It may be useful, therefore, to inquire somewhat particularly, whether, and how far, the existence of "natural laws" and the operation of "second causes" should affect our views of the Providence which God exercises over us, or of the Prayers which we address to Him.
SECTION I.
THE DOCTRINE OF NATURAL LAWS AND SECOND CAUSES.
The existence of "natural laws," and the operation of "second causes," are often explicitly recognized, and always obviously implied, in Scripture.

Revelation is not designed to explain the nature or the action of either; but it assumes the reality of both.[185] It is plainly implied in the very _first_ chapter of Genesis, that, at the era of creation, God gave _a definite constitution_, implying peculiar properties and powers, to all the various classes of objects which were then called into being.

He created light, with its peculiar properties; He created water, with its peculiar properties.

He created everything "after its kind." The distinction between one created thing and another, such as light and water, and the distinction also between "genera" and "species," especially in the case of plants, trees, fish, fowl, cattle, and reptiles, are very strongly marked in the sacred narrative: and this distinction implies the existence of certain properties peculiar to each of these objects or classes,--properties not common to them all, but distinctive and characteristic, which made them to be, severally, what they are, and which amount to a _distinct definite constitution_.

These properties, account for them as we may, are essential to their existence as distinct objects in nature, and cannot be separated from them as long as the objects themselves exist.