Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/340

328 his persuasive voice, and every movement toward righteousness is the impulse of his impending presence.

According to his word, God is in man, living and moving of his own good pleasure; not beyond his reach nor without him, but in him and of him, and may be recognized in every stone and star, in every glint of beauty and waft of fragrance, in every touch and tone of tenderness, and in every strain of melody and movement of intelligence. What, then, would be the use or the value of the supernatural in nature?

As to the scientific dogma of the evolution of man from monad through monkey, the New Theology is as ready to accept it as to reject it, according to the evidence; but in no event does it see the necessity of nor admit a special divine interposition to complete any stage in the process, and it is unscientific to assume it. The divine immanence is constant, and is sufficient for every evolved condition without aid from or resort to unnatural or supernatural supplementation to the uniformity of nature; and, whether evolved or not, man is consciously and practically a moral being, capable of virtue and vice, and justly censurable for evil and worthy of commendation for good.

But, more than any other, the topic which has made the New Theology most conspicuous is that which is denominated a second probation, which is yet illy conceived and variously presented. Consistent thinkers not only accept the doctrine of rewards and punishments, but hold that neither can adequately express the Divine attitude toward holiness and sin, nor man's sense of propriety and justice, unless they be eternal. They do not assume to describe the rewards or the punishments of the future, nor to know their constituents, but presume, from their appropriateness, and from the consistency in the order of divine things, that they will be similar to or identical with the peace and joy of believers, and the commotion and wretchedness of sinners on earth. From this point the New Theology shades off gradually from the Old. It holds that sin involves death or permanent disability, and that continuous sinning becomes increasingly disastrous, undermining and weakening the moral nature, until it becomes so enfeebled as hardly to be able to perform or to enjoy the pleasures of a virtuous deed, and logically terminates in the extinction of moral being. But since, according to Scripture and science, nothing is made in vain, or to be destroyed, there must be hope where there is life, and since the annihilation of any existence implies a useless act in its creation, or an error in the calculation of its author, it assumes that being, especially moral being, is an assurance of immortality, and that so long as there is a spark of vitality there is a possibility, or, according to the nature and course of things, a probability of an awakening to a higher life and its eternal development. And if, with the diminution of moral energy referred to, there is, as is claimed, an element of pain as a corollary of transgression, it is an additional evidence of the