Yet, strong as is the proof arising from these and similar sources, there have occasionally appeared in all ages, and especially at a certain stage in the progress of philosophical speculation, men who admitted, and even maintained, the existence of the Supreme Being, while they denied, nevertheless, the doctrine of Providence and the efficacy of Prayer.
In certain stages of philosophic inquiry, there is a natural tendency, we think, or at least a strong temptation, to substitute the laws of Nature in the place of God, or to conceive of him as somehow removed to a greater distance from us by means of these laws.

Every one must be conscious, to some extent, of this tendency in his own personal experience; he must have felt that when he first began to apprehend any one of the great laws of Nature, and still more when he advanced far enough to see that every department of the physical world is subject to them, so as to exhibit a constant order, an all-pervading harmony, his views of God and Providence became less impressive in proportion as the domain of "law" was extended, and that he was in imminent danger of sinking, if not into _theoretical_, at least into _practical_ Atheism.
"It is a fact," says Dr.Channing, "that Science has not made Nature _as expressive of God_ in the first instance or, to the beginner in religion, as it was in earlier times.

Science reveals a rigid, immutable _order_; and this to common minds looks much like self-subsistence, and does not manifest intelligence, which is full of life, variety, and progressive operation.

Men in the days of their ignorance saw an immediate Divinity accomplishing an immediate purpose, or expressing an immediate feeling, in every sudden, striking change of Nature, ...

and Nature, thus interpreted, became the sign of a present, deeply-interested Deity."[184] That the scientific study of Nature, and especially of certain departments of physical inquiry, has often had the effect of deadening our sense of a present and presiding Deity, of obscuring or perplexing our views of the connection of God with His works, and of virtually removing Him from all efficient control over the creatures of His hands, is attested, not only by the published speculations of some, but also by the inward consciousness of many more, who have never avowed infidel sentiments to others, nor even, at least articulately, to themselves.