Divine Intervention

There is an account of Brother Juniper’s wish to bring the study of theology into line with scientific thought. Since Brother Juniper’s puzzled mien decorates the original cover of the book, one might suppose this is taken to be the crux of the story.

His hypothesis was that God must have measurable purpose in the way he makes his decisions, that surely he would favor the worthy over the unworthy. Brother Juniper’s research to date, however, had failed to support this hypothesis; in fact he had shown that the unworthy outdid the worthy five to one. Having been the only named witness to the collapse of the Bridge of San Luis Rey the priest was confident a study of the victims’ lives would support his belief. He amassed a huge amount of material, but could not make any statistical sense of it, and was...