Science, Prayer, Free Will, & Miracles, an Essay, Repr. from the 'Dublin Review' (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1881 edition. Excerpt: ...the machinery for his own purposes. Undoubtedly, therefore, if any class of phenomena be abstractedly capable of indefinite scientific prediction, this class of phenomena is not premoved by Almighty God. Here, then, is the vital and essential issue of our present investigation. How far, we inquire, has the course of science (taken by itself) added probability to the supposition, that there is an abstract scientific possibility of indefinitely predicting the future course of all external phenomena? Most assuredly science has not approximated to proving such abstract possibility; but we really believe more than this. We believe that the march of scientific progress has been in such a direction, that (on scientific grounds alone) the abstract possibility of such indefinite prediction is a more improbable hypothesis now, than it was two centuries ago. For consider. What can be more amazing than the present rapid advance of scientific truth? "The enlargement of the circle of secular knowledge just now is simply a bewilderment; and the more so, because it has the promise of continuing, and with greater rapidity and more signal results." The speculative and the practical results of science succeed each other with a rapidity, which almost takes away one's breath. Suppose some inquirer of the seventeenth century, earnestly devoted to scientific pursuits, and possessing no firm grasp of religious truth. Suppose such a man had been authoritatively told of the astounding development which science was to receive in this nineteenth century. If there is one augury rather than another which such an inquirer would most confidently have made, it would be that the sphere of scientific prediction must by this time have received an incredible enlargement....