Mm0i {tiS^5i5x5K5d0.ci'x: Ij I B II- ^A. n ^^ ®hcoUuiical ^cminavy, I j'lUNCETox. y. J. The Stephen Collins Donation. ^r ,, Division No. Ois.. /^K- 3/§( THE SUPERNATURAL THE SUPEENATURAL IN RELATION TO THE NATURAL. BY^tHE REV. JAMES M'COSH, LL.D. AUTHOR OF " THE METHOD OF THE BIVINE GOVERNMENT, " INTUITIONS OF THE MIND," ETC. NEW YORK: ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS, No. 281 BROADWAY 1802. IELFAST: ALEX. MAYXE, PRINTI PEEFACE. The author of this Treatise all along intended that his Work on ^^The Method of the Divine Government Physical and Moral" should be fol- lowed by another on '' The Method of the Divine Government Supernatural and Spiritual." This Essay may be regarded as Part First of that con- templated work. Whether it will be succeeded by a Second Part, bearing more especially on the Spiritual Economy of God in our world, depends on so many circumstances at the disposal of a Higher Power, that he thinks it wiser to make no promise to the public on the subject. The questions agi- tated in our day have called on him, in the mean time, to give to the world the First or Apologetic Part of the intended publication. His deepest feeling, in now issuing it from the press, is a regret VI that it is not more worthy of the all-important theme discussed. In this world of ours the work of destruction is easier than that of reconstruction. A few reckless men may, in a few hours, break or consume as much valuable property as would require many sober men, many years of toil, to repair or restore. When the authors of ''Essays and Eeviews " began to scatter inflammable materials, the first efforts of the defenders of the citadel attacked were naturally directed towards ascertaining the precise aims of the combatants, and stay- ing the immediate effects on the minds of the nation. I suppose, however, that the public feel that we have had enough of disquisitions as to the position of the Essayists, and as to the tendency and probable effect of their writings. There is also a very general feeling that we must now have something beyond those excellent little articles and essays, which have been written with the view of counteracting the general influence of the doubts that have been insinuated in regard to Vll the Word of God, and the attacks that have been made on the fundamental principles of religion. The expectation now is, that there must be a laborious discussion of all and of each of the questions started, and this on their absolute merits, with a view it may be to existing contro- versies, but on grounds and by principles not peculiar to this or to any age. It has often been remarked, that in a com- mon-place subject it is easier to advance an acute objection than to offer a telling reply. A man may acquire a reputation for ingenuity more readily by proving that a stone is not a stone, than by a laboured demonstration that it is a stone. Nevertheless, the friends of religion, na- tural and revealed, must engage patiently in the work of defending what has been attacked. It may be all true that the objections have been offered before ; it may also be true that they have been answered before ; still, as long as the attacks continue, and there is a race of young men springing up who are exposed to them, those Vlll set for the defence of the fortress must meet tliem^ and this at the very points at which the assaults are made. This is what is expected, in the present day, of the defenders of religion. This is what they owe to truth ; this is what they owe to the God €f truth. It is thus that what seemed an evil may, by God's blessing, be turned to good. We have seen a company of boys at the top of a steep hill setting a number of stoneS rolling, without seriously contemplating whither they might go, and what injury they might do among those sitting, or lounging, or working below. The writers of the ^^ Essays and Re- views" have been acting very much like these youths. Seated on their academic heights, they did intend to let loose a set of active agencies which might move and startle the Church and the world ; but I am convinced that some of them did not calmly weigh the destructive effects that might be produced on those beneath, as these rolling stones came rushing in among tjiem. I believe that the issue, chronological and logical, of the IX views propounded, on those wlio fall thoroughly under their influence, must be a denial or at least a doubt, of any supernatural power having been in operation, at the creation of the world or since, either in the production of man or in order to his redemption. Whatever Mr. Temple or Mr. Jowett may have meant, we may see — unless it be counteracted — the proper result of the whole movement in once living faiths groaning, bleed- ing, and dying in that stony, arid, and horrid plain which Mr. Baden Powell has provided in his exclusive naturalism, in his mechanical law, and physical causation. The profound Leibnitz, in writing to Arnauld, intimates his fear that the '4ast of heresies may be, I do not say Atheism, but Naturahsm publicly professed." Had the fisherman, Peter, a prophetic glimpse opened to him of the same state of things when he speaks of scoffers who shall come in the last days, saying — '^ Since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were from the begin- ning of creation " ? h The questions started by the '^ Essays and Reviews " relate to the reality and possibility of sujDernatural operation ; to the historical evidence substantiating Christianity ; to the inspiration of God's Word ; and to the topics involved in these directly or collaterally. We must now have these subjects discussed; either in one great work issu- ing from the depths of a comprehensive mind, or, what may serve as good a purpose, in a number of treatises written by different men, each taking up the theme which he feels himself competent to treat. In this little work only one of the ques- tions raised has been taken up. The special aim of the author is to disentangle the confusion which has crept into the discussion of one great problem, and to throw what light he can on the Natural and Supernatural, and the relation in which they stand one to the other, to man and to God. CONTENTS BOOK EIEST. THE NATURAL IN RELATION TO THE SUPER- NATURAL. CHAPTER I. PAOB Man Discovering the Uniformity of Nature, . , 1 CHAPTER II. In What the Natural System Consists, .. ., 26 CHAPTER III. Mental Principles IxWOlved in our Conviction as to the Uniformity OF Nature, ., .. .. 36 CHAPTER IV. How MUCH IS Contained in the Natural, ,. .. 4o CHAPTER V. The Natural a Manifestation of the Supernatural, . . 82 BOOK SECOND. THE SUPERNATURAL IN RELATION TO THE NATURAL. CHAPTER I. General Remarks on the Supernatural, Sect. I. The Precise Nature of the Supernatural, Sect. II. The Possibility of a Miracle, Sect. III. Purposes served by the Supernatural, Sect. IV. Relation of the Supernatural to the Natural, 101 101 118 133 150 Xll CHAPTER II. The System in the Supernatural. Sect. I. There is System in the Supernatural Sect. II. The Typical System of Revelation, Sect. III. The System of Prophecy, Sect. IV. The Plan of Christ's Life, Sect. V. The System of Miracles, Sect. VI. The System of Doctrine, Sect. VII. The System of Duty, .. Sect. VIII. The System of Means. Sect. IX. The System in the Dispensation of Grace, CHAPTER III. The Evidences of Christianity. Sect. I. A Study of the Christian Evidences. The Evi- dences a System, Sect. II. Connexion between the Miracle and the Doc- trine, Sect. III. Ends accomplished by the Systematic Charac- ter of Revelation, Analogy between Systems, . . CHAPTER IV. THE Natural and Supernatural PACK 166 178 204 228 237 256 267 271 274 282 308 316 340 APPEXDIX. Art. I. Oxford Philosophy, Art. II. Bunsen and German Theology, 3-53 363 BOOE FIEST. THE NATURAL IN RELATION TO THE SUPER- NATURAL, CHAPTER I. MAN DISCOVERING THE UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. It is a most vivid and iijtensely interesting pic- ture which is presented to us by Humboldt in the second volume of the Cosmos, where he unfolds the ideas which mankind have formed, in succes- sive ages, of the magnitude of nature, and of the manner in which their views of earth, ocean, and sky, of plant, animal, and man, became enlarged, as voyagers and travellers explored new countries, and as science extended its observations and cal- culations, and combined them into general laws. It would be quite as interesting, and fully as in- structive, to have a like panoramic view of the conceptions which men have been led to enter- tain, at various times and in various countries, of the nature and extent of uniformity and of law in creation, and of the enlargement of their A MAN DISCOVERING apprehensions and beliefs, as observation and science pushed on their researches, and widened the sphere of their discoveries. In now endea- vouring to furnish this, I am not to attempt such a glowing historical painting as Humboldt has set before us; I must content myself with a simple sketch in plain water-colours. Let us try to put ourselves in the position of a shepherd, a hunter, or a tiller of the ground in the early ages of the world, or of an uneducated man in countries beyond or in states of society beneath the reach of civilization, as he looks out on the phenomena of nature. Two deep impres- sions, I think, w^ould be. left on the mind of such aii one ; — one, that there is uniformity, and the other, that there is irregularity in nature. The uniformity presses itself everywhere on his notice. He sees it in day following night, and night succeeding day, in the sun pursuing his steady course in the heavens, and in the seasons appearing in due order ; he discovers it in food nourishing and sleep refreshing him, in the growth of the grass and the trees, of his lambs and his cattle. But in the very midst of these regularities there are occurrences which come after a different fashion. The sun rises and sets with undeviating constancy, but the eclipse ap- pears very inconstantly and the lightning flashes very unexpectedly. The seasons accomplish their TEE UNIFORMITY OF XATURR 6 beneficent rotation without a failure; but storms arise and rains descend (in most climates) in perplexing and puzzling uncertainty. His bodily frame performs its functions, and his grain and fruit-trees, his flocks and herds, spring up and grow according to a very obvious course, which he can, to a large extent, anticipate ; but blight or disease may come upon them at most unexpected and troublesome times, to disappoint his plans and blast his prospects. If our observer be a godly man, that is, with a heart inclined towards God, he will discover and acknowledge the presence of a Divine Being in each of these classes of objects. But, on the other hand, if he be disposed to live without God, and to keep Him at a distance, he may find a convenient means of accounting for both without calling in a living and acting being, employing physical agents to accomplish beneficent and moral ends. To explain what seems settled and constant he may give a power and a being to Nature, constituting it into a self-working ma- chine, while he refers the irregularities and inter- ferences to Chance,* not that he ever thinks of defining Chance ; but he means that the events come without any purpose of a designing mind. But, meanwhile, man has deep religious ten- dencies and impulses, which will break out de- spite his unbelief and in the very midst of his 4 MAN DISCOVERING ungodliness. Circumstances arise and feelings are awakened, \Yhich constrain him to look out for, or to believe he discovers, a Being above these mundane agents. But the whole history of man shows that while he has deep religious instincts, they do not usually work in a healthy manner. Too frequently they are in a dormant state, and they are called forth only by what rouses the mind into excitement, into a state of hope or a state of fear. The consequence is that God comes to be seen in certain of His works, and not in others; — in those wdiich move and alarm, not in those which come daily and steadily; in the drought or tempest which blights the crops, not in the heat and moisture which make them to spring up and grow and ripen ; in the disease which wastes and ravages, not in the health which has sustained and gladdened the frame for years ; in the lightning which smites, but not in the light which smiles ; in the eclipse with its lurid darkness, but not in the pleasant sunshine daily playing on our earth ; in the meteor which bursts out so ominously, but not in the stars which look down upon us so purely and benignly ; in sudden and unexpected prosperity, but not in the com- mon blessings which are showered upon us from day to day ; in the storm which sinks the vessel, but not in the favourable breezes which have borne it along for such a length of time ; in the THE UNIFORMITY OF NATURE, preservation of the individual in a shipwreck, but not in that assiduous care which to so many has prevented shipwreck altogether. This is superstition, which, in its narrowness and par- tiahty, discerns the God who is in all nature, only in certain portions of it. When unrestrained by .foreign influences it soon issues in polytheism, or the belief in " gods many and lords many," each supposed to be engaged somehow or other in interfering with what has been settled, and in producing those irregularities which spring up in the midst of the uniformities,- to control or to disturb them. It is a perception of the uniformity of nature which forms the most effective natural means of making mankind keep hold of the unity of God. Those who have lost, or who have never reached, the idea that there is a connection between the various physical agencies in the world, are sure to look upon them as being directed or interfered with by a number of conspiring or conflicting supra-mundane beings, each .with a purpose of his own ; and I believe the great body of man- kind can be kept from this error only by a direct revelation from heaven of the character of God. Even those who have a written word will ever be tempted, like the Jews in old times, to run after the worship of a multitude of gods, or like rude unlettered Christians in modern times, to 6 3IAX DISCOVERING make a subordinate class of preternatural beings, such as saints or witches, act an important part in those cross events for good or for evil, which in- terpose to help or to hinder the more direct and settled tendencies of nature. But the same spirit of ungodliness which allures so many to an adulterous attachment to a multiplicity of gods, who suit their contracted view^s and corrupt taste, may take another form among those who have been kept from polythe- ism by a comprehensive conception of nature ; or, by what is more common in the ages when persons begin to reflect and philosophize, by a vehement inclination towards abstract thinking, which, as in the case of the Eleatic school' of early Greece, perceives, but exaggerates and mis- interprets, the unity which exists amidst the variety of physical agents. The deep natural aver- sion to a pure and personal God, who sees the hearts and judges the deeds of man, tempts this latter class into pantheism, of a ruder or more refined character; and they look on nature per- sonified as being God, and the sun, moon, and stars, or the animals in whom the principle of life is most active, or the more powerful physical agents, such as light and fire, as being themselves the acting deities. In many Eastern countries the two forms of error coalesce and exist side by side ; the pantheism being the form adopted by the TEE VNIFORMITY OF NATURE. * sages who mount up into liigli abstractions, and the polytheism furnishing the channels in which the religious feelings of the people expend them- selves. These two, the nature pantheism and the nature polytheism, have a great many more points of affinity and bonds of communion than we might at first suppose. The philosophic pan- theist is quite willing to allow the rabble to be polytheists, since they can rise no higher in their conceptions ; he will let them freely indulge in the worship of the sun, and moon, and ani- mals, and elements, and will himself fall in, without compunction, with their worship, looking upon the individual natural objects, or the sym- bols of them in the temples, merely as represen- tatives of the Whole; and with this accommoda- tion the polytheist is entirely satisfied, which he would certainly never be with the uncompromis- ing position of stern distance held towards him by the pure theist. The two, indeed, often meet in the same individual; the pantheist, finding that his abstractions are cold and unattractive, has to lavish his pent-up feelings on beings who can hear and respond to the breathings or beat- ings of his heart ; while the polytheist, in his times of deeper thought and sentiment, or of more terrible emergency, feeling as if all inferior and divided powers were failing him, casts himself on the One Supreme and Omnipotent God. 8 MAN DISCOVERING Taking mankind as a whole, a far greater number fall into superstition than into panthe- ism. The victim of superstition, we have seen, feels his dependence on God only in regard to supposed interferences with the settled course of things. The Egyptians told Herodotus that, as their fields were regularly irrigated by the waters of the Nile, they were less dependent on God than the Greeks, whose lands were watered by rains, and who must perish if Jupiter did not send them showers." Persons trained in these narrow views are apt to be very much offended when philosophers argue that all things are go- verned by laws, or when men of science shew them natural powers, where they believed there was only a Divine agent. They feel as if one part of God's works after another were being wrested from Him by presumptuous and impious men, who would, in the end, leave him no place at which he can interfere, or at which we may discern his agency. Hence the conflicts between science and religion, or rather between science and persons resolved to stand up for God, but who have adopted the doctrine that they must cease to recognise Divine action as soon as they find physical agency. As one field of nature after another is taken from God and given over to mundane operation, some grieve, others rejoice, * Herodotus, II. 13. TEE UNIFOEMITT OF KATURE. 9 while a third class are exasperated into bitterness aiid fanaticism. Some feel their whole soul per- plexed, and their heart failing them, as they find the gods driven from the wopds and the streams, from the mountains and the stars, and allowed to interfere neither with health nor disease. Not a few, as they discover that the Divinity can no longer be found in what they have been taught to recognize as his place of abode and special sphere of action, are greatly tempted to abandon them- selves to utter unbelief, — it is as if they had entered into the inner shrine of their temple, where they were told that God dwelt, and found it all emptiness — it is as if a Jew had been brought, by unexpected circumstances, or by a rash deed of profanity, into the holiest of all, and found there no ark of the covenant, no Divine presence. Others feel and express their joy, as they have been delivered from all fear of a God to judge and to punish ; and they often break out into scoffing and profanity. As to the great mass of vulgar minds, they at once rush into an unwise and violent contest with the advocates of natural agency; they denounce them as ungodly, and at times expose them to a virulent persecution. These throes are the Nemesis which ever pursues error (as w^ell as crime), till thinking minds are led to undertake the task of readjusting the rela- tions of physical and Divine agency. 