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This is what I call the specially British form of Quietism, or a devout, but excessive, reliance on an over-ruling Providence.
An over-ruling Providence, long accustomed to the exigencies of the stage, could not fail to intervene at the critical moment in behalf of innocence and virtue, and the spectator never had the least occasion for anxiety. Not unnaturally there was a black-hearted villain in the piece; so very black-hearted that he seemed not to have a single good impulse from first to last.
He might have rung the bell at the street door, and been admitted into the temple of his goddess, but a certain vague terror of his grannie, combined with equally vague qualms of conscience for having deceived her, and the approach in the far distance of a ghastly suspicion that violins, pianos, moonlight, and lovely women were distasteful to the over-ruling Fate, and obnoxious to the vengeance stored in the gray cloud of his providence, drove him from the awful entrance of the temple of his Isis.
'The inspiration of holy men is to be construed, as we construe the doctrine of an over-ruling and special Providence; of the divine supervision and guidance of the church; of the faithfulness of God in answering prayer. The truth of these doctrines is not inconsistent with the existence of a thousand evils, mischiefs, and mistakes, and with the occurrence of wanderings long and almost fatal.
But the foreknowledge which simply perceives what direction will be taken by the will is a very different thing from an over-ruling destiny, which should compel the will to take some special direction. Still it is obvious that, in this instance also, foreknowledge is based entirely on causation.
The position is somewhat similar to that of a modern philosopher who attempts to think out the psychological problem of Human Will in relation to Almighty and Over-ruling Providence. One may very clearly see the psychological difficulties, without ceasing to believe either in the one or the other as facts. The first of the 'psychological dialogues, as we have called them, is the Philebus.
The wave of his hand was expansive, his stride was swaying and decisive, his over-ruling, fraternal faculty was always in full swing. Viking was his adopted child; so much so that a gentleman river-driver called it Philippi; and by that name it sometimes went, and continues still so among those who knew it in the old days.
Count Timascheff, in a voice that seemed to thrill with solemnity, said: "In such events we are at the disposal of an over-ruling Providence; human precautions cannot sway the Divine will." "But with the most profound reverence for the will of Providence," replied the captain, "I beg to submit that it is our duty to devise whatever means we can to escape the threatening mischief.
Away then with fear, because our first and over-ruling and all-determining relationship is to Him. In eliminating money-fears from my own life that was the fact which helped me most. I had not only to seize it intellectually, but to get what William James calls the "feeling" of it, the apprehension of it in my subconsciousness. It was like acquiring a new instinct.
The laurel, used for classic wreaths, has long been regarded emblematical of renown, and Tasso thus addresses a laurel leaf in the hair of his mistress: "O glad triumphant bough, That now adornest conquering chiefs, and now Clippest the bows of over-ruling kings From victory to victory.
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