Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/338

326 to the highest good of man, and which could be eternally approximated, but which never could be conceived by man without its disclosure in the life and death of our Lord.

In regard to the supernatural, the New Theology doubts or denies it in the economies of Nature and of grace. It believes in the inspiration of all scriptural and other truth, in the authenticated phenomena called miracles, in the regeneration of corrupted human nature by the power of the Holy Spirit, and in the active and efficient superintendence of divine providence; but it maintains that the divine immanence in the world is sufficient to account for the minutest and the mightiest phenomena which have occurred, or which can take place, and that to assume special divine interferences or the interposition of new agencies in the communication of the Divine Will, in the government of the material or moral world, in the recovery of man from wickedness to righteousness, presumes the "sober second thought" on the part of God that his original executions were defective, and needed amendment or reformation; that he is partial, and favors with advantages one age or one class more than another, and that he is changeable and unreliable. All natural wants, physical and spiritual, are indicative of the divine disposition to help, and are assurances of suitable supplies—material for the body and immaterial for the mind—which, according to all human experience, never ignore nor supersede a natural law or function; and it is doubtful if any supernatural helps could be recognized or appreciated; so that it is not improbable that all that is called supernatural is of misconception, superstition, or credulity. And, if there be no necessity for it, or if that which is so called can be accounted for or accomplished by natural means, its exercise would be a useless display of energy, while, if necessary, it shows that the provisions of Nature are inadequate to its necessities and thereby reproach their author; and if it intervenes to assist, or retard, or counteract, it must be a supersedence of the supernatural by the supernatural—a kingdom divided against itself and self-destructive; for is not Nature, in its being and in its processes, a divine arrangement and incapable of any modification or rearrangement except by a greater than Nature? And to the affirmation that all the divine creations and phenomena are necessarily supernatural, it may be asked: How can there be a supernatural without a natural to exceed? and if supernatural, how can they be superseded unless by a greater than the supernatural? and would it not be useless to introduce the supernatural unless it could exceed a process of Nature or equal an act of creation?

But who knows what Nature is capable of? or if it has ever been superseded? or that any of the operations called supernatural are more than natural? As mankind advances in intelligence, the supernatural retires, like barbarism before civilization; and yet, the prevalent belief of Christians is, that there is a supernatural, spiritual agency in the world which enlightens the mind and transforms the heart of