1^ MAX DISCOVERING When nations are first brought into view by their historic records, we find them looking on certain objects and certain departments of nature as settled and fixed, while others are regarded as irregular, or at least disconnected the one with the other; the former being ascribed to the gods or to nature, the latter to the gods or fortuity, according as persons are piously or profanely dis- posed. It is in this state that we find Greece, when its earliest writings enable us to understand the views and thoughts of the people. The hills, the fields, the seasons, the ordinary life of the plant, of the animal, and of man, are objects about which httle curiosity is excited, and httle inquiry is made ; they seem all ruled and deter- mined, or they run their undeviating course without requiring any external aid to help them on. It is different with objects within the reach of man's view, but beyond his minute inspection, and with events which come with variations, or which appear at unforeseen times or with tremen- dous energy. As observation extended, and science co-ordinated the facts gathered, the por- tion of the universe seen to be regulated by law of some sort, became larger in itself, and in com- parison with the seeming irregularities and ano- mahes. It was seen, from the time when observa- tion began, that the sun has in himself some power of shining, and that his course is a regular one ; TEE UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 11 but certain superstitions were interfered with when the Babylonian star-gazers could predict the exact time of the occurrence of the eclipses of the moon. Those who were taught to consider the heavenly bodies as divine, could not look with much favour on x^naximander of Miletus, when he instituted calculations as to the sizes and distances of some of the heavenly bodies ; or upon another Ionian physiologist, Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, when he speculated as to the causes of the moon's light and the eclipses of the sun and moon, and maintained that the moon, like the earth, had plains, mountains, valleys, and dwellings, evi- dently for intelligent beings. A revolution was about to be effected in men's ideas of the world when Aristotle" elaborately demonstrated that the earth must be spherical. Anaxagoras, it is well known, represented rea- son as the first or deepest principle in the sys- tem of the universe, and maintained that by it all things were caused and set in order. When some one read this to Socrates he was highly delighted, and thought he had now discovered a sufficient explanation of what came under his notice in the world. But having got the books of the Ionian physiologist, he was astonished to find that after making reason arrange all things, Anaxagoras makes no farther reference to it, but * De Coelo, II. 14. 12 31 AN DISCO VERIXG calls in " air, ether, and water, and many other things equally out of place,"* From the few isolated references to the doctrines of Anaxagoras handed down to us from ancient times, wo can- not ascertain how he reconciled his two state- ments, of all things heing caused and disposed by intelligence, and of the physical elements being the agents employed in the production of natural occurrences. But the criticism of Socrates, and we may add, the like criticism in the next age by Aristotle, f shew that neither of these philoso- phers had attained clear ideas of the compati- bility of all things being caused and arranged by Divine reason, and yet of the economy of the world being carried on under God by physical agents. Socrates may be taken as the type of the religious philosopher of ancient Greece or Eome, bent upon seeing God and the gods (for in his creed there is a somewhat incongruous mixture of pure theism and polytheism) in all nature and in a well- ordered providence. Aristotle may be taken as the representative of the mere metaphysical and physical speculators of the same era, acknow- ledging a God or gods, and perceiving an order and a system, but not discovering or explaining how God is using all physical agencies for the accomphshment of his purposes. Neither of these profound thinkers seems to have risen to * Phaedo of Plato, 105—108. f Metaph. I. iv. 4. THE UmFOHMITY OF NATUME. 13 the idea of a God actiDg everywhere in nature, by natural agency, according to natural law. Meanwhile, the great body of the people divided what w^e call nature into two parts, one of which they ascribed to the system of things, or to chance, and the other of which they ascribed to their gods, and they were jealous to an intense and vehe- ment degree of all those philosophic speculators or physical inquirers, who maintained or wdio hinted that what they had reserved for these divi- nities could be accounted for by natural causes. I believe that the heart of many an earnest and thinking youth was wrung with agony, and could find no sympathizing one to whom to express it, as he struggled between the super- stition in wdiich he had been trained, and the natural discoveries which w^ere being opened to him ; as he strove to retain both, and found them to be incompatible ; or as he abandoned the faith of his youth to give himself up to a cold and comfortless scepticism. It is painful and hum- bling to read the record of such conflicts, in which a steadily advancing science has ever been victorious, while its opponents have been obliged to give up one untenable defence after another. But it is not, after all, without its valuable les- sons, for it shews that the defender of religion is betraying the cause committed to him, when he allows directly, or by implication, that God is not 1 4 MAN DISCO VERIXG to be seen in what is brought about by those wise and beneficent laws which he himself hath instituted. It can be proven that some of the ancients had grand glimpses of the unity of nature, evidently suggested by the correlations which were ever cast- ing up among things, wdiich at first sight seemed so unlike and disconnected. These were gene- ralized far too hastily into doctrines not autho- rised by the facts, but some of them, notwithstand- ing, have turned out to be curious anticipations, and, as it were, jjresages of modern discoveries. The Pythagoreans traced regulated numbers and forms through every object in the heavens and earth : it should be added, that they did so in a very mystical and unscientific manner. Plato dehghted to recognize earthly things as being after the patterns of eternal wisdom ; and as he often failed to discover the Divine model, he ascribed the failure to the incapacity of matter to receive the Divine idea. The views of these gifted men, though large and expanded, were shadowy and uncertahi ; they were the presentiments of genius looking to a few obvious facts, and not the results of a careful induction, and they were mixed up with innumerable errors. Of all the ancient sects, the Stoics, as we might expect from their methodical mode of procedure in everything, contrived to draw out the most com- TEE TTNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 3 5 plete plan of the system of the world. But their scheme was entirely theoretical, and was built on no induction of facts, and modern science has completely set it aside. By help of a passive principle which is matter, and an active principle which is God, and the four elements, fire, mois- ture, air, and earth, they constituted the world, in which the presiding principle is fire, identified by them with God ; which world has undergone, and shall undergo, an infinite series of cycles, each closing as it had begun with a conflagra- tion, in which all things are absorbed into the elemental, the intellectual, the Divine fire, out of which, as the heat subsides, there come, first the gods and the heavenly bodies, and then the earth with the objects on it, each new cycle exhibiting the same scenes as had gone before, so that in the next period (as in the present) there shall be a corresponding Socrates who shall marry a cor- responding Xantippe, and be accused by a cor- responding Anytos and Melitos."^' It is only in modern times that the doctrine of the unity and system of nature has been esta- blished on a basis of facts. It is interesting to observe the stages by which the human mind has proceeded in its progress. First, Copernicus promulgates the great revolutionary truth that * Orig., Contra. Gels. IV. Seneca, Quaes. Natur. III. 29. M. Aur., Med. VII. 19. Plut. Contrad. Stoic, &c. 1 6 MAN JDISCOVEBIXG the sun, as the larger body, must be the centre of the system, and that our earth goes round him as a dependency — an idea which had been thrown out in a mystic way by certain Pythagoreans at a time when the world was not prepared to receive it, but is now taken by the modern world as a fertile seed into its bosom. A change from the earth to the sun as the centre of the system would not produce so great an effect on the physical world, as that produced in man's ideas when he felt that he had a new and larger centre, and was in close relationship with a wider universe. The mechanical discoveries of Galileo removed deep- rooted prejudices, by shewing what was the law according to .which bodies tend to the earth. But the greatest impulse was given to the popular feeling, when the recently invented magnifying glasses were directed by Galileo towards the sky, and shewed that the planet Jupiter has its satel- lites, even as the earth has its moon. The new world discovered by Columbus was, in a higher sense, a new world to man's intelhgence, it added more to man's ideas than it added to his wealth or his possessions. The very common people could no longer look on the earth as a lump of stone and clay, with a flat but variegated surface, covered so far with water, when seamen returned to tell how they had actually circumnavigated our globe. Order was introduced into the wandering THE UNIFORMITY OF NATTJRE. 17 movements of the planets, when Kepler proved that Mars pursues an elUptic path, and thus gave us, hy consequence, the very orbit in which our earth runs in space. When Newton demonstrated that the moon is held in her sphere by the same power as draws a stone to the ground, men now rose in their conceptions to a law which embraces and binds the whole material world. Henceforth, even in the common apprehension, those spots of light which dot the sky at night became enlarged into worlds, possibly the suns and centres of other worlds each as large as our earth. The researches which followed the discovery of Newton shewed that gravitation operates far as observation, aided by the telescope, can reach ; and the calculations of the great continental mathe- maticians demonstrated that the variations in the movements of the bodies of the solar system are periodical, and that there is a self- regulating arrangement pervading the wdiole. Another class of investigators have been strengthening and widening our conceptions by inquiries into the more latent forces which work on earth, and which seem also to be active all throughout the mundane sphere, such as light, and heat, and chemical action, and electricity, and galvanism, and magnetism. It cannot be said that as yet we kiiow the essential nature of any of these forces, but we have discovered B 1 8 MAN DISCO r BRING enough about them to be quite certain that they operate universally, and operate according to fixed laws. Those who looked on thunder as in a special sense the voice of God, and on the light- ning as the minister of his vengeance, must have had their feelings somewhat shocked by the dis- covery of Franklin that thunder is the noise made by natural forces, quite of the same character as those which act everywhere in bodies on the earth's surface, and that the lightning is so far under the control of man that it can be drawn from the heavens by a kite. The doctrine of the correlation of the physical forces, more than even that of universal gravitation, connects eveiy part of nature with every other, in a thorough unity of action. Sir Humphrey Davy corre- lated the chemical and electric forces. Oersted correlated magnetism and electricity. Faraday has magnetised a ray of light, and illumi- nated a stream of magnetism. Late discoveries correlate all the physical forces, including heat and light, and mechanical powers, and demon- strate that they are related even to the vital forces. By an appropriate arrangement, any one physical force can be got from any other; and the amount of any one which can be derived from a given amount of another is definite, and admits of de- finite expression. As light is one of these forces, and as it is by light that the stars are revealed to TEE UNIFORMITY OF NATTIRE. 19 US, we are thus made to discover that there is a unity or connection offerees, running through the whole knowahle creation, to the most distant star which the farthest seeing telescope has disclosed. Such discoveries are turnings at which we see new aspects of old and familiar ohjects; openings through which we get views of far distant scenes ; elevations from which we descry the directions, tlie bearings, and the connections of tracts of the universe which were before regarded as divided, separated, and isplated. Researches into the organic portions of nature have furnished equally beautiful illustrations of the order, and the unity of order, in creation. The observations of naturalists, the dissections of anatomists, the classifications of botanists and zoologists, shew that in every country, every plant and every animal, and every organ of every plant and every animal, is after a type or model, and that there is a mutual affinity and a harmony among organized beings, from the lowest lichen up to the highest quadruped, and to man himself. It has been shewn that the whole skeleton of the vertebrate animal is made up of a series of seg- ments, which, with an infinite number of variations, are yet homot}^al ; that is, of the same general form. It has been shewn that all the parts of the flower of the plant, sepals, petals, stamens, and pistils are after the model of the leaf, and so MAN LISCOrEBING it can be shewn that there is a homot}]pal corre- spondence between the leaf with its \^eins or ribs, and the branch with its branchlets, and the whole tree with its ramifications. These discoveries make the animal and the plant a unity through- out. Geology, the younger, does for time, what astro- nomy, the elder sister, had previously done for space ; shewing that law reigns through all know- able age^, as the other had proven that it rules through all knowable places. It shews us the very same agencies w^orking from the remotest ages ; tracts of country widely separated from each other, raised or depressed by like causes ; and corresponding or homoeophyte plants and animals appearing on regions or ages far re- moved from one another. There are disputes as to whether there have not been supernatural exercises of Divine power in the creation of new species or orders of plants and animals ; and all believers in the Word of God, and most of those who have studied the psychological nature of the human soul, maintain that there must have been a special creative act when man appeared on the scene, but all acknowledge that physical causes operated on our earth, millions of ages ago, as they now do, and that on the j)lants or animals coming upon the stage, they are of the same fun- damental types as those now on our globe, and THE UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 3 I that tliey lived, and propagated tlieir kind, and died, as they do in our epoch. These are the views entertained hy all edu- cated men in our day, and for the professed defender of religion to set himself in opposition to tliem, would only he to injure the cause which he is seeking to henelit. It is quite as possible for those who adopt and cherish these concep- tions to he religious, as for those who have more contracted ideas and convictions as to natural law. It may he all true that they have difficul- ties and temptations to contend against ; hut these will be found to have their seat and their strength in the ungodliness of tire heart, which is much the same in all ages ; and though they may have taken a somewhat different form in this epoch of advanced physical knowledge, I doubt much whether they are greater and more formidable than those which have beset thinking minds in all times. It is surely possible for those who see natural law every^vhere, to discover at the same time the present action of God. We should so train and discipline our minds, that we see God acting in all action, and living in all life. I believe we are now in more favour- able circumstances than the heathen ever were, for seeing the Creator in all creation. In per- fect conformity with all that science has dis- covered, we may look on tlie sun, moon, and 2-2 MAN LISCOVEBIXG stars as the symbols of his majesty; ^Ye may still hear his voice in the thunder and see his terrible power in the lightning. The gods have disappeared ; but it is as ghosts flee before a brighter light, which discloses the one God in all his greatness, and higher beauties in him and in his works. God may still be regarded as compelling the clouds and hurling the thun- derbolt, with this only difference, that we also look upon him as making the sun to shine, and spanning out the bow of heaven, and preserving us in health in the midst of a thousand dangers. We can dispense with Neptune ruling the waves and Aeolus the winds, when we have one great God taking care of all, and making them work in harmony. We no longer need Phoebus and his chariot and his coursers to convey the sun ; we have a better provision for his fulfilling his course, in the laws and arrangements of the mundane system. It may have been a tem- porary disappointment to some, but should have been a permanent joy to all, when the Naiads were driven from the rivers, — on the banks of which we are encouraged to seek, and may actually find, communion with the one living and loving God. The Cafi're, after becoming a Christian, may still see God as the rain- sender, only he will now understand and believe that he does not send rain capriciously, but TEE UNIFORMITY OF NATURK 23 according to an ordained plan, and that the same God sends all other blessings as well, to call for til our gratitude in one full and, swelling tide. The Hindoo may at first be pained when the microscope shews him that he is devouring living creatures in the food he eats and the water he drinks ; but when he rises to more enhghtened and expanded views, he will be glad and grateful to think that God has filled all nature, air and earth, woods and waters, with beings living and enjoying life, and as they do so, testifying of the goodness of Him who hath given tliem all their enjoyments : and in regard to his magnificent river, while no longer permitted to honour it as a god, or allowed to cast his aged mother into its waters, he will rejoice to look upon it as it flows along so majestically, and dis- penses blessings on either bank, as a grand sym- bol of the power and the majesty of God. By tlie progress of science, the stars are driven into more distant regions of space, and creation into more remote ages of time ; but then we look on the stars as worlds, and as centres of worlds, which can be numbered only by Him who made them, and, by moving back the beginning, we leave in front a larger space for the varied evolutions of Divine wisdom, with its infinite resources. Irregularities and anomalies decrease and at last disapjDear, but it is only that wonders 24 MAN DISCOVERING may multiply and ever become more wondrous. Chaos is driven out of sight, and chance has no longer a place in which it can work ; and all, that law may universally reigii, with a living, an all-wise, and all-gracious God, as its giver and guardian. He who discovers God as acting in natural law may see God in the law as well as in the action, and may admire not only the power of the acts, but the wisdom of their mode of action. After all, the views entertained by pious and reflecting minds in the simpler, and again in the more advanced ages or stages of the world, do not difler so widely as we might at first imagine. In primitive times, the observing man sees sys- tem, and he sees seeming irregTilarities ; and the religious man ascribes both to God. In the scientific ages, the devout man observes the same two classes of phenomena ; — he perceives mecha- nical law, and the regular successions and cycles of events ; but he discovers also that there is an adaptation of one agent to another, and of one law to another, whereby God can secure the most minute providential occurrences, at times in uni- son with, at times in contradiction to, the more direct operation of the uniformities of nature. He discovers the difference of those two, as the early thinker did, with this difierence, that he observes, what the uneducated man did not, TEE UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 25 tliat both are within the natural and ordained system of God ; but with this far more important point of agreement, that he recognizes in both, as the primitive behever also did, the operation of God, fulfilling his purposes of unfathomable wisdom. We must return to this subject. 