Plan in History. By Rev. E. A. Lawrence, D. D. [pp. 555-564]

Plan in History.
sophically demonstrable from a general one. Indeed they are
so almost identical that they mutually include each other, as
the whole the parts, and the parts the whole. The greatest
events often turn on the minutest. No epoch in history, or
important fact, can be fully explained without the unimportant
ones that helped to make it so. The fall of the apple, by which
Newton is said to have discovered the principle of gravitation,
was as really prearranged by providence as the great law which
it brought to light. On the lance that mnissed Napoleon at
Kylau, and the bullet that struck Gustavus Adolphus at Liitzen,
turned the tramp of armies and the fate of nations. Such
a perfect network of little things and large is history!
It would be as unphilosophical to say that God sends the
great showers that water the earth, but not the little drops of
rain; that he ripens the rich harvests, but not the small ears of
corn, or heads in the golden wheat-fields, as that his providen tial plan is general but not particular. If the nations and dy nasties are all numbered, so are the hairs of our head. If our
escapes and rescues in danger are providential, so are our exposures and preservations. Does the escape come through acquaintance with the laws of Nature and by prayer? So does exposure
often from ignorance of these laws and want of prayer. But
the ignorance and the knowledge, the prayer and the prayerlessness, have their place in the providential plan equally with
the dangers and the rescues.
Prayer does not alter the plan of Providence, nor disturb its
unity, but comes in as a means of its accomplishment. As
expressive of piety towards God, it is loyalty to the divine government. It is an elemental harmony in the music of providential events-a link that joins the status of the prayerful to the
favoring divine will, as prayerless disloyalty does that of the
profane with the disfavor of that will.
This free-will of the dependent subject which is involved ill
piety and prayer, is, to some, a disturbing element, as in conflict
with law and the stability and regularity of the providential
course. Law is fixed, they say, and calculable.. Volition is
variable, capricious, and hence incapable of prevision and fixity in a plan.
But is not moral freedom a fundamental fact? Is it not veri
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