no law of nature to the effect that a supernatural force shall never
intervene. Even if, as may be done perhaps in the greatest miracles,
God suspends His concurrence, so that the creature acts not at all,
even that would be no violation of the physical law of the creature's
action: for all that such a law provides is, that the creature, if it
acts at all, shall act in a certain way, not that God shall always
give the concurrence which is the necessary condition of its acting at
all. The laws of physical nature then are, strictly speaking, never
violated, although the _course_ of nature is occasionally altered by
supernatural interference, and continually by free human volition. But
the laws of physical nature, in the highest generality, are identified
with the moral law. The one Eternal Law embraces all the laws of
creation. It has a physical and a moral side. On the former it
_effects_, on the latter it _obliges_, but on both sides it is
imperative; and though in moral matters it be temporarily defeated by
sin, still the moral behest must in the end be fulfilled as surely as
the physical behest. The defeat of the law must be made good, the sin
must be punished. Of the Eternal Law working itself out in the form of
punishment, we shall speak presently.

7. It is important to hold this conception of the Eternal Law as
embracing physical nature along with rational agents. To confine the
law, as modern writers do, to rational agents alone, is sadly to
abridge the view of its binding force. The rigid application of
physical laws is brought home to us daily by science and by
experience: it is a point gained, to come to understand that the moral
law, being ultimately one with those physical laws, is no less
absolute and indefeasible, though in a different manner, than they.

It is hard for us to conceive of laws being given to senseless things.