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The Visible an Outcome of the Invisible. 423

accompanying Divine Power, and receives life and immortality by the appointment of the Creator." 1

In Studies of "The Supernatural," "Threshold of Creation," "Rudiments of the World," we arrived at the Creation as a fact. We are not "a crowd of wretches, equally criminal and unfortunate," but children of God—not looking from the outside into halls and saloons, but tenants of a spacious house, to whom all doors are open. Competent to labour, mentally capable of investigation, spiritually desirous of knowing whence we came and whither we go, we apprehend the influence of spirit on matter: can go forth from our own sphere to influence the development of another being. This effective and purifiable spiritual and physical action is a continual miracle. Unbelievers will have no miracles, and say "What is so absurd as perpetual miracles in Nature?" Yet the universe is one splendid, universal, all-comprehending miracle; incomprehensible energies acting in different degree and capacity of development; classed in families, orders, species, rising from brute nature, in which life sleeps, to life's spiritual awakening in the splendour of humanity. Minerals and plants, animals and men, things gross and things sublime, all that can be imagined, our own world and existence in other known worlds, are but a small part of the infinite universe. Separate but allied to one another, alike and unlike, ever dying yet continuing through ages in successive progress, the sounds of life are a grand march-tune of the universe. Every existence is, in itself, a little world; and represents, in diminutive mirror, the universe. Every creature lives, not of itself; but by continual efficacy of eternal energy in whom all lines of force and life centre. The visible is an outcome of the Invisible, a manifestation of the Supernatural, essentially miraculous in every part; yet, blind men do not see a miracle, nor are the ignorant conscious of Great Intelligence.

An objection is raised—" A miracle is beyond usual law, and science declines to admit such weakness in Omnipotence." We reply-Law is administered and explained by such infinite variety of operation, that no man is able to limit the power of usual operation when an unusual element is introduced. It is gross presumption to imagine that we know all the usual operations of law, and are so acquainted "Plato's Dialogues-Statesmen," p. 270: Jowett's translation.

with the whole course usual and unusual of things that we can say " It is a weakness in Omnipotence to act outside the course that we know of, in another course which we do not know."

The highest act of creation produces free, responsible beings. We are sure that a perfect God performs perfect work and creates free beings. They must be finite: for everything created is so of necessity. Finite free beings are liable to misuse their freedom: otherwise, they are not free. Freedom of action, modifying law, necessitate special operations of wisdom and power. These special operations, not in accord with the law hitherto prevailing, but manifesting new powers, are miracles, requirements to meet necessities; not out of, but within the Divine plan; not marks of weakness, nor of short-sightedness, but proofs that omnipotence and omniscience control the universe.

The Studies-"Creative Words," "Days of Creation," "The Two Divine Accounts," "Pre-Adamite Earth"show that God created the universe, realised it, as a manifestation of Himself. The might of God was worker; the love of God, inspiring motive; the wisdom of God, the guide. Certainly it is better to speak of God's attributes as those of mind rather than those of matter.

Did God create the world from without Himself? If so, a being acting from without himself is, not infinite, but as a sculptor who fashions marble. Did God create the world from within Himself? That is Pantheism.

Did God act upon chaos, as Anaxagoras said—Mind moving inert matter? or, as the Demiurgos of Platoimpress luminous ideas of the good and beautiful? or did the world, being eternal, in virtue of God's secret aspiration, as Aristotle would say, move towards Him who attracteth all things; yet who in His Solitude and Bliss, regardeth them not?

A personal God is an Individual, not an abstract notion which we form concerning universality, but the I Am, the self-existent, all-perfect Being. The infinite whose abode is immensity, whose duration is eternity.

Pantheism reproaches Scripture for making God like man; yet itself falls into grossest materialism, by attributing

The Personal God.

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the properties of matter and the imperfections of creatures to the Creator. There is nothing more contrary to the idea of perfection than that it should develop; but Pantheists liken God to a being who changes, who develops; and, consequently, is imperfect. Nor is that all their God, without the world, is no God; and his extinction takes place with the extinction of Nature.

The Personal God, is the Principle, the Spirit, the Universal, who inhabits heaven, earth, infinity, eternity. He is not, in creating, as a Michael Angelo, who draws forth Moses from a block of marble. He is not, in His own life, as a grain of wheat germinating; not as an oak extending its branches; with profounder energy and more sublime activity than matter can exhibit, or we conceive, He Exists and Creates. He is not to be conceived of as under the necessity of acting from within or without Himself; such conceptions have their limits in space, in time; God is Infinite, Eternal, Perfect, Self-sufficient; but the world is in course of development. God is in eternity-the Eternal; the world is in time-the temporal. The moments of time do not compose eternity; time is neither within nor without it; yet, eternity is the reason of its being. The relation is unique, mysterious, but certain. Whatsoever is gross in words must be laid aside and the inner spirit regarded: God, in eternity, eternally sees time, space, the world. In time, He sees the movable figure of His Eternity; in space, the miniature of His Infinity; in the world, the expression of the communicable powers of His Infinite Being. Our happiness is not-nothing further to know, no more to desire: continual progress finds new pleasures, ever discovers new perfections in the Infinite and Eternal.

The Studies of Divine Operation in the various creative Works of the Days, evidenced the reality, definiteness, comprehensiveness, simplicity, of the Scripture narrative. The Study, "Variety in Nature," was of the endless versatility in Nature: Law is not bound with links of Fate, but beautiful in capacity of adaptation, and a means of discipline for improvable and responsible creatures. The Study of "The Invisible Universe" regarded worlds as a vast procession from the Unseen to the Seen; to return in due order from the House of Time to the Eternal Dominion. By "Follies

of the Wise," we learn there is a light of the world which leadeth to darkness.

The argument, in all the Studies, was conducted along many lines of thought, that through intelligent intercourse with ourselves and nature we may see by reason, by conscience, by science, that the Bible is the Book of God: not an evolution nor a product of unaided human intellect, but a Divine Revelation to fit us for a more expanded existence.

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"The Kingdom of God," our present Study, has several times and meanings allotted to it: 1. The Gospel period; 2. The kingdom for which we pray-"Thy Kingdom Come; 3. The kingdom of Glory. Not in any of these senses, but in the large meaning of God's Providence and Spiritual Rule, is it now to be considered. It is more than dream, more than hope, it is an anticipation verified by our many capacities which soar above life, which extend beyond death.

Religion, Science, History, explain many past and present phenomena of existence. We calculate and enumerate special faults, habits, vices of mixed communities; and see the agreement of immense multitudes as to traditions and beliefs, "quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est," extending from remotest periods to present time; from primitive culture until the high Faith of Christianity stands complete in doctrines, in rites, in ceremonies. It is thought that we can trace the growth of Faith in the world, as were it of human origination—a product of human culture. It is asserted that evidence as to the ancient phases of religious consciousness; nature, meaning, practice, of rites and ceremonies; their transmission, expansion, restriction, modification; gives a natural explanation of the most sacred and high powers of religion.

The culture of science and art, history and philosophy, displays a world-long progress wrought out wholly by men in their ascent and in their degradation. The same progress is assumed as to religion; but that great fact, the Supernatural, on which all religion rests, is either denied or ignored. Ignored-despite the truth that, from earliest days till now, the intelligence of mankind, accepted and accepts the Supernatural. Denied despite the fact that Christianity, Mohammedanism, Brahminism, Buddhism,

Religion is not an Evolution.

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Zoroastrism, and all other Faiths down to lowest Fetishism, claim Divinity in their origin and continuance. Men generally have not thought they were to die and not live again. They never, as a race, have lost the thoughts that enter eternity; nor given up themselves to nothingness—as had they not been created.

The folly of ignoring the miraculous becomes more evident when we learn-"the relation of savagery to barbarism and self-civilisation lies almost wholly in pre-historic or extra-historic regions. . . . Direct history hardly tells anything of the changes of savage culture. . . . Perhaps no account of the course of culture in its lower stages can satisfy stringent criticism." The philosophy of religion, which professes to account for the origin, nature, development of religion, is confessedly ignorant of that origin, and can trace only a few steps of its backward course. Moreover, Mr. Tylor says-"Separation of intelligence from virtue which accounts for so much of the wrong-doing of mankind, is continually seen to happen in the great movements of civilisation." "2 He adds-". Ethnographers consider the rude life of primeval man under favourable conditions to have been, in its measure, a good and happy life." Knowing, further, the fact expressed by Bishop Butler-" Mankind are for placing the stress of their religion anywhere rather than in virtue;" it seems, if the doctrine or philosophy of a natural evolution of religion be true, that uncultured ancient men devised supernatural restraints on vice and encouragements to virtue; but that cultured men, “in the great movements of civilisation," through unbelief discard those supernatural restraints and separate intelligence from virtue. The conclusion is irresistible-Religion, resting upon faith in the supernatural, far from being an evolution by advancing intelligence, is that very thing which culture, through unbelief of the supernatural, sets itself to destroy.

Banishment of the supernatural is impossible. The measurement of man's life is not by days on earth. The summing up will be in presence of their spirit. All generations have felt this. Secularism, undertaking accurately to formulate all knowledge, admits that all natural phenomena rest on the transcendental-on the unknown. The tools

1 "Primitive Culture,” vol. i. p. 55: Edward B. Tylor.
Ibid. vol. i. p. 25
3 Ibid. p. 27.

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