Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/376

 358 PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING

associate a large measure of variability, irregularity and incalculability of procedure with personality; and when we discover that a series of phenomena recurs according to a fixed and invariable sequence, we attribute it to the agency of non-personal forces.

But it is not alone the perception of the universal prev alence of law which makes this tendency so strong. So far as the regularity and uniformity of natural phenomena are concerned, it is possible to interpret them as the expressions of a rational and orderly mind, though there is a strong ten dency to do otherwise. But upon the modern mind nature makes an impression of being non-moral, which for most men completely precludes the interpretation of natural proc esses in terms of personal will. While in a general way and on the whole, nature appears to favour the development of life, in a concrete and specific way it is amazingly indifferent to moral distinctions. The plague sweeps away the good and the bad alike ; the drouth burns the fields that belong to the saint just as it does those that belong to the sinner; earthquakes tumble into ruins the homes of the virtuous and the vicious, the temples of worship and the haunts of wickedness with a striking lack of discrimination. What does the lightning ask as to the character of the man or the structure destroyed by its bolt? And nature bestows her favours in the same indiscriminate fashion. Of course, a series of actions of the most rational character may seem non-moral or even immoral to one who does not see the rational and moral considerations guiding the actor. But the general conception of nature in the thought of this age is that its processes absolutely ignore moral distinctions. If we postulate as the ultimate goal of the processes of nature some far-off moral end in the progress toward which they so strangely ignore the moral distinctions we are walking by faith, not by scientific sight.

For these reasons the modern mind has become very much confused as to the relation of God to the universe. Once men seemed to find little difficulty in giving a religious inter-

�� �