Let us trace rapidly the growth of this issue. The old idea and the
most natural to the religious mind was the direct agency of God in
every event and phenomenon of Nature. This view is nobly expressed
in the noblest literature in the world--in the Hebrew and Christian
Scriptures: "He looketh on the earth and it trembleth. He toucheth
the hills and they smoke." "He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and
on the good, and sendeth his rain on the just and on the unjust." But
now comes Science and explains all these phenomena by natural laws and
resident forces, and we all accept her explanation. Thus, one by one
the phenomena of Nature are explained by the operation of resident
forces according to natural laws, until the whole course of Nature,
as we now know it, has been, or will be, or conceivably may be, thus
explained.