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THE SUPERNATURAL IN NATURE.

STUDY I.

IS INTELLECT DIVORCED FROM PIETY?

"Christianity did not appear in a barbarous age, nor win acceptance because nations were unintelligent. The Greeks were people of highest natural power in freshest vigour, with radiant intellect pervading the sense of youthful beauty. The Roman is a symbol of the bold and clever leader, with whom to dare is to do. Men of the early Church were of earnest, heavenly-minded character-their saintly aspect was in itself a revelation."

IT has been very confidently asserted that we have not to reckon with religion; its day is gone by, the best minds of our age have forsaken theology, take no account of it, and that this is preparatory to a general abandonment of belief in the Supernatural.

The statement is improbable. All that we know of faith and intelligence assures us that the sum total in the twentieth century will be the offspring of the nineteenth, as the nineteenth is of the eighteenth, and must be-unless special, that is miraculous, illumination be given. It may be taken as certain that whatever change takes place in the symbols by which religious faith is expressed, religion, in all essential respects, will remain unchanged. Summarily to throw away ancient beliefs and institutions, to discard the universal growth and experience of moral discipline, can in no case be the work of an individual intellect, or of one age. No one individual nor age has ever succeeded in remodelling society to a prescribed ideal.

Lord Bacon says,-"Are we disposed to survey the realm of sacred or inspired theology, we must quit this small vessel of human reason, and put ourselves on board the ship of the Church." It were better not to quit "the small vessel of

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human reason," but to use intelligence as a divinely kindled lamp, and this intelligence will burn brighter if fed with the oil of faith for the religious sense, the highest which we can entertain, is based upon the aspiration and endeavour after complete fulness of life.

It is easy to understand that men of hard mechanical mind, "who," Scaliger roughly said, "lick the vessel but never touch the pottage," have little or no sense of religion; but it is not easy to understand by what right, with least power to judge of the Supernatural, they assume authority to decide that the world is nothing but matter, containing only material organisms. Why, if our own material organism is governed by intelligence. may not the universe be governed by Intelligence?

They say "There is no actuality in the Supernatural, no reality in any knowledge we can obtain of it;" but they are well aware that the appearance of things is not their essential reality, and that every phenomenon is the manifestation of an unknown energy; consequently the Unknown is knowable, so far as He is manifested, unknowable so far as He is infinite and eternal. Every fact in history, occupying but a moment in time, is rooted in an unsearchable past, and enters an endless future; the first link hides in the past eternal, and the last vanishes in the future eternal: all nature, on one side, touches the seen, on the other, the unseen. It is an essential part of our nature to be conscious of this; the Power underlying all-the Great Reality.

In essence God is ever unknown, as everything else is essentially unknown; no term can be used in precisely the same sense of essence and the phenomenon, of man and of God; there is, none the less, an analogy; so that, in human, limited fashion, we know the Unknown; and the effort to know more, to co-ordinate emotional consciousness and intellectual cognition, is the highest, purest and most strengthening exercise of our reason.

We all admire and applaud the noble Roman, Regulus, who voluntarily returned to torture and death rather than violate duty to his country and faith plighted to an enemy. Who could interpret that man's life and mind by their material conditions? or, interpreting, would, according to material conditions, have

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Need of an Ethical Ideal.

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interpreted aright? We commend Andrew Fuller, who, willing to lose his life in order to serve his country, would not do a base thing to save it. Does not every good man say?—"I would be virtuous for my own sake, though no man should know it; and clean for my own sake, though no one should see me." The reality, the animating principle of such holy conduct, resting on universal emotional consciousness of God, is more active and powerful in life than that which is merely intellectual. The fact, moreover, "that no human being, and no society composed of human beings, ever did or ever will come to much, unless their conduct was governed and guided by some ethical idea," renders our acceptance of that ideal not merely a requisition of common sense, but an indispensable condition to true and lasting welfare. On grounds therefore of intelligence and morality, we appeal to the good and the great whether the highest and best ideal is not found in the Bible? We ask those of high moral nature, whether its purity does not make them affectionate and reverential? Whether the things which have been surely believed among us are not still worthy of all acceptation? Whether religion does not take that place in the heart which, otherwise, superstition would usurp? Certainly it is right to urge the pure in spirit to maintain these things in integrity; for if our race lose faith in the soul's immortality, in Providence, if, on the intellectual side, we lose the recognition of Deity, and, on the emotional side, a yearning for closer union with Deity, we can neither attain nor retain the virtues, happiness and true civilisation of wellordered communities.

There are, indeed, many reasons for supposing that human nature will expand its powers, and occupy a wider sphere of knowledge and action than the present; but that advancement, if made without the guidance of revelation, without the establishment of harmony between our knowledge and our aspirations, will rather bring more anxious cares and sharper pains than augment enjoyment, or secure and enlarge our peace. Appalling facts of the most grim and gloomy aspect prove, as Bishop Butler said, that "Mankind are for ever placing the stress of their religion "Critiques and Addresses: " Prof. Huxley.

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anywhere than upon virtue;" and experience shows that sceptical men, denying Divinity, pave the way to sensualism and thence to superstition. It is equally certain that the habits, usages and propensities of millions of our fellows are not leading them forward to goodness and happiness.

...

The manner of argument against the Supernatural is surprising. We are told, "The teaching of Jesus carried morality to the highest point attained or even attainable by humanity. The influence of the spiritual religion has been rendered doubly great by the unparalleled purity and elevation of His own character, so that the 'imitation of Christ' has become almost the final word in the preaching of His religion, and must continue to be one of the most powerful elements of its performance." It "is the highest conceivable by humanity ... Its perfect realisation is . . . extinction of rebellious personal opposition to Divine order, and the attainment of perfect harmony with the will of God." Now, would it be believed that, immediately preceding, we find these words? "The disciples, who had so often misunderstood the teaching of Jesus, during His life, piously distorted it after His death." We are to believe that disciples, capable of receiving, keeping, and handing down to future ages, the highest system of morality attainable by humanity—in the light of which they lived, and for the truth of which they died-"piously distorted" that system! This "spiritual religion" of "sublime simplicity and moral grandeur," putting all other systems to the blush, "uniformly noble and consistent," is really built on "mere human delusion!" Now, no folly is greater than this: to regard the Bible as true, yet full of error; pure, yet defiled by prejudice; Divinely animated, yet disgraced by fanatical assumption. As if a thing could be really of heaven and heavenly, yet animated by the devil with the breath of delusion and deceit. We are to believe, on the one hand, "no supernatural halo can brighten its spiritual beauty, and no mysticism deepen its holiness. In its wisdom it is eternal;" but to hold, on the other hand, "the falsity of all miraculous pretension;" that St. Paul

1" Supernatural Religion," vol. ii. p. 487.
Ibid., p. 486.

Ibid., p. 488. ♦Ibid., p. 489.

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