Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/372

 the soul forms the body; man's relation to nature, to the spiritual world, and to God. They could have known how so to live that God's life would best flow in and lift them up spiritually into His presence. These are the things that elevate man, and these are the truths that they at the beginning could have had. Though they did not know how to make a triple-expansion engine, or understand the electric current, they could look into nature, and see it as a perpetual panorama of God's powers, a veritable parable of the spiritual world. They could have seen God's wisdom, power, and love thus revealed; they could with keen vision have penetrated nature, observed there the universal natural science perpetually operative, and have lifted up their vision to see God in His works. They, in the degree that they willed to do so, could have opened their minds and affections to His life, and have been given to know of the power, richness, and hallowedness of His love, resulting finally in a supreme illumination both mental and moral.

There are abundant reasons and much evidence that this was the case. There is one reason alone that is adequate. Since such an elevation of man was the purpose of God's creation, and there had not then intervened self-will as opposed to God or to Divine order, and since the human race