26 IN WHAT THE NATURAL CHAPTER II. IN WHAT THE NATUEAL SYSTEM CONSISTS, It is clear that nature is a system, that is, a regulated structure. Let us endeavour to find out the elements of which it is composed. So far as man can rise to a reasonable opinion on so vast and complicated a subject, they seem to consist of a number of substances, with their powers or qualities, of a distribution of them in space, and with time for them to act in. These substances have a- power of acting according to their properties; and being placed in a certain relation to each other, they begin to act; motions, changes, and new distributions follow. Thus, as things are so constituted that matter attracts mat- ter, certain bodies are drawn towards each other, while others are driven farther away, by reason of the more powerful attraction of one or more of them towards a larger body. Again, certain sub- stances combine chemically by their mutual affinity, while others are decomposed in conse- quence of the tendency of one of the elements to combine with an adjacent substance. This actual SYSTEM CONSISTS. 27 structure of the system is determined by the number of the substances, by the nature of their quahties, by the mutual relation of their rule of action, and by the arrangement and collocation of the objects. The present state of the universe is the issue of these agents, dispositions, and actions, all of which are ascribed by the pious man to God. What the ordinary observer sees, what we all see prima facie in nature, is not the ultimate elements or original structure, but a derivative order, the result of arrangement and operation. The skeleton of the body is hid from our view by a filling up, a covering, and clothing — far more grateful to us in their rounded forms and surface colouring ; and w^e can dis- cover the bones and ribs, the moving and vital organs, only by an inspection below the surface, by a, sharp and penetrating dissection. Thus, by a very simple observation, we can discern the alternation of day and night and the revolu- tion of the seasons ; but these flow from the motions and mutual adaptations of the earth and heavenly bodies, which were not found out till astronomy had made considerable progress through long ages of patient observation. It is easy to discover the general order according to which grain springs and animals grow, but to determine the precise mechanical, chemical, 28 IN WHAT THE NATURAL electric, and vital properties according to which the organism germinates and is matured, has been found by science to be a vastly more diffi- cult undertaking. Science must ever commence with the observation of phenomena, that is, of individual facts as they appear, and it would rise to the laws of phenomena, which it does by generalizing the appearances that present them- selves. It would thence strive after the discovery of the elementary objects in nature, and of their original forces or properties. It may be doubted wiiether even the most advanced .science has succeeded in reaching this knowledge in any one department of nature. It cannot be proven that we have discovered the original constitution of any one body, — that even oxygen and hydrogen are certainly indecomposable elements. It is dis- puted whether the law of chemical equivalents is an original law of elective affinity, or results, as Dalton thought, from the size and form of the primary atoms. Some maintain that even gra^d- tation is not an ultimate law of matter, and that it may possibly be generated by some other and wider and simpler force. The discovery of the primary nature, qualities, and constitution of sub- stances may be, or quite as possibly may not be, within the grasp of human investigation. Still, it is the polestar which the scientific navigator never reaches, but which he sets before him, to SYSTEM CONSISTS. 29 guide him in the direction he would take among these moving elements which he would make to fulfil his j^urposes. We are ever hearing, in these times, of the order of nature, and of the uniformities of nature, and of the laws of nature. The Rev. Baden Powell, in particular, is ever referring in all his works to the " principle of order," to the " grand principles of law," to " law pervading nature," to tlie ^' chain of universal causation," to the " in- variahle universal system of physical order and law." But no where has he entered upon a searching analysis, or given an exact statement of what is involved in these very wide, hut not very definite expressions ; and the consequence is, that he is ever making rash and unwarranted assertions as to the nature and extent of phy- sical law. If we would understand precisely what the natural system is, we must look carefully into its structure. It will he found to comprehend the following parts : — ] . Every suhstance in nature is endowed with certain properties, original or derived. Thus, the soul is possessed of powers of consciousness, of sense-perception, and feeling. Bodies continue in the state in which they happen to he, whether this be motion or rest, unless they he influenced by powers ah extra ; all bodies attract each other inversely according to the square of the distance ; 30 IX WHAT THE NATURAL the elements combine according to definite pro- portions ; light is propagated by vibrations ; ac- tion is equal and opposite to reaction ; in polar forces, like repels hke, and attracts unlike ; — tliese are samples of properties which may be simple or may be complex, but are, at all events, natural properties. These properties consist essentially in tendencies — not in acts, but tenden- cies to act, on the needful conditions being sup- plied. Thus, oxygen has the tendency to com- bine with hydrogen, and does combine with it, when the hydrogen is presented in the proper mode. Thus, it is the tendency of fire to burn when fuel is presented, and the tendency of a dead animal body to decay. It will be shewn, as we advance, that this tendency is never, properly speaking, interfered with in any of the miracles of Scripture. But our present aim is simply to bring out what is in the cosmical system. 2. The substances and their properties are correlated and distributed so as to produce a general and an obvious order. It will be shewn in a succeeding Chapter, that they are so adjusted as also to produce individual events, having an important bearing upon human character and human destiny. But our present concern is more especially with the order and uniformity of nature. These are effected by the arrangement of the substances with these properties, so as to SYSTEM CONSISTS. 31 produce here a contemporaneous order, and there a regular succession of phenomena which can he observed for scientific and for practical purposes. Of this description are the apparent motions of the sun, moon, and stars in the heavens, the seasons for sowing and planting, for reaping and gather- ing in fruit, the stages in the hfe of the plant, and a hundred other periodical laws which human beings can observe more or less easily, by science or without science, and to which they can accom- modate themselves, and, as they do so, secure the blessings which nature has provided. All this order arises from arrangements among the substances with their powers. With other dis- tributions and collocations of natural agents there might be no general laws, or the general laws would be different. The actually existing laws are admirably adapted to the constitution of man; — to his intellectual powers, which delight to discover class and cause, and the relations of means and end, and also to his practical con- venience, as enabling him to anticipate the future from his experience of the past. It is very conceiv- able that these laws may be in themselves an end contemplated by God, and pleasing to him as he surveys them. It is certain that they are a means towards a farther end, a means of making crea- tion intelligible to the intelligent creature, and capable of being used for practical purposes. 32 IN WHAT THE NATURAL Miracles, we shall see, are, in a sense, an inter- ference with these laws. They fulfil their end, they draw the attention of spectators, they become "wonders" and " signs," and they attest a supernatural revelation, because they do not fall in with natural laws. But supernatural occurrences may (it will be shewn that in fact they do) take the form of order or system, and thus fall in thoroughly with an analogy which binds the natural and supernatural, as the two compartments of one- great system, which God has constructed for the accomplishment of his ends of awful wisdom and bright beneficence. 3. There is a large yet limited body of objects and powers, constituting nature and performing its functions. I believe that the substances, with their properties, have all been created by God, and also that all their natural relations and dispositions have been instituted by him. No human power, no natural power, can add a new substance to nature, or destroy any existing sub- stance, — ^we may burn the hay or stubble, but it is not thereby annihilated, one j)ortion has gone up into the air as smoke, another has gone down to the earth as ashes. Not only so, it seems to be established by the latest science, that power cannot be created or lost, and that the sum of force in the world cannot be increased or diminished, by natural means. We may trans- SYSTHJf COXSISTS. 33 form one natural force into another, or make one natural force produce another ; hut in all the mutual action of hodies, the sum of the potential and actual energies is never altered. Not only is it beyond created power to create or annihilate new bodies or substances, it is beyond all natural power to create or annihilate force. Nature is a self-comprised system, globe, or sphere ; in se ipso totiis, teres, atque rotimdus. In saying so, it is not meant to assert that this sphere has no points of contact or relationship with other compartments of creation, and still less, that it has no dejDendence on a higher and a supernatural power. All that we maintain is, that it has a number of agencies which, in their totality, combination, and action, constitute the system of nature. A miracle, we shall see, does imply the interposition of a power beyond this mundane sphere. It serves its end, because it is the effect of a supernatural cause. But, meanwhile, let us understand precisely what is meant when it is said, that nature is a self-contained system. Let us not suppose that it has been proven that it needs nothing to sup- port it, and that it will go on for ever if left to itself. The geologist, in his diggings, has gone a httle beneath the surface, but has not reached tlie bottom in his explorations ; he has gone back many ages, but has not reached the beginning, c 34 m WHAT TEE NATURAL which ever retreats before him. The astronomer has penetrated to great distances, but he has not reached the outside, — he is just impressed the more with the vast circumambient region into which his telescope cannot penetrate. Science, in all its explorings, knows not when the beginning was, nor when the end shall be ; knows not where the centre is, nor where the circumference is, — if indeed there be a circumference. This knowable world, however large and complete, is not, after all, the universe, but only a part of it ; whether we follow it behind or before, above or beneath, on the right side or the left, it is seen to be broken off; beginning we know not when, ending we know not where, but certainly not when and where our vision fails ; it looks hung from above, and resting below, on nothing discoverable by physical science. There is clear evidence that things have not always been as they now are : there was a time, for example, when man was not on the earth ; an earlier time, when there were no animals on the globe. There is no evi- dence that there are physical agencies in the world which would keep it existing for ever. The continental mathematicians of last century thought they had gone a step beyond Sir Isaac Newton, and demonstrated that, according to laws now in existence, the machine would go on through all eternity, without requiring to be SYSTEM CONSISTS. 35 wound up, or receiving any aid from without. All that they proved was, that there is a heautiful self-adjusting or self- regulating arrangement in tlie solar system, which secures that the ohvious variations of the motions of the planetary hodies are periodical. Later inquiry has sheAvn, that there are agencies now operating which must, in the end, dissipate the whole existing order of things ; and the most advanced science has dis- covered no natural means of counteracting the destructive tendency. The following are the conclusions drawn hy Professor W. Thomson : — *' 1. There is at present, in the material world, a universal tendency to the dissipation of mecha- nical energy. 2. Any restoration of mechanical energy, without more than equivalent dissipation, is impossible in inanimate material processes, and is probably never effected by means of orga- nized matter, either endowed with vegetable life, or subjected to the will of an animated creature. 3. Within a finite period of time past, the earth must have been, and within a finite period of time to come, the earth must again be, unfit for the habitation of man as at present constituted, unless operations have been, or are to be, per- formed which are impossible under the laws to which the known operations going on at present in the material world are subject." " * Transactions of the Eoyal Society of Edinburgh, 1852. 36 MENTAL FRINCIPLES INVOLVED CHAPTER III. MENTAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN OUR CONVICTION AS TO THE UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. Our belief in the uniformity of nature is, I am persuaded, the result of a large and long ex- perience. It does not seem to be guaranteed by any native or necessary principle. There are, as I think, very clear tests by which supposed in- tuitive convictions of the mind may be tried. Intuitive or necessary truths are all self-evident ; they are seen to be true on the bare inspection or contemplation of the objects. They are also necessary ; that is, they carry with them an irresistible conviction that they are true and must be true. They are, farther, catholic or universal ; that is, they are entertained by all men, on their minds being fairly directed to the objects. But our conviction as to the unity or uniformity of nature cannot stand these tests. It is not a self-evident truth ; men cannot, on the bare contemplation of the notions or terms, and apart from a course of experience and the gathering of facts, declare that law reigns over all objects in nature. It is IN OUR CONVICTION. 37 not necessary, it is certainly not universal ; for^ in fact, the unscientific and the unlettered, who constitute the great bulk of mankind, are igno- rant of it, and a vast number, were some one to propound the doctrine to them, would declare that it cannot be true, for that they see constant interpositions of supra-mundane agencies. The conviction is entertained steadily, and in regard to the whole of nature, by those only who have had the advantage of a scientific culture, by which, or by the literature in connection with it, they have been put in possession of the results of a very wide induction of facts. Still I am inclined to think that there are native and original principles of the mind which incline us to look for, though they do not compel us, apart from experience, to believe in, law and uniformity in nature." 1. There is an intuition which leads us to look on every object falling under our notice as having Being^ something constituting it what it is, abiding in it, and going with it wher- ever it goes, so that we are sure that if we meet with that object again it will have this being or essential nature, which must ever con- * I cannot, in this treatise, give a general exposition of the intuitive convictions which I here call in to explain our inclination to seek out for uniformity, and so I must refer to my work on the " Intuitions of the Mind." 38 MENTAL FRIXCIPLES INVOLVED tinue with it, unless destroyed by something ah extra. This intuition, commonly unobserved, enters into all our knowledge of objects, and makes us feel that we are surrounded, not with ideas, images, or spectres, but with solid and abiding realities. It is to be carefully noted, however, that this intuition does not vouch for the uniformity of nature. We have an intuition which says that every object must retain its being, unless changed by an external cause, but w^e have no intuitive means of knowing, as to any given object, whether it is the same as we met with before. We have to determine this by ap- pearances, and by experiential rules of evidence. But, in forming our judgment, we may be mis- taken, and, in fact, are often mistaken. The child frequently looks on a stranger, seen at some dis- tance, as its father or mother ; and all our lives we may be tempted to find identity where there is only similarity. The intuition of being, or identity, is, however, one means, not exactly of leading us to a conviction of the uniformity of na- ' ture, but of inducing us to look for the sameness of objects surrounding us. 2. There is an intuition as to substance and quality. Tbis joins on to the one we have just been looking at, but goes beyond it. We regard every substance as exercising a quality, and every quality as implying a substance. We are thus IX OUR coNriCTio2{. 39 led, when we perceive an object, to anticipate that it will have some kind of action, and we are thus carried up in our investigation from the properties exercised to the things that exercise them. All this does not prove that there is ever the same group of objects in nature, but it prompts us to observe the action of objects, and the uniformity of action of objects, falling under our notice, and to trace all action up to substances. 3. There is the intuition which leads us, when we discover an effect to look for a cause. This intuition connects itself with the other two ; but it rises to farther truth. On seeing a change, we are sure that there has been an agent effecting it. This is the most active and potent of all mental principles in impelhng us to the scrutiny of nature. We are not satisfied with the im- mediate present, we are sure that it has proceeded from the past ; and we go back from the nearer to the more remote past, and we are not contented till we reach an all-sufficient cause which is not itself an effect. But this principle, while it ever prompts us to seek for the causes of the effects which come under our notice, and thus leads us to discover the causal connexions in nature, does not insist that all things proceed according to an eternal chain of physical or of mundane causa- tion. The conviction does, indeed, demand a cause for every occurrence, but would be quite 40 MENTAL PEINCIPLES INVOLVED satisfied though some or all the causes were supernatural. 4. There is another native (not necessary) in- clination of the intellect which has its influence in making us seek for, and in the end discover, the uniformity of nature, — it is the tendency to perceive resemblances. We love to detect like- nesses of every kind, and by means of them to bring the multifarious objects around us into classes, into species, genera and orders, with due ordination and subordination. I do not look upon this intellectual impulse of the mind as being of the nature of a principle of reason, or an intuition guaranteeing necessary truth. It is merely a native talent, taste, and disposition, tending ever to act, and in doing so, to seek out its appropriate objects, that is, resemblances and affinities^ of every kind, and thus connect all nature by analogies, and bring all its objects into groups. All this does not prove that nature is uniform, it simply prompts us to seek out for the uniformities that exist. It is only on actually observing the analogies of nature, that we know them to exist; and the internal inclination does not guarantee their existence beyond the objects that have been actually ex- amined. This same mental principle, on the discovery being made of supernatural operations, will delight to trace analogies between the IN OUR CONVICTION. 41 natural and supernatural, and between one part of the supernatural and another, — and we shall discover that there is abundant field here thrown open for the exercise of the faculty. These, or such as these — blended, in the quick- ness of mental action, as colours are on a rapidly- circulating body — seem to me to be the mentar principles which lead us to seek for a uniformity in nature. They constitute th^-t instinct to which Thomas Reid, Dugald Stew^art, and- others of the Scottish metaphysicians so often refer, and which they seem to look upon as a simple principle, un- resolvable into any other elements, whereas I regard it as the combination or issue of seve- ral mental intuitions, each inclining the mind in the same direction. It is to be specially noted, that no one of these mental principles of itself authorizes a conviction of the uniformity of nature, nor do they together sanction any such wide conclusion as that nature has nothing but physical or mundane law. Nor is any one of them, nor are the whole of them, inconsistent with a miracle. We may regard every object as having permanent being, without having any in- formation or belief as to how many objects are operating around us, or as to whether they are wdthin or beyond the domains of nature. We believe that substances will act, according to their properties, on the needful conditions being sup- 42 MENTAL PEINCIPLES INVOLVED plied ; but this law of mind says nothing as to what substances are at work, or as to whether they are all within the circle of mundane agencies, or whether some of them may not be from a region beyond. Every effect has a cause ; but for any- thing the intuition says to the contrary, the causes of the effects visible to us might be found quite as readily in Divine as in creative agencies. Our faculty of comparison prompts to the discovery of likenesses, but it is observation that finds out what are the actual analogies in the Cosmos. All that these intellectual propensities do is to instigate us to seek out for the permanence, the activity, the causal connexions, and the affinities that exist in the objects pressing themselves on our notice. As we follow them, and observe the phenomena, we arrive at the reasonable conviction that there is a universal system of natural law. But this is the product not of intuition but of a lengthened observation, to which, indeed, our intellectual promptings have incited us, while it is experience which furnishes the true ground on which the belief rests. The same experience which authorizes the conviction must determine the extent of it, and the limits to it. As it is by the evidence of facts that we reach the wide . general maxim, that there is uniformity through- out nature, so we may also, by the same evidence of facts, reach the conviction that there is a super- IN OUR CONVICTION. 43 natural power operating in the midst of the natural system. It will be found, indeed, that the very same intuitions which instigate us to notice the stability and the correlations of nature, also allure and prompt — indeed compel — us to go on to a belief in a supernatural power and activity. Our intuition as to being is not satisfied with dependent being; it feels that it has not got a deep enough foundation till it rests on indepen- dent being. Our intuition as to substance will go down till it reaches self-existing substance. Our intuition as to cause insists on going back to the Being to whom emphatically all power belongeth ; and when an occurrence is discovered in this mundane sphere, beyond the capacity of natural agents, it demands a supernatural power. Our inclination towards analogies does instigate us to admire the wondrous affinities of nature ; but it will be quite as interested in looking into the analogies between the natural and spiritual, — " And what if earth Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein Each to other like, more than on earth is thought ?" The above statement brings out, I believe, what our consciousness reveals of our actual mental operations ; and it accounts, on the one hand, for that inductive propensity which ever incites minds of higher intellectual calibre to 44 MENTAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED. seek for the uniformities of nature, while it is quite consistent with the fact, that the great body of mankind have ever been prone to seek for supernatural interpositions amid natural occurrences ; and it certainly shews that it is vain to appeal to any native principle of the mind as authorizing the rash assertion that a miracle is an impossibility." * Reid says, " God hath implanted in human minds an original prin- ciple, by which we believe and expect the continuance of the course of nature, and the continuance of those connections which we have ohserved in time past." And again, " Antecedently to all reasoning, we have, hy our constitution, an anticipation that there is a fixed and steady course of nature." — JForks (Ham. Ed.) pp. 198, 199. He allows that this expectation " leads us often into mistakes," p. 199. D. Stewart represents our " expectation of the continuance of the laws of nature " as "an original law of human belief," and seeks to explain by it " our conviction of the permanent and independent existence of matter." — Phil. Essays {Works, vol. v.) pp. 104 — 106. I greatly doubt whether the child or savage has any expectation or belief about a " steady course of nature " or " laws of nature." It has merely cer- tain tendencies which make it look out for constancy and law, whether in nature or beyond it. HOW MUCH IS CONTAINED IN THE NATURAL. 45 CHAPTER lY. HOW MUCH IS CONTAINED IN THE NATUEAL. In the present day tliere is a constant reference to nature or natural law. But those who make the most frequent appeals to it generally take a very limited view after all, meaning by it merely mechanical, or, at the utmost, physical law, — thus contemplating only one of its many mansions. Let us comprehend and thoroughly realise the extent of the natural. I, Let us observe the extent of the Physical. 1. The natural undoubtedly includes Order. It is the aspect of it most frequently dwelt upon in these times. In particular, it was the feature habitually and exclusively viewed by Mr. B. Powell, who seems^ in the end, almost to have identified order with God; thus he speaks of the " great principle of physical order, and its conse- quences, as the indication of, or rather as sy- nonvmous with, reason and mind in the natural world."" By all means let us labour to discover the order in the physical world ; and, as we do so, * Order of Nature, p. 242. 46 HOW MUCH IS CONTAINED let US cleYOutly look upon it as the expression of intelligence. But the order of nature, least of all the " physical order/' is not synonymous with "reason and mind," it is merely an indication of them ; and the •' reason " always resides in another sphere, — it resides in " mind," — that is, in the Divine Mind. Mr. Powell is ever represent- ing order as the proof, and the sole proof in the world, of inteUigence. But, amid all his dog- matical assertions, and wearisome repetition of assertion, we look in vain for the ground or principle on which he argues inteUigence from physical order, and we are left in ignorance as to whether he proceeds upon intuition or experi- ence, on a mental law or an external observational law, or on what else. I am inclined to look on order as the evidence of intelligence, because it is an evidence of design, and that it is an evi- dence of design, because the result of arrange- ment contemplating a wise and beneficent end. Certain it is that the order of nature is the issue of an assortment among very numerous and diversified materials and agencies. What a vast variety, within the Cosmos, of separate sub- stances, animate and inanimate, material and mental, each with its distinct powers and rules of action. The order of nature is due to no one of these taken by itself. Take the forces which may seem the most strictly and numerically IN THE NATURAL. 47 regulated — take the law of gravitation and the hiw of the chemical affinities of hodies — they are only single elements of the order which reigns in the compartments in which they are found. The law of gravitation might draw all hodies to one great centre, and bring all motion to a dead halt, were there not an adjustment of centrifugal and centripetal forces. Chemical attractions, among bodies incongruously huddled, might give play only to a war of jarring elements, or settle into lumpish compounds standing in our way as an incumbrance. Order in the solar system, order in the earth, order in the structure of the inorganic materials in our world, order in the stems and flowers of plants, order in the organs and movements of animals, are all the result of arrangements made by a power without and above the material forces. Just as the figures in damask or in the carpet are made to come out from threads skilfully predisposed and then in- tertwined, so do the beautiful forms of plants and animals — the elegant conical forms, for example, of pines and their fruit — the lovely shapes and colours of the corolla of flowers — the fine propor- tions and graceful movements of man and woman — all proceed from a skilful adjustment among rude materials. It is because order is the result of arrangement that I am inclined to regard it as an evidence of intelligence. 48 HOW MUCH IS CONTAINED 2. This order, as it results from means ap- pointed by God, so it is also a Mean toivards an End contemplated by God. In saying so, I do not mean to say that this order may not be in itself an end. It may be, that just because it is order it is grateful to the high wisdom of Him who delights in all his works. It may be, that it is also pleasing to the contemplative mind of angelic beings, as they look down upon its pro- portions and harmonies from their heights above us. But whatever else it may be, it is also a mean towards ends of very high importance. In saying so, I do not refer to relations which it may have to other and unseen worlds. It is clear that it is the order in our earth which constitutes it a compartment of the wide Cosmos known to us ; and it may be, that it is the order in our Cosmos which makes it fit into a yet larger system of which ours is but a part. All this may or may not be, — we must so speak because the theme lies in a region beyond the clouds which ever bound our vision. But there is an end served by the order in our world of which we can speak with confidence ; for it comes every where, and alluringly, and pres- singly, under our view. The order has certainly and obviously a special respect to man. His intelligence is so constructed that he has plea- sure in contemplating it, and is ever impelled to IN THE NATURAL. 49 seek out for it, and he experiences a Ligli delight in tracing the elements in the compounds, in grouping the individuals into classes, and in detecting the causal links by which the present hangs on the past, and has dependencies in the future. Not only so, it is because there are estab- lished order and law in the Cosmos, that man can accommodate himself practically to the position in which he is placed, take steps to draw in the good and avert the evil, and exercise an in- fluence on coming events. It is because there are day and night in orderly succession that he knows how to plan his periocls of rest and labour ; it is because there is a regular succes- sion of seasons that he knows when to sow his crops; it is because seed bears fruit after its kind that he knows what sort of crop to sow; it is because the laws of chemical composition and decomposition are invariable that he con- tinues to partake of food in the confidence that it will nourish him ; it is because there are laws of political economy that the statesman can add to a nation's w^ealth ; it is because there are laws of mind and character that the wise and strong man can sway for good or evil the opinions and morals of the men of his own age, and transmit his influence to the generations that follow. 3. In nature there is Beauty as well as mecha- nical and physical law, I by no means maintain D 50 sow MUCH IS CONTAINED tliat the phrase beautiful, can he apphecl appro- priately to every object in our world. A state of things in which everything was positively lovely, would, in the first instance, be too exciting, and, in the end, would pall upon the taste, by being too luscious and luxurious. I believe that every object in the Cosmos is useful, it is suited to its place, and it has a good end to serve ; but it would be extravagance to affirm, that evei^y sur- face of clay or cloud has aesthetic qualities. It is out of the midst of the more ordinary and commonplace scenes that certain objects rise — as plants do from the soil of the earth, as damp vapours are lit up by the setting sun, as moun- tains lift up their heads from the plains — to melt and soften us by their loveliness of form or colour, to kindle our mind and our eye by their sharp and vivid outline, or to awe us by their huge bulk, or dizzying height, or irresis- tible power. Persons busied with the more sordid solicitudes of life have little time, except perhaps in a quiet evening after the toils of the day are over, to spend on the admiration of beauty; and, in fact, they have little relish for it except in its more obvious forms — as in the flowing stream, in the grassy slope, the fertile plain, the glowing evening sky, or the face and person of young man and maiden ; but as mental cultivation advances, and accumulated wealth ly TRE NA TURAL. 5 1 leaves leisure for quiet observation and reflec- tion, the taste becomes more and more intense, and takes in a much greater sweep of things, and it is found that there are objects in nature to gratify it, — in sky and cloud, in mountain and valley, in tree and flower, in animal life lower and higher, in man and in woman; and that there are persons moved to produce objects of art for the farther gratification and elevation of it, — in music, in statues, in paintings, and, above all, in poems, which come nearest to the full symphonies of nature without us, and the capacity of the taste within. It would be for the benefit of the exclusive observers of mechanical law to contemplate this feature of the well-ordered Cosmos, were it only to raise them to something higher — as music and poetry are often made the stimulus wherewithal to raise men to noble thoughts and sentiments. They should observe that these very mechanical powers are often turned by God and man to the production of works of art, which lift us far above natural law into a region bordering on the moral and spiritual, to the existence of which they testify, and to w4iich they are meant to be fit ministers. 4. There is in nature a Fitting of every one object and power to every other. I am convinced that there is a prior propriety in the very original constitution of the objects themselves, and of the 52 EOW MUCH IS CONTAINED powers or properties with which they are endowed. I argue this on two grounds. One is, that, so far as we are able to penetrate into the ultimate constitution of the powers of nature, w^e dis- cover — as in gravitation and chemical affinities, and the dispositions of the organs of plants — nu- merical relations and proportions with a very profound meaning. The other is, that order is seen to be the result of their operation in actual nature, and it is not easy to see how such har- monies should result from the union of ma- terials in themselves altogether discordant. But whether there be or be not method in the ori- ginal structure of the substances in nature, whether the harmony has proceeded from con- cords or from discords, it is quite certain that it has proceeded from an arrangement of some kind — for even melodies, without assortment, will not produce harmonies by their conjunction; and so we are constrained to recognise superlative wisdom in the accommodation of every object to every other, of every group of objects to every other, of every system of groups to every other, and of the whole to every part, and of every part to the whole. The actual order of nature is the result, we have seen, of these con- formities, and so must also be the beauty which consists in colour and form, in proportion and harmony. From these same arrangements pro- /xV THE NATURAL. 53 ceed other benelicerit characteristics which we are now to consider. 5. In nature there is Final Cause, havino- respect to the comfort of the lower animals and of man. In the plant, the simple material ele- ments — the oxygen, hydrogen, carbon and nitro- gen — are made to correspond with one another; and the external stimuli of light and heat, moisture and food, so act on them as to produce that organic structure which is so pleasing to the eye of intelligence, and is made in its growth and fruit to furnish such nourishment to the animal creation. In the animal frame, hone so fits into hone, and hone is so adapted to attached muscle, and the vital organs are so suited to each other and to the nerves and brain, that the organism becomes a wondrous unity, in w^hich every part has a function and subserves the good of the whole. This final cause, pervad- ing, as it does, all nature, and especially every part of it bearing on animal comfort, is quite as obvious as the material or physical cause. Nor is it any valid objection that, as we know every- thing only partially and in progress, we cannot be prepared to pronounce upon the purposes of God. I give no credit for humility to those who tell us that it would be presumptuous in them to imagine that they can discover any of the de- signs of an infinite God. I am not disposed to 54 sow 211' CE IS CONTAINED lavish any sympathy on those who tell us, with a sigh, that they are so sorry that they cannot detect any special end in events which seem to move on like a stream in an unhroken flow. It is a great truth that we know hut in part ; hut this implies that we do know, though only in part. He who denies this consequence is logi- cally landing himself in a universal scepticism, which no man can consistently carry out. It is not required that we should profess to have " found out the work which God worketh from the beginning to the end," in order to entitle us consistently to affirm that we see so much of the work of God as to lead us to adniiire it and de- light in it. It is not needful that we should be able to fathom all the mysteries of nature, in order to be quite sure that we know some of its laws, and somewhat of its method. Many a one who does not comprehend all that is in the Principia of Newton, does yet rejoice that he ap- prehends so much of the Newtonian discoveries, and can appreciate what he understands. We who are uninitiated should not attempt to guess at all that is transacted in our great mercantile houses, which trade with the ends of the earth, or find out the purpose aimed at by the general in all his military movements, or by the Minis- terial Cabinet in all its counsels, though we may, without presumption, venture to say that we ZlY the xatueal. 55 see some of the means employed, and some of the ends accomphshed. I am using small mat- ters to illustrate great ones. We should cer- tainl}^ never pretend to he ahle to find out all the purposes contemplated by God in any one of his acts and agencies, for I believe that, in the pleni- tude of his wisdom, he commonly accomplishes a great variety of ends by one and the same means. " Canst thou by searching find out God ? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?" " Such knowledge is too wonderful for me ; it is high, I cannot attain unto it." Still there is so much that we can know ; it is meant that we know it ; it is thrown open to us freely and un- grudgingly, as in a museum, or school, or garden, for this very purpose. " The secret things belong unto the Lord our God ; but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children." God's works are throughout a manifestation of God, and are, so far, a revelation of his will. The scientific man is quite certain that he has discovered laws ; they may or they may not be ultimate laws, but they are laws ruling in nature, and he can turn them to practical purposes. There are also in creation special ends which we can discover, and this without professing to know all the counsels of God. The fountain may be high up in mist or mountain beyond our reach, and the ocean into which the waters pour them- 56 sow 3IUCJ3: IS CONTAINED selves may be unexplorable in its vastness, still we know so much of the stream as it flows past us, or as we float on its bosom, to be quite sure that we see uses served by it, and know the direction in which it runs. I have really no moral tolerance for those who tell you that they are not sure whether the eye were made for seeing, or the ear for hearing, or the hand for grasping, or the feet for walking, or the ball and socket joint at the shoulder to give a convenient and easy motion to the arm. 6. Nature throughout has a Bespect to Man. All objects on the earth minister to his bodily wants, and are, so far, subordinated to him. Geology seems to shew that when man was about to come on the scene, there are plants, unknown before, which make their appearance to sustain his life, and contribute to his enjoy- ment — such as wheat, and barley, and oats, and rye, and Indian corn, and millet, and rice, and the plants which yield wine, and oil, and odours, as well as most of those, such as roses, which are covered with the flowers which yield him such delight. When he comes, he "has dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth on the earth." As he uses his power, his intelligence is evoked and strengthened ; for, if he would earn a suste- nance, or enjoy the full blessings of life, he must ly TEE NATURAL. 57 cultivate the soil, and tend the plants, and care for the lower animals. The very order of nature, we have seen, is adapted to his contemplative intellect, which delights to resolve the complex structures of nature into their ingredients, to catch the chxsses according to which all the ohjects in nature are arranged, to trace the causes and comhinations of causes from which all changes proceed, and to dwell on the propor- tioned forms and harmonious colours which everywhere draw our regards towards them. If we train ourselves to look on physical nature as a mean, having throughout a respect to man, to his happiness and elevation, I helieve we will not be disinclined to suppose that there may be other and supernatural means provided to further the same general ends of beneficence and morality. And here it will be necessary to remove the impression, that because there are other pur- poses served by the agencies of heaven and earth, we are no longer entitled to look upon them as having the respect which our forefathers fondly imagined them to have towards the chil- dren of men. There was an excuse, they allow, for those who looked on the earth as the centre of the world, when they supposed that the hea- venly bodies had a peculiar reference to man ; but it is said to be absolutely ludicrous to entertain any such notion, now that we know 58 irOJF MUCH IS CONTAIXED that the earth is a comparatively small body dangling round a vastly larger one, and that the stars are themselves worlds or centres of worlds. But I maintain that all this is the conception, not of large, hut of contracted minds, which look upon the great God as being like the great man, who must often neglect affairs of less importance in attending to matters of mighty moment. It would be a most unfortunate nar- rowing of a boy's idea of a father's love, were some one to persuade him, now that he sees that the father has wide cares as a merchant, or wider cares as a statesman, that one so burdened cannot possibly feel so deep an interest in his family as at one time he was supposed to take. On the same principle, it would truly be a lower- ing, instead of an enlargement, of our ideas of God's greatness, were we tempted to believe that, in fulfilling his purposes of wisdom towards these other worlds we have come in sight of, he is obliged to withdraw his special regards from his intelligent and re^onsible creatures on the earth. Those who -would rise to a full compre- hension of God's goodness, and of his greatness in his goodness, must learn to conceive of him, as not neglecting the part, because he has to take care of the mighty whole, and as making, in the riches of his resources and in the might of his love, as full a provision for our earth and IN THE NATVEAL. ^ 59 for each creature on it, as if there were no other workl or no other created heing in the universe. It is all true that the man of devout spirit is inclined to say, " When I consider thy heavens the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained ; what is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou visitest him." But while he is amazed at the Divine condescension, he does not douht that condescension. He believes that the hea- vens are the work of God's finger, and tjiat the stars are ordained by God ; but he believes quite as firmly that God is mindful of the chil- dren of men, and graciously visits them. God's greatness is seen in his taking care of the little — as we reckon it in our littleness — equally with the great. The pansy, no doubt, is the product of wide physiological laws which have relations to many interests ; but it can be shewn that, by the shape it has been made to take, and the harmonious colours of yellow and purple and white which come out on its corolla, it is ex- quisitely suited to the eye and to the tastes of men. The sun lightens other planets ; but it lightens this one also as beneficently as if it had no other to shine on. These stars, no doubt, look far out with penetrating eye into space ; but I am persuaded that every unclouded night they look down with benign regard upon our world. 60 HOW MUCH IS CONTAINED 7. In nature there is a Special Providence. In all ages mankind have been inclined to believe not only in general law but in particular provi- sions which have a respect to the individual man and his special wants. The views entertained, both of one and other of these, by men of con- tracted vision and limited prospects, have been very narrow, and their opinions of the relation of the one to the other have commonly been very confused, and at times very -erroneous. Still, mankind generally have risen to some idea of a settled system on the one hand, and of certain dispositions or interventions on the other; and they can be justified in believino- in the ex- istence of both. I maintain that advancing knowledge has not set aside either of these. I deny that in throwing open larger views of the general order it has made it necessary for us to overlook the special providence ; for while God has so arranged his physical agents, that general laws, such as those of the seasons and of the stages in the life of animated beings, every where prevail, and prevail for the good of man, he has also so disposed them that by their combina- .tion or coincidence, crossing or collision, they produce individual incidents, which exercise a mighty influence on the world at large, or which meet the state and the wants of individual men at momentous or critical times in their history. IN THE NATUHAL. 61 The seasons revolve according to a regular sys- tem, but in the very midst of the heat of sum- mer there may interpose, — and this by the pre- arrangements of nature, — a storm which wrecks the persons or fortunes of hundreds, or gives a new turn to the wdiole life and destiny of some individual. There is an average life for man upon the earth, but, by a natural disposition of natural agents, the child which has nestled itself in the w^armest affections of a parent's love, may have its life nipped in the bud; or the youth, full of hope and activity, may have all his energies for ever arrested, and his fond plans finally frus- trated by unexpected, but not unordained, disease or death ; and one or other of these events may come home wdth very peculiar force to the heart of some interested individual, and have a greater influence on his or her future life in time or eternity, than has been exercised by all the more orderly events on wdiich the scientific or philosophic mind is so apt to dwell. By all means let us observe the order in nature, for it is the w^ork of God ; but as w^e do so, let us not overlook the mutual fitting of objects and powders by which the order is produced ; and let us also note how^, by this same predisposition of law^s and agents, there are brought about individual occurrences by wdiich a mighty power is exerted on the destinies of the world at large, or of par- 62 HOW MUCH IS CONTAINED ticular persons ; by which great men appear on the emergency to do their appropriate work, or by which great tides of popuLar feehng are raised up, evidently by a power from above drawing them, and to keep the shiggish waters of our earth from stagnating ; by which the archtyrant is cut off when his schemes of wickedness were about to be consummated; by which the poor man has his wants supphed in the time of need ; by which the guihy is detected, as by hghtning flashing out and glaring upon him in the dark- ness as he did the deed; by which the falsely accused has his character fully vindicated and all suspicions dispelled ; by which the man waiting for instruction is rebuked when he w^ould become vain and proud, or cheered when he would lose his courage and sink; and by which the good man has his purposes of usefulness helped on to their completion — openings being disclosed to him on the right hand and on the left — mountains which seemed to shut him in, shewing an outlet for him as he advances — and the stream which bears him along hav- ing a channel provided for it, till it carries him to his destination.'"^ We can surely be- hove that He who has so provided for the meanest of the earthly wants of his creatures, *■ The author has explained this fully in the " Method of Divine Government, Fhysical and IMoral."— -Bk. II., chap. ii. IN THE NATURAL. Go will also provide for tlieir deeper and spiritual wants. II. In nature there are Souls with High Endowments. It is an unfortunate incidental effect of the division of labour in science, and of the suc- cess which has attended the study of the physical sciences, and of the interest which has, in con- sequence, collected around them and the phe- nomena investigated by them, that the most wondrous object disclosed to us in our world has been overlooked by many who have a large know- ledge of the heavens and earth, or a minute acquaintance with particular departments of them. Nature is a vastly richer field than some imagine ; it has gems, which many never discern, as well as the stone and the clay which mankind are ever looking at. There is more in it than mechanical, and chemical, and electric force, — more than the plant, with its vital power, more than the animal, with its sensations, its appe- tences, and its incipient reason. This earth has something nobler on its surface than the tele- scope has^ ever discovered in sun or star. This epoch of our worlds history has in it a being vastly better, and, alas ! vastly worse, than all the brutes which enjoyed life on its surface in the earlier geological ages. In the complex but com- pact structure of nature it is evident that some 64 now MUCH IS contained parts are higher than others ; — some being, as it were, the moving powers, others the mere channels of transmission ; some, as it were, the head and heart, and others tlie mere arms or hmhs. In this economy the animate has a higher phice than the inanimate. The plant, by its living power, draws rude matter into itself, and turns it to its own uses ; while, again, the animal feeds upon the plant, and subordinates it to its own superior functions ; and above them all is the soul of man, with its conscience and its free will, capable of controlling the animal instincts, and turning them to high moral ends. There is machinery in our world, we admit, but there are workmen with throbbing hearts moving and labouring in the midst of it, and these are also worthy of our attention and regards — the very machinery has throughout a respect to them. Yerily, he must be guilty of a flagrant oversight who, in considering nature, overlooks human nature. It is as if one were to visit a great city, and admire its masonry and its architecture, and take no notice of the inhabitants, with their strivings and ambition, their sins and their sc^tows; or travel through a rural district, and feel interested in the cottages and the culture of the fiekls, but neglect to make the acquaintance of the tillers of the ground, with their cares, their feuds, their industry and their vices ; or as if one were to IN THE NATUIiAL. 65 inspect a school, and note its order and its discipline, and not think of tlie motives throb- bing in the hearts of the children ; or it is as if one ^vere to look down from a lieight on a battle-field, and follow the military movements, and never once be impressed wdth the passions quivering in the breasts of the combatants, or moved by the writhings of the wounded and dying. ]. Let us consider that the soul has high Intellectual Endoivments. The mechanical in- quirer is w^ell employed when he is seeking to obtain the riglit expression of the laws of motion and force; the physiologist is fulfilling a very important function when he is trying to catch the more recondite laws of life; but let both acknowledge that in the mind of man there are still higher laws at w^ork — if only the psycholo- gist could seize them as they act, or rather that they exist and ever operate wdiether he does or does not succeed in apprehending or expressing them. And let not the psychologist, in his attention to the inferior parts of our mental nature, iigis?, the higher and nobler. As'he looks at the dependence of mind and body, let him not neglect its higher and more independent powders ; as he analyses our sensations, and our instinc- tive feelings, and our remembrances, and our associations, let him not omit the higher attri- 66 iioir MUCH is contained butes of mind. Whether metaphysicians have or have not succeeded in mifolding them, let us reahse how much is imphed in such an attribute as consciousness, the consciousness of self — the consciousness of ourselves as persons ; how much is involved in our higher intelligence; in our being able to perceive truth, and necessary truth ; in our being able to know things, and the rela- tion of things ; to know the necessity of mathe- matical and other relations, and the indelible distinction between right and wrong. These in- telligent acts shew how closely we are allied to higher and supernatural intelligences. 2. Let us consider how much is involved in our haAdng a Free Will, and in our being free agents. A fact is now before us of an altogether different kind from those which meet us in any of the lower departments of nature. In behalf of that fact we have the testimony of consciousness so clear, so decided, so assuring, that it needs no confirming evidence, and can be set aside by no seemingly conflicting proof. In order to gain all we need for our argument, we do not require to take a side with the Augustinian or the«Pelagian, with the Calvinist or Arminian : we assume nothing beyond what Augustine and Calvin both acknowledge — that man has, in his essential nature, a power and freedom of choice, which makes him a free and responsible agent. Here, IjY the natural. 67 then, we have a being raised above all other subkmary agents, and closely allied to that free agent who is above nature, and from whose free exercise of power all nature has proceeded. At this point we have come in sight of that pos- sibility of sinning which has issued in a fearful actuality; and this is the awful fact that seems to call for an interposition from a supernatural sphere. 3. The natural man has a Conscience, which discerns a moral good and a moral evil ; which declares that there is a distinction between the two, indelible and immutable ; which points up to a law altogether different in kind from mathema- tical or physical law; a law with obligations re- quiring us to do this, and not to do that; a law above man, implying a lawgiver above nature — a lawgiver who must also be a judge, and call man into account for the " things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad." Every one carries in his very nature feelings and principles which announce and guarantee all these truths ; and whoever believes them, as the great body of mankind do beheve them, in a less or more conscious man- ner, feels himself under a supernatural authority, responsible to a supernatural being, and about to exist in a supernatural state of things. 4. Man is, in his very nature, a Bdigious Being. G8 now MUCH IS COXTAINED This is attested at once by every man's internal feeling and by the records of history. Different accounts have been given of what it is in man's natm^e which makes him the subject of religious convictions, of rehgious fears, and religious hopes. Some have supposed it to spring from an im- inediate intuition or consciousness of God. I am more inclined to look upon it as the natural and intended result of several native intuitions called forth by, and proceeding upon, certain very obvious observed facts. The native principle of causation ever prompts man to seek for a cause of that order and beneficence which everywhere meet our eye in nature, and in the chase after subordinate causes he is never satisfied till he reaches a supernatural and Divine cause. Our moral faculty recognises, and looks up to, a law having authority, and this law is the expression of the holy nature of a lawgiver. Our conception and belief in regard to infinity can find nothing but an abstraction till they rest in an infinite God. According to the account now given, all the steps in this process are not immediately intuitive, nor is the whole apodictive or demon- strative like a mathematical proposition. There are observational or experiential elements enter- ing into the argument ; but these are facts which can be seen by all, and which press themselves on the attention of every one ; and, with these J^Y TUE NATURAL. Gl) facts before the mind, there are fundamental laws of thought and belief, which lead up to the conviction of a God to whom all power belongs, and who acts in all action, who is good and does good, who is entitled to our obedience, as he claims our obedience, and is greater than we can conceive — so great, indeed, that he cannot be greater. The conviction thus wrought in us is one which may be very much crushed by intel- lectual degradation, and become confused, or all but overcome, through sophistry; still it is there in the breast, very much undeveloped it may be, but ready to be developed — like the plant in the dark cellar, as it were, longing for the light and creeping towards it ; ready to come forth under influences in any measure favourable ; often bursting out in very adverse circumstances ; making unsophisticated man everywhere, from love or from fear, from selfishness or from duty, a worshipper of the God or gods recognized by him, and rendering those who have been misled by infidel sophistry unsatisfied and restless, and ever doubtful of their own doubts. 5. The soul of man is Immortal, Our convic- tion of this truth, like that in regard to the existence of God, seems to be the issue of a number of mental principles looking to external facts, and all concurring towards one conclusion. The sense and consciousness of self as a separate *^ • BOir 3IUCE IS CONTAINED person, the absence of any evidence that this self dies, the shrinking from the very thought of jinnihilation, the impression that the soul may live when the body dies, all conspire to produce a deep conviction, which can scarcely be eradicated, and which no good man would eradicate. Our sense of moral obligation, and of responsibility, exerts a yet greater power over us — we feel that we must appear before God in judgment. These, and it may be other feelings, have raised, or, aided by tradition so far preserved through these feel- ings, have kept alive, a deep persuasion among all nations that the soul at death has to appear at a judgment seat, to be there consigned to a place of happiness or of woe. III. Nature has within it abounding Sin. It requires some skill to place this truth in its proper light (or darkness) as a truth of natural religion. For there can be no doubt that we owe, to some extent, the knowledge and the sense of sin to the revelation that G od has been pleased to make of his will. Still there is a sense of sin, developed or undeveloped, in all men. Every one is obliged to acknowledge the justice of the charge when he is dealing honestly wuth himself, though he may deny it with great vehemence when others attack him, or when he is determined to defend himself from the reproaches of con- science. Again, the extensive prevalence of vice IN TEH KATURAL. i 1 in the world is recorded by every faithful chro- nicler, is mourned over by every moralist and philanthropist. The extent and depth of tlie evil are apparent from the very efforts made to stem it, and which may have helped to turn it away from particular channels, but have not suc- ceeded in drying up its bitter waters. The Word of God presupposes the fact of the existence of sin, even as it supposes the fact of the existence of God; and it charges man, in the name of God, with being ungodly, and expects to meet with a response in the heart and conscience, and is, in fact, answered by an echo, often very weak, and at times interfered with in the noises of the day, and not heard when disturbed by the tumults of life, but audible ever in the quieter hours of reflection and self-examination — as we have beard an echo in the quiet of evening, which w^ould not sound in the bustle of the day and when the winds were raging. It is in very pro- portion as persons realise this great fact that they are prepared to listen to the revelation which God has been pleased to make in the Gospel. Those who speculatively deny the natural truth will be tempted to doubt of, or deny, the supernatural one. Those who feel the deep natural w^ants, and who see very clearly that nature cannot remedy them, wall not be indisposed to welcome the supernatural remedy, i^ HOW MUCH IS CONTAINED a provided it comes with the proper eyidential support. For mark what it is w^e meet with every- where in the workl around us, and deep down there in that dark nature which we carry with us. The facts are as patent as any that physi- cal science looks at, and they have a prior and a deeper claim upon our immediate attention, for they have a closer connexion with our essen- tial heing and our destiny. We have a con- science within us w4iich announces, on the one hand, that there is a moral law ahove us and binding on us, and, on the other hand, that we have not kept that law. We find proof, on all hands, that God hates sin, and yet we see sin abounding all around us in the world which God has made, and over which he rules. . Everyw^here in heaven and earth do we see order, and yet everywhere, in the midst of that order on earth, do we see sin, wdiich is manifestly disorder. Physical law is viewed in the highest light when regarded as a mean to moral good as an end, and yet how frequently do the means fail to secure the end, — and that pure sun lights men as they go to perform deeds of darkness, and the riches of the earth- incite lusts and pamper luxury. AVe are sure that God must punish sin, and we see him often punish it in this world ; and yet quite as often do we see wickedness IN THE NATURAL. 73 trium[)liing. How often is the judgment delayed, very possibly that it may only be the more terrible at last — as we have seen the cloud gatlier and thicken, that in the end it may burst with more fury. Or rather may not the punishment be delayed in order that the offender may repent and be forgiven ? yes, forgiven — we look for it, we cry for it, we hope for it. lu our world the shadow pursues the light, but the light also pursues the shadow — which is from a light shining above us, though obstructed by the vapours arising from the damps of the earth. Clouds there are, threatening destruction, yet there is a bow upon them — from a still shining sun — encouraging us as by a smile. Yet, while we hope, we cannot point to a ground of hope ; the conscience is there, ever ready to raise its voice as an accuser,-^ but where is the voice to declare the pardon ? He who ponders these facts, in their relation one to another, as intently as the physicist does the unexplained phenomena of the universe, will find himself in terrible perplexity. He hears the earth, in its travailing, uttering a cry, but, as he listens, he can hear no answer from the earth, and he looks up and almost expects to hear it from heaven. He admires nature — he cannot but admire it, and he approves himself as he admires it, and yet he is confident that there is something wanting, and he argues that, under the 74 now MUCH IS CONTAINED government of a good God, there must be some- thing to join on to what he sees broken off so ab- ruptly. He argues that, outside the natural, there must be a supernatural part — the two constitut- ing the perfect whole ; and he infers this almost as confidently as Columbus, and others before him, argued that there was a new world lying West of the old, long before it was actually discovered — almost as surely as mathematicians concluded that there must be a new planet out- side the old ones and part of the system, when yet the telescope had not lighted upon it. In consequence of the scientific expectations, many an eye looked from Teneriffe far into the West, in order to see the new land, and not a few thought they saw it when it was only a cloud that appeared; and many a glass was directed to the heavens to find the wanting planet — some thinking they had found it when it was only an old star that came into view ; and, in like man- ner, multitudes have Rooked prematurely for the supernatural revelation, and been disappointed or deceived ; yet these very anxious looks, and the repeated belief in spite of failure, prove the depth and reasonableness of the expectation, which, again, is a sort of prognostic or guarantee that it will, somehow or other, at one time or other, be gratified. IV. In nature there is a Mokal Government. IN THE NATURAL. 75 liiis government is very complex. It is so because of the variety of ends which it lias to serve, in a state of things in which man is free and man has sinned, in which God condemns sin and favours the sinner. 1. God encourages tlie moralhj good. This is evident, lirst of all, in the agreeable feelings which all benevolent affections raise, and in the echoing pleasure which the reflective conscience feels in the contemplation of all good actions. These are the immediate rewards which virtue reaps. They are quite as clearly rewards as those given in the family by the father to his obedient children, or those bestowed in the school by the master to his diligent pupils. There are other and more indirect encour- agements; — in industry commonly securing a competent portion of this world's goods ; in ex- cellence of character gaining trust and esteem, and opportunities of rising in this world; in the benevolent being helped on in their schemes of usefulness, and in love kindling love in return. 2. Siti is so far discountenanced and imnished. There are the direct consequences in the pain- ful sensations which accompany all the malign affections ; in the weariness and ennui that come after sinful indulgences, as vultures do on the back of the carnage ; and, above all, in the 76 now MUCH IS CONTAINED accusing' conscience which gives its warning — at least after the hrst transgression in a particular hne, and raises up fears to haunt the guilty wherever t'hey go. The judicial condemnations, the hiipositions of fines, the confinements and the executions, are not more certainly penalties in the government of nations, than these inward reproaches are punishments in the kingdom of God. There are other appointments which have also a penal character. Thus we see idleness and vicious indulgences landing the possessor in poverty; and the drunkard and licentious, as it were, sold into slavery to pay the expense of their lusts ; and the deceitful caught in the net he has laid for others. At times, too, we see the hold transgressor, who has lifted his head as a headland facing the sky, struck visibly as by lightning from heaven, or wicked men who have combined to raise an impious tower of defiance scattered by a confusion among the builders. The connexion between the moon's motions and the tides of the ocean, is not more certain than that between sin and sufiering; — the de- pendence in both these cases may seem some- what complex, and to have exceptions — which, however, are only seeming ; but in both it can be firmly established, — it being vastly mure important, however, that we observe it in the latter case than in the former, and also certain IN THE NATURAL. i i that mankind generally have been constrained by their apprehensions to attend with far greater eagerness to the moral than even to the physical connection. 3. God is delmjing the imnislunent of transgressors , thus. giving to all a period of probation. He is good and kind, and often continues long to be so, to those who have broken and are still break- ing his law. " He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust." The governor is evidently also the father of those he is called to condemn, and we see that he is loth to condemn and slow to strike, and all that he may give space and opportunity for repentance. 4. God ii'ill in the end punish offenders. We argue this very immediately from the imperative character of the law, which cannot let go its re- quirements and must exact its penalty, and from the immutable character of God the governor, who upholds that law as his own law prescribed as the rule of the universe. It is clear that the eye of our ruler is ever upon us, and when his uplifted arm is staid for a time, it is only that it may come down with more terrible power in the end — as the avalanche collects for years, and then, as it is loosened by a heavenly beam, de- scends on the instant. Often may we track Divine justice pursuing its victim through a long 78 HOW MUCH IS CONTAINED series of years, and a complicated course of things, and at last springing upon it at the oppor- tune moment when escape is hopeless. The explosion which rouses the whole community is from the simple application of a spark to a train, which had long heen laid. All this prepares us to believe that God will by no means spare the guilty, and that, " though hand join in hand, tlie wicked shall not be unpunished." 5. Now, it is because the government of God has all these ends to accomplish, and has to deal with such a multitude and diversity of human beings, so mixed up one with another in the various relations of life, in its family ties, its friendships, its connexions of business, of neigh- bourhood, and of country, that it is so complicated and so clifficidt of iJiterpretation, God must en- courage the good, and yet not so encourage them as to pamper their self- righteousness and make them feel that they have no sin. He has to shew his disapproval of the sin, and yet he would spare the sinner and allure him to repentance. He spares the sinner, and yet he must not counte- nance him in his sin. By one and the same event, one man has his wickedness exposed, and another his innocence cleared; one is cheered and quickened, another is rebuked and arrested. Every member of the household is in" a diiferent mental or moral or spiritual state, and needs a IN THE NATUJRAL. 79 different lesson ; and the family occurrence has a lesson to each, to father and mother, to sister and brother — possibly far-reaching consequences to that little infant. The great public event which is a judgment upon the community, is a blessing to certain individuals ; or while it is an appropriate trial to certain persons, it is a benefit to the nation. Often does the warning seem to come after the judgment, as the report comes after the shot has done its work — as the roar of the thunder is heard after the lightning has smitten its Adctim ; but the audible signals may be a warning to others, and the judgment has at last descended on those who got admonition upon admonition without attending, and who have now to be cut off with- out farther notice. When the instruments of God's government have such diverse ends to effect, no one should pretend to be able to find out all the purposes of God in any one occur- rence ; it will generally be enough that he dis- covers the lesson which it reads to himself as an individual. Our Lord severely rebukes those who looked upon calamities as judgments proving guilt on the part of those on whom they fell, and tells us expressly that those who had been slain while offering sacrifices at the altar, and those on whom the tower of Siloam had fallen, w^ere not to be reckoned as sinners above others 80 • now MUCH IS contained (Luke xiii. 1 — 4). But ^Ylnle we must be on our guard against rash judgments in individual cases, every one is expected to discover certain great moral laws, such as the law of reward, the law of penalty, the law of forbearance, and the law of final retribution. Unsophisticated men have ever, in fact, held more or less firmly by these general beliefs, and though they have often felt the dis- pensations of providence to be dark and myste- rious, and experienced an extreme difiiculty in determining in any given case which of these purposes, or how many of them, are intended to be served, or, indeed, what purpose has been accomplished, and have often pronounced rash and uncharitable judgments on others, yet they have always, and in spite of appearances, held that the judge of all the earth must ever do right, and have believed and been sure that a just end has been served, even when they have failed to discover it. Admirable as is the machinery em- ployed in the evolution of the bodies of the solar system, and admirable as are the arrangements for enabling organisms to fulfil their functions, I am convinced that the adjustment of means and end in God's government will be seen to be vastly more wondrous and wdse when the whole Vvdieels and their fittings and products are fully disclosed to the saints in the world to come, and the meaning of every dispensation clearly explained. IN THE NATURAL. 81 But while we have so much certainty on these topics, w^e find the certainty only landing us in deeper uncertainty. We are sure that God hates, and that he will punish sin, and we hope that he is ready to forgive it ; hut we have no means of bringing together and reconciling these different convictions. We here fall in with an awful chasm ; we believe that in a world, under a good God, there must be some bridge to span it, and yet as we grope in the darkness we cannot find it. He who has realized all this certainty and uncertainty will not turn away with levity or con- tempt from what seems a supernatural method of reconcilement, and of turning the uncertainty into certainty. 82 THE NATURAL A MANIFESTATION CHAPTER V. THE NATURAL A MANIFESTATION OF THE SUPER- NATURAL. Before mounting into the higher and more recondite region of the Supernatural, we may gather into a few groups some of the truths picked up by us in the lower fields of the Natural. § 1- Religion should never be regarded as an isolated act or exercise. Godliness should run through the whole man, his whole temper, beliefs, and acts, and sliould guide him in the view he takes of all the objects coming under his notice. In particular, it should lead us to look on nature as a whole, and on every part of it as a manifestation of God. The natural implies the supernatural. The fitting of every one object to every other, and the order of nature as the result, presuppose a disposer of the several agents. The combination of means towards a beneficent end shows design OF THE SUPERXATURAL. So contemplated by a designer. In particular, the soul of man, with its free will, its intelligence, and its reason speculative and moral, claims for its author a living Being possessed of these qualities in an infinite degree. The intuitive convictions of the mind, looking to obvious facts, insist on all this ; insist that the world, as an effect, implies a being above it as a cause, indeed, are not satisfied till we rise beyond the chain of causation to the uncaused, beyond the dependent to the indepen- dent. We cannot understand the physical, unless we bring in the hyperphysical. In contemplat- ing the finite we are necessitated to believe that there is an infinite. The sense of moral obliga- tion proceeds on the existence of a moral law, which implies a lawgiver, who is the judge of bis intelligent creatures, and of all their actions, and who must, therefore, institute a searching judgment day, and distribute impartial retribu- tions in a supernatural state of existence. § 2. The religious spirit recognizes God in all nature ; it sees him as upholding all substance ; as the power in all force ; the actor in all action ; the mover in all motion ; living in all life ; shaping in all forms ; organizing in all systems ; himself the light and the fountain from which all other lights are fed ; knowing in all knowledge ; 84 TUE ^ATUIiAL A 2IANIFESTATI02T himself lovely, and the author of the loveliness in every kind of heauty ; himself good and in every good deed; compassionating wherever there is sorrow ; helping in all timely succour ; the judge when justice is dispensed ; the avenger when w^rong is remedied ; cherishing affection to all his creatures ; and loving in all their holy love. § 3- But man in his ungodliness has failed to see God as he should have done. This ungodly spirit has taken various forms. Atheism sees God in nothing, — fails to see his wisdom in the order of nature, and his providence in the gifts bestowed on his creatures; and it is atheism, whether with the ancient sceptic 'it does not, or with the modern sceptic it does, discover order and method in the universe. Pantheism consists in failing to distinguish God from his works, and this, whether it looks upon the works as being God, or on God as existing only in his works. Superstition sees God in certain of his works, but not in others ; in those only which excite, and move, and startle, not in those which are more regular, and constant, and familiar. True piety sees God in every agent, and would gather from every occurrence the lessons which it is fitted to read; and it is true piety, whether it does or does not discover the second or instru- OF TEE SUFERXATURAL. 85 mental cause, — the difierence between the piety of the unscientilic and the scientific man lying only in this, that the former may discover God, and God only, as the actor, whereas the other sees, besides, somewhat of the system on which God proceeds, and the physical agents employed by him. As against the atheist, who believes only in fate, or who looks on all things as pro- duced by mechanical causation, or as brought about by chance, piety ascribes every object, and traces every event, to God; it will not hand over the beneficent order of the seasons to blind law, nor abandon the extraordinary coincidences of Providence to accident; it cannot allow the course of things to take the credit of these bright stars and beauteous flowers; and when health is restored, after a period of sickness, it gives the glory and the thanks *to Him who has arranged the means and been operating in them. It rejoices, with the pantheist, to see God in all his works ; but it will not allow that God is exhausted by his works; it believes that God w^as before his works, is above his works, and is independent of them. As against the super- stitious man, it claims for God the symmetry and the harmony of nature, as well as those occur- rences which may seem to come as anomalies or interferences; it discovers him in the storm, but it also feels him in the calm ; it sees him in the 86 THE NATURAL A MANIFESTATION disease which prostrates our energies and makes us reahze our helplessness, but it also constrains us to recognize him in the health which has buoyed us up for years. The ungodly spirit may coexist with all de- grees of ignorance or of knowledge as to the system of nature. It may exist in the most ignorant peasant, or in the most degraded savage, who discerns in the earth only the clay and the clod ; who can appreciate the tree as bearing fruit or yielding shelter, but discovers nothing else in it; who appreciates his sheep and his cattle, only as beasts to yield him sus- tenance and clothing ; and who esteems the sun merely as a beneficent light for the day, and the moon and stars as useful lamps hung out in the darkness of night. It may dwell in the breasts of the half-educated or semi-civilized, who see natural law, and natural law only, in the more regular occurrences, — in the revolving stars and revolving seasons, in the springing of the grass and grain, and in the growth and sustenance of his own frame, — and wdio divide other and more irregular occurrences between chance and the God or gods momentarily loved or feared for the gifts sent or the judgments which may seem im- pending. It may lodge, in intensest keenness. OF TEE S TIPERNA TURA L. 87 ready, when provoked, to break into terrible bit- terness, in the deepest lieart of our men of science, who, in studying and admiring mecha- nical power, and chemical and electrical forces, and vital energy, and in viewing the adaptation of every one part to every other merely as the condition of existence, resist and resent the pre- sence of a living and spiritual God acting in all these agencies, and employing them for the accomplishment of his moral ends, §•5. The religious spirit is equally compatible with all degrees of ignorance in respect .of the order of nature. The rudest barbarian, the unedu- cated labourer in our civilized countries, the child just beginning to use its senses intelli- gently, may be taught to contemplate every object in earth or sky, may be taught to regard star and flower, tree and mountain, shower and sunshine, prosperity and adversity, life and death, as the operation of God's hand, — the physical cause being all the while concealed or unknown. The man more intellectually advanced may dis- cover order and law in certain courses of things which look constant and settled, as in the mo- tions of the heavenly bodies, and the ordinances of the seasons which supply him with food ; while in other occurrences, as in his preservation from 88 THE NATUBAL A MANIFESTATION eminent danger, and the opportunities of re- ceiving s^^ecial privileges, he may discover inter- ferences, or rather dispositions, to accomphsh a special end ; but he deUghts to acknowledge God and his wisdom and goodness both in the regular positions and the irregular interpositions of things. Finally, he who has fallen in most thoroughly with the spirit and the method of in- duction, and who believes in universal law reign- ing in all ages past and present, even in stars visible only by the telescope, and in molecules invisible by the microscope, in every change of our ever changing bodily state, and in every impulse of our ever active minds, may have a faith as strong as that of the child or peasant, while it is more enlightened and expanded. The only difference between these cases is, that, in the first, the man of faith sees God and God only in his work ; that, in the second, he observes a general plan in some of God's works, and a special end in others, and the presence of God in both ; while, in the third, he beholds a gaiieral plan in all, but a plan arranged for the very purpose of accomplishing all and each of the purposes of God, general and special. In the first, the intellect could take in no more, but the faith was as extensive as the intelligence, so that, wherever a work was discerned, there, also, the worker was acknowledged. In the second case, OF THE SUPERNATURAL. 89 the man's intellectual vision was enlarged and his faith widened with it ; he got glimpses of an order, which he contemplated as a Divine plan, and also of particular purposes secured. In the third, science has carried him to a height whence he ohserves that the design is so uni- versal as to require no interferences, that in the plan itself are such adaptations, such windings round the ohject meant to bo preserved, and turnings where an obstacle presents itself, that the most minute purposes of God are fully exe- cuted. He knows that the lily grows by natural law^, but he believes also that it grows by the ar- rangement and the very powder of God, and that God clothes it with beauty. He knows that the sparrow lives and dies according to physiological laws, but he knows also that a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without God. Let not the scientific or half scientific man smile at the piety of his child, or ridicule the devoutness of his servant, who discerns the great acting power, but may have missed the secondary instrument; who knows that God makes his sun to shine, though he is not aware that his beams come in vibrations ; wdio believes that God sends the rain, though he has no idea that electricity has to do with it. Nor 00 THE NATURAL A MANIFESTATION let tlie ignorant man, in liis ignorance, charge the philosopher with atheism when he delights to detect not only the Divine presence and power, hut the Divine plan, and to look into the internal mechanism which makes the hands to move over the face of the great timepiece standing hefore him in nature. But we hehove to rehuke the peasant and the very savage, wdien .he can inhale the hreeze of heaven and eat the corn of earth, without giving God thanks. And w^e are entitled to reprove the philosopher, and this in. the very measure of his j)i'etensions to a higher light, when he discovers order, hut fails to notice design; wdien he examines the struc- ture of the machine, hut overlooks the name of the Maker inscrihed on it; as he incessantly w^atches the apparatus, hut avoids taking any notice of the great moral and spiritual ends promoted hy it. § 7- We cannot with any propriety say that man- kind, in these latter days, are hrought into closer contact with the natural ; for in early times most persons had to earn their sustenance by hunting wild beasts, or tending their herds, or tilling the ground ; and in " this age of great cities" multitudes are very much removed from close intercourse with green fields and trees. OF THE SUPERXATUnAL. 91 with fowls and cattle. But to counterbalance this, the educated are now trained to look more intently on the scientific structure of nature ; and the dwellers in the villas that girdle our great cities, and the summer saunterers by the sea shore, and the autumnal ramblers over our mountains, bring themselves to appreciate every varied aspect of sea and sky, of rock and moun- tain, and they talk of nature with a rapture which would have appeared affectation to our fore- fathers. This state of things has its temptations. That which was meant to be a veil to keep us from being blinded by the effulgence of the light — while it let the glory of God shine through — w^e have made a screen to conceal him, and we have gazed at the screen, and the figures upon it, and we have stayed there without looking on the living face beyoDd. The more vulgar minds stop short, and satisfy themselves with the com- forts, the wealth, the glitter of this world, cher- ishing meanwhile no love to the giver, and feeling in no way their need of God himself, as better than all his gifts. Minds of a higher but not a holier spirit content themselves with inspecting the machinery ; like children, they gaze at the chariot, its Avheels, and its motions, but without looking above it to Him who rides on it so ma- jestically to scatter blessings and administer justice. Others, more refined, are exposed to a 92 THE NATURAL A MANIFESTATION different class of temptations ; they are seduced by their highly cultivated tastes into the worship of foam -born beauty. §8. But that high-born soul of ours can never be satislied with the mere mechanism of nature. The railway steam-engine is an imposing object, as it moves on towards us so determinedly, as it sweeps by us with so fixed a purpose on the way which has been ])repared for it towards its station, which must be duly reached at the appointed minute. But, as we look at it, we love to think that human intelligence has planned it ; we are relieved when we are able to believe that a conscientious skill is guiding it ; we love to see it bearing human beings along with it on errands of business or of pleasure ; and we would not choose that there should be nothing in our world but iron-bound roads and unrelent- ing machineiy; nay, we long at times to get away from it, to be out of the reach of its smoke and the sound of its clanking wheels and rails, and we steal away through some green loan- ing scarcely knowing, and not wishing to know, whither we are being carried ; or we march up into the clear mountain, where, as we breathe the bracing breeze of heaven, we forget that there is mechanism, or remember it only to OF THE SUPEENATURAL. 93 rejoice that we are above it. In like manner, while we should ever acknowledge that it is a good thing that there is mechanical power in our world, and that it moves in such fixed grooves, and according to such measured stages, and while we take advantage of all this for the purposes of profit and gratification, and after wandering away from it into more inviting regions, we are glad to come back to it, to help us on our earthly way ; — yet there is something within us which will not allow us to rest in these mechanical movements of nature ; somethincr which constrains us to look on physical force as the manifestation of the Divine power, and is relieved when it can look on the arrangements according to which it acts^as made by the Divine skill ; and which ever allures us to rise into a more elevated and a purer region, whence we may look down on all this, and trace its studiously re- ticulated plan, or lose sight of all this as we gaze into the heavens, and behold there still more glorious objects looking down upon us so j^urely and benignantly from their lofty spheres, where, no doubt, they are not lawless, but Vvhere their law is justice and their operation is love. § 9. The man of aesthetic taste tells us how much pleasure he enjoys in communion with nature. 94 THE NATURAL A MANIFESTATION And it "is a good thing for us to be able to enter, as it were, into the feehng of God's works, to allow our soul to take, as the sea does when placid, the colour of the sky above it, — to reflect, as the lake does, the trees and hills on its banks : — to be refreshed, for example, with the freshness of the air of heaven, or to be enlivened by the purling of the stream, or to enter fully into the gloom of the deep woods ; to catch thoroughly the revival of the morning, to brace ourselves up to the activity of the day, to reflect from our spirits, like burnished windows, the glow of sun- set, and to sink into quiescence, like the twilight which succeeds, ere night comes like death to close the scene ; or to feel our souls bursting with life like the buds in spring, and melted and softened by the heat and beauty of summer, and striving after an exuberant fruitfulness like that of the fields in autumn, and taking the pensive hues of the leaves in the declining year, and coming under the melancholy of the falling leaf, and realizing the need of shelter as we look out on the ravings of the storm in winter. But all this does not rise to true fellowship, and we shall, in the end, be miserably disappointed if we look upon it as such ; the soul will ever be driven back upon itself in utter loneliness if it does not find a living agent in the midst of the scenes. That is the noblest beauty, which is associated with OF THE SUPERNATURAL.- 95 life, — tbjit is the highest subhmity, which is asso- ciated^ with power ; dissever the two, as we do when we cut off God's works from God, and nature wdll appear as a branch cut off from the tree — w^e feel that we would soon have to cast it away, or as a stream cut off from its fountain — w^e feel that its moving power is gone. Though we may admire line statues, we would not choose to be shut up in a hall of marble figures ; w^e would weary even of a picture gallery, w^ith all its symbolic influence and its rich suggestions, if we had to dwell in it for ever ; and, on a like principle, we would become tired of the very grandeur of our world, if the miages of life and love weie finally discovered to be without a reality. Have not all of us felt nature to be awfully cold and distant, as w^e looked upon its never-moving mountains, or into these depths of stars so pure but so little interested in us ? — we have felt how unbearably lonely it would be to dwell in a world in which there was nothing but these. The soul is not satisfied even wdth tlie multitude of men and women on the earth's sur- face, — most of us must have felt at times terribly solitary in a great city. We long for communion, but it must be a reciprocal communion, and our fellowship with nature is gone when we look upon all as dead. Those of us who see nothing in an idol but a dead image, can never bring our- 96 THE NATURAL A MANIFESTATION selves to worship it, however beautifully it may be carved. We would feel our prayers coming back upon us with a chilling influence, like breath going up in warm moisture, and coming back in rain or snow, were we required to put up our petitions to the cold mountains, or the frosty stars ; for we know full well that they do not hear us, that they do not reciprocate our feelings, that they cannot help us. The soul does crave for fellowship, but it must be with a living being who knows what we feel, and returns the feeling ; and nature can help us in all this, only as its forms and aspects are viewed as the symbols of Divine life and Divine love. § 10. Our internal position and our inward feelings both impress us with the idea that the natural is encompassed all round by the supernatural, as the world is by the "welkin." After all, our Cosmos is not the rh ntav, though there are some who so represent it ; it is only to the whole what the earth is to the Cosmos ; like the earth, it is a globe, and it is in a sense independent, but in a higher sense it, and man who dwells on it, hang, or are made to stand, through a binding power like the gravitation which binds our system into one ; and influences are shed upon them from a higher sphere, bene- OF THE SUPERNATURAL. 97 ficent as the light of sun and of stars. The heauty in our visible Cosmos is merely like the sheen of stars in the waters of our earth, the reflection of the glory of a supra-mundane region. Pursue any one line, starting from the earth, or the pre- sent, or self as a centre, and it it runs out, — with space — into the infinite, — which is supernatural. Follow the links of causation upwards, and the mind insists that the chain must hang on the uncaused,— which is supernatural. As we go down from one dependency of being to another, the reason comes to independent sub- stance, — which is supernatural. As we go back into the past, the stream, as we mount it, leads us to a fountain which is its own original, — and the unoriginated is the supernatural. If we go out into the future, with the soul as it leaves the body, we are in the unending world to come, — which is supernatural. In all his deeper moods, man is made to feel his dependence upon, his nearness to, the supers natural. The hope of it cheers him in his temporal difficulties; and he feels he can ever appeal to it, as a just tribunal, from present dis- order and injustice. The darkness of night shews us objects which are concealed in the light of day — for it is when the glare of sunlight has died out that we see those stars and constel- lations in the height of heaven; and, in like G 98 TEE NATURAL A MANIFHSTATION manner, there are high heavenly hghts discerned by the spirit of man in the darkness of adversity, which may not he perceived in the sunshine of prosperity. I heheve that the fear of a super- natural power haunts man — as his sins do — more or less consciously, all the time he is on earth ; and a judgment* seat, from which he cannot escape, is ever seen by him standing at the close of life. In particular, every human being is made to feel himself very near the supernatural as he contemplates death — the death of a fellow- man or his own death ; — he feels that something is about to depart, or has departed, into the super- natural. Surely he who believes that something thus goes out from our world into another, will not be inclined dogmatically to affirm that there may not also come something from that other world into this, were it only to train the young immortal in its mortal sphere, for its immortahty in the sphere beyond. § 11- This thought, like every other profound thought, brings us to the profoundest thought in the universe — to the sin which opens like a fathomless gulf below, facing the brightness of the Divine holiness which shines from above, but cannot dispel the gloom beneath. He who does not see this is overlooking the most mys- OF TEE SVPERKATURAL. 99 terious fact in our world, the deepest fact in our nature ; it is as if a man were to visit one of our great cities and look only at its palaces and its temples, and go nowhere else than to its festivals and its banquets — never entering those lanes where poverty would hide itself, or taking any notice of those haunts where sinful pleasure revels, or of those sinks behind them, into which iniquity at last pours itself. Surely he who looks into this fearful abyss, and feels that he is being driven into its awful depths, may well be glad and grateful when told that God has interposed his arm to save us. § 12. It is in very proportion as mankind see God in the natural, that they are disposed to look for a supernatural manifestation. He w^ho does not see God in his works in the world, will in no way be inclined to look for higher operations. He who contemplates exclusively the mechanical or instrumental portions of the universe will discover nothing to lead him to look for the interposition of a spiritual remedy to meet a spiritual evil. He is prepared to believe in a supernatural ap- pearance who thoroughly discerns God in the natural, and he is best prepared who looks up to the highest glories, and looks down into the deepest mysteries of the universe. He who looks 100 TEE NATURAL A MANIFESTATIOX. on all these objects in earth and sky as the works of God, -will easily believe that he may have other works. He who looks on these powers of nature as agents of God, will at once acknowledge that he may turn them to whatever uses he pleases. He who discovers God making provision for the most minute temporal wants of his creatures, will not be inclined to scoif at an arrangement which, be it mundane or supra-mundane, makes provision for the relief of man's spiritual wants. He who looks on nature as an apparatus of means to support moral ends, will not be indisposed, as these bulk largely before his view, to believe that God will employ every means, be it natural or be it supernatural, to promote these ends. He who looks on God as the author of all excellence, and as delighting above all things in moral good, and hating sin supremely, and who discerns sin raging as a fire in the fairest portions of our world, and who has, after looking above him, and around him, and within him, come to the conviction that, if left to itself, the fire must go on devouring and consuming for ever, on the materials supplied by the corrupt human heart, will surely rejoice to learn that God has interposed to extinguish the flames. We are not yet in the region of the supernatural, but we feel that we are on the very verge of it, and that it may soon appear. BOOK SECOND. THE SUPERNATURAL IN RELATION TO THE NATURAL. CHAPTER I. GENERAL REMARKS ON THE SUPERNATURAL. SECT, I.— THE PRECISE NATURE OF THE SUPERNATURAL. We have seen that m this world there is a set of objects and agencies which constitute a sys- tem or Cosmos, which may have relations to regions beyond, but is, all the while, a self-con- tained sphere with a space around it — an island separated so far from other lands. This system we call " Nature," and the events produced by tlie agencies we call " Natural." The beings above this sphere, and the agents beyond it, though it may be acting on it, we call " Superna- tural." God, who created the cosmical agencies and set them in operation, is himself super- natural. When a supernatural being or power 102 GENERAL REMARKS operates in nature, we call the work supernatural. The effect is among cosraical objects, it is wrought in men's minds or bodies, or in physical nature around them. It is thus only that it can fall under our experience, internal or external, under our consciousness or under our senses. But the power to produce that effect, and the agent in whom that power resides, do not lie within mundane potencies, but in a region abo^e and beyond. • The w^ork of creation is super- natural, it is a work in nature proceeding from a power above nature. The raising of the dead would be supernatural, for there is no pliysical or physiological law capable of producing such a result. By this representation we are saved from cer- tain mistaken views as to both the natural and the supernatural. We see that in representing an event as na- tural we are not placing it out of the dominion of God — for we put the whole of nature under its Maker. A natural event is produced by natural causes, but these causes have been in- stituted by God. I believe that Deity is work- ing in them, as he is certainly working by them. We see, farther, that a new, a wonderful, a start- ling, an anomalous event is not, therefore, super- natural. The sun setting in the tropics about six o'clock, is not supernatural ; nor is it a ON TEE STIFERNATURAL. 103 miracle when, in the arctic regions, his hght lingers on the earth for months without a night. Just as the sun, in his daily rising and setting, is not preternatural, so neither is the moon in her more irregular course, nor are the planets in all their wanderings, nor the comets in their widest eccentricities. The meteor flashing across the sky is the work of God, hut it is not a super- natural work, nor is the awful thunder, nor the swdft lightning, nor the pestilence as it llieth in darkness and visits a city to decimate its in- habitants. It is not a miracle when a tower stands, nor is it a miracle when it falls and kills "thirteen" persons, while others may escape. It is not supernatural, but natural, when the ship sails along buoyantly in the favourable breeze ; and it is not supernatural, but natural, when it is wrecked by a storm which arose, as it passed a rugged coast, and drove it upon the rocks. It was certainly by the appointment of God, but it was quite by natural agency, that ninety-nine persons in the ship perished, while one was saved ; it behoves that one to bless the Lord for his w^onderful escape, and his gratitude should not be lessened when he discovers that God has accomplished it by a particular whirl of wind, raising a fortunate wave which brought a fragment of floating wreck to him, and drove it on to the shore as he clung to it in despairing agonies. 104 GENERAL REMARKS We have seen (Bk. I. chap, ii.) that in nature every substance is endowed with certain proper- ties, which act on the needful conditions being supphed ; that the objects are so disposed as to result in general laws ; and that there is a large but limited body of these substances with their powers in nature. Let us inquire how a super- natural or miraculous event stands in regard to each of these peculiarities of the natural. I. In regard to the natural endowments or tendencies of natural objects, they are in no way destroyed by the supernatural action. No one reckons the nature or the action of a natural substance as annihilated when it is restrained or directed by other natural agents. It is the ten- dency of the earth's gravity to draw all bodies to its surface; but this quality is not extinguished, it is merely counteracted in the circumstances, when we hold a stone in our hand and keep it from falling. A blow is directed against us, v/hicli would fell us to the ground, a bystander interposes his staff, and we escaj)e, and in the whole we have only each agent acting according to its nature. It is the same when a super- natural power interposes. It is the tendency of fire to burn, and this tendency it must ever retain, as long as the substances acting in the fire keep their endowments ; but this tendency may be counteracted by other agents, either ox TEE SUFERKATURAL. 105 natural or supernatural ; it may be counteracted by natural agents, as by water thrown upon it, or it may be counteracted by the immediate power of God, as when it was not allowed to consume the three children of Israel who were thrown into the fiery furnace in Babylon, — but the fire all the while retained its power, as was shewn by its consuming those who threw them in, and it was restrained by the power of God only, as it might have been curbed by cosmical powers. II. In regard to the general laws or obvious uniformities of nature, it should be allowed that miracles do not fall out in accordance with them. These general laws serve most bountiful pur- poses. It is because of their prevalence that man can so far anticipate the future, and draw towards him the good and ward off the evil. A system of things in which miracles were ever interfering with the established order or course of things, — so that no one could commence a course of action with any assurance that it would not be disturbed by some interposition from with- out, — would certainly not be suited to man, with his present nature and constitution. But it is to be observed, that even in the natural system there is such a disposition of agents that unex- pected events are ever occurring, fitted to impress him with his dependence on a higher power and 106 GENERAL REMARKS wisdom than his own. He who sows in spring will usually reap in autumn, and he who follows industry will commonly secure a worldly compe- tence ; yet the hest laid plans of man will, at times^ he so frustrated that he has little or no crop, and he who has heen dihgent in his calhng, may, after all, be left in poverty. Often when our confidence was the greatest, are we made to say — " I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill, but time and chance happeneth to them all." While a constant and capricious miraculous interference with the plan of nature might disturb all the principles of probability on which men usually act, — all such, for instance, as those on which insurance offices proceed, — no such prejudicial effects could follow from an oc- casional miracle wdiich would lessen human fore- sight and limit human sagacity only to a small and un appreciable extent, beyond the restraints already laid on them by the cross events of pro- vidence. And it may be observed, of the mira- culous interferences of God brought before us in Scripture, that they are only occasional. In all the dispensations of God, general laws have been the rule, and miracles the rare exceptions — so rare as not to interfere with the anticipations of ON THE SUPERNATURAL. 10^ human wisdom. Twice only did our Lord, when on eartli, distribute food in a miraculous way, and when the people began to trust in this mode of procedure, he ceased to make any such provi- sion for them ; and his other miracles — such as the healing of the sick (as Dr. Chalmers has remarked), had no tendency to induce im- prudent expectations, as no one would be likely to bring on bodily disease in the hope of having it cured by the power of Jesus. The miraculous interpositions of God have never tended, in any way, to lessen men's motives to industry and activity. They have ever been so introduced into the natural, as to honour the natural, — I mean the sinless natural, — and allow it to fulfil its full intention. Not only so, I hope to be able to shew that they have been wrought upon a plan or system, analogous in many respects to the .system of nature, and that in the supernatural, as in the natural, there are order and law, ^which enlarge our wisdom by shewing us new and more spiritual relations of things, which quicken our energies by the liberal blessings that may be obtained in the use of appointed means, and extend our foresight, by the telescopic views opened, of far distant scenes in the earth of the future, and in the kingdom of heaven. III. In regard to the circle of agents acting 108 GENERAL REMARKS in nature, a supernatural event is caused by an agent from a region l)e3'ond them. It serves its end because it is so/'-' But then it is the effect of a power, of the existence of which we have evidence in the action of nature — a power which is, in fact, ever operating in nature, though after a somewhat different mode. The account now given imphes, that in the discovery of the supernatural, there is a process of inference in which we rise from the effect to the cause. An objection, founded on this cir- cumstance, has been started, to the possibihty of proving a miracle. AVe can never, it has * The pantheistic Spinoza defines miracle — " Opus cujus causam na- turalera exemplo alterius rei solitae explicare non possumus, vel saltern ipse non potest, qui miraculum scribit aut narrat." — {Tract. Thcol.-Pol. : vi. 13.) According to this view, a miracle is something which we cannot, or which those who narrate it cannot explain by natural law, but which has always a natural cause. It could easily be shewn that this defective view influenced the speculations of the German rational- ists of the end of last century and beginning of this, when they (g.e. Paulus) set themselves with such preposterous ingenuity to discover a natural explanation of the miracles of Scripture. It might also be shewn that this swayed Schlclermacher (who had such an admiration of Spinoza) when he represents miracles as being such merely relatively — that is, for those for whom they were at first dond, and springing from Christ's deeper knowledge of the natural and connexion with it {Christl. Glaube) . From these German sources, similar defective views have come into our own country. Some, with the view of recommending miracles to the exclusive believers in nature, have taken great pains to shew that tliey proceed from higher natural law; while others, or the same, represent the higher sentiments of gifted men as inspired. AVe shall see infra that this is to strip miracles of their peculiarities, and to make them incapable of fulfilling the end designed by them. ON THE SUPERNATURAL. 109 been said, see a miracle, we can merely see an event which we argue to be miraculous, and the argument must carry us into very recondite con- siderations, which metaphysicians only can un- ravel, or perplex as they would unravel. This objection can seem plausible only to those who have contracted a senseless prejudice against metaphysics, and are utterly ignorant of their nature and their office. For every one who has studied the operations of the human mind knows, that in the case of all our convictions, except those which are intuitive, there is reasoning, and commonly reasoning from effect to cause. The metaphysician has proven that we do not see distance — that we do not know intuitively the distance of the house or hill — we infer it from what we see. We do not see the love or the anger that burns in the bosom of a fellow- man, we conclude it from the expression of his countenance, from his manner, or his words. A body is seen lacerated on the ground, — this is all we perceive, — and when we declare that a man has been murdered, and go on to seek out the guilty party, we are arguing, and arguing from effect to cause. Such inferences, indeed, are involved in the convictions which we form and act upon in all tlie ordinary affairs of life, and he who would refuse to accept them must needs £jo out of the world. In all such 110 GENERAL RE 21 ARKS cases the process is a simple one, (indeed it is only the metaphysician who knows that there is ratiocination) ; but the inference is equally easy, when, from the fact given, that a man has risen from the grave, we conclude that a supernatural power has been exercised. It should be allowed that we are not entitled to look on an occurrence as supernatural unless we are satisfied, not only that it cannot be ex- plained by known law, but that it is beyond the power of natural agencies. We do not reckon the disease which has blighted the potato plant for so many years as miraculous, nor do we reckon the cholera as supernatural in its mys- terious visits, because science has not been able to detect the producing causes ; for we are con- lident, on the ground of induction, that the cause does lie among natural agencies, discoverable or undiscoverable. We do not allow that the phenomena of mesmerism are miraculous, be- cause we are not able at the present stage of physiological and psychological science to explain them thoroughly ; we have an idea that part of the appearances may be ascribed to the preten- sion or deceit of the operators, and we are sure that the explanation of what is real is to be found in the mysterious agencies which work in the border territory between mind and body. The defender of miracles must be prepared to ON THE SUPERNATURAL. Ill accept the responsibility of shewing, not only that the occurrences are inexplicable, but that tliey are beyond the capacity of natural agency. The principle now announced enables us to draw sharply the distinction between the higher moods of the natural man and the inspiration of God. Eveiy one, I should hope, has felt him- self carried at times into a high mental region, where he has breathed a purer, or at least a more stimulating atmosphere, and got glimpses of far distances. These are precious moments in the midst of the worldliness by which we are held down to the damp surface and the clay of our earth. There are men who have been privileged to rise more frequently, and to dwell more habi- tually in these higher regions. How expanded tlie view which opened to Plato, as he speculated on the relation of God, of the soul, and of the world ! How pure and spiritual the air in which the bard of Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained habitually breathes ! At such times — alas, how rare ! — but at such moments — alas, they are but moments ! — we feel as if we were inspired by a higher life ; and not unfrequently have persons under the influence of these high impulses been said to be inspired. The language is not inap- propriate ; it contains a great truth. These occa- sional uprisings of the water shew how high the elevation from which man has descended, and to 112 GENERAL BE MARKS what a height he may yet be raised. They are the hngering hght of a sun which has set, but which once shone upon our earth ; they are the dawn of a hght which may yet appear. But, after all, these moods are in the region of the natural, and not of the supernatural. As we look up to these heights, and as we ascend them, we may be tempted to think that we are mounting into the sky, but we are, ever and anon, made to feel that we are only on one of the mountains of the earth. We would detain these moods — as w^e have often wished to detain the long and plea- sant light of summer — as we have often wished to prolong the glow of the evening sky — but it is all in vain, the light departs in spite of all our efforts to keep it — it fades into darkness as we gaze upon it. As we linger on these heights we are wrapt in mist and cloud before we are aware, and had better descend quickly to a lower and a safer level. If, through pride and presump- tion, we seek to loose ourselves altogether from terrestrial influences, we shall find, as we w^ould moimt on the wings we have formed, that the w^ax melts, and our flight ends in a fall — a fall into vain fancies and deceptions. How often have those who have thus tempted the Lord their God, by striving to reach a dizzy point, and by cast- ing themselves down thence without any promise of help to stay them, only fallen ignominiously ON THE SUPERNATURAL, 113 amid the scoffs and jeers of men. The weak- ness by which even the best of such have been beset, and the mistakes into which they have fallen, shew^ that they have never been under the inspiration of a Divine and unerring wisdom. Still these convulsions shew what man is capa- ble of; the remains of man's strength, they are evidences of what he could do if complete health w^ere restored. They are not inspirations, except in a metaphorical sense, but they show the pos- sibility and desirableness of such an inspiration, should God in his grace be pleased to grant it. But it has been urged, that upon the condition now laid down we can never prove a miracle, as it is beyond the capacity of man to tell what powers are in nature. You may shew us, it is said, a phenomenon inexplicable in our present state of knowledge, but this does not prove it to be beyond agencies of nature as yet undiscovered by man. We do not know, it is said, the nature of the sun's atmosphere, nor of the composition of the comets, nor of the forces which operate in the production of the crystalline structure of minerals, nor of the ether which seems to vibrate through all nature ; but no one supposes any one of these to be produced by angelic or satanic influence, or by the Divine power acting apart from a physical cause. The progress of science, it is urged, is ever disclosmg new powers in II 114 GENERAL REMARKS nature, of which those who hved in former times had no idea, or of which they caught merely im- perfect ghmpses. It is only in modern times that we have any adequate conceptions of the mighty influence exercised hy electricity and hy magnetism ; only of late years that we have had any notion of there heing such varied powers in the sunbeam. Who can say, in these circum* stances, that there may not, among the yet undiscovered powers of nature, be agents capa- ble of explaining all these occurrences which we represent as miraculous ? " What is alleged is a case of the supernatural, but no testimony can reach to the supernatural ; testimony can apply only to apparent sensible facts ; testimony can only prove an extraordinary, and, