided for in the -workings of the all-comprehensive system.

The most trivial circumstance ever thrown up by the ceaseless waves of Time, is not a stranger—is not an enemy—to the boundless Order, to the progressive development, of the noiselessly rolling universe.

Christian and heathen alike intuitively believe in the all-lovingness, in the all-comprehensiveness, in the all-mightiness of the God of Nature. It is an affair of temperament and of country, whether this Divine Mind is worshiped as a Personality or as a Principle ; and to the true believer in the immutability of Truth, the form which this worship assumes is of little moment, the only question being, whether the worshipper is emancipated from the horrible doctrine of the ancients, that a portion of mankind is doomed to endless burnings !

With reference to the general question of our correspondent, we would, while protesting to the personification of a principle, quote the words of Akenside:

'' From the wide complex Of co-existent, natures, there shall rise

One Order, all involving and entire;

For He, beholding in the sacred light

Of His essential Reason, all the shapes

Of swift Contingence, all successive ties

Of action propagated through the sum

Of possible existence—He, at once,

Down the long series of eventful time,

So fixed the dates of being, so disposed

To every living soul of every kind

The field of motion and the hour of rest,

That all conspired to His Supreme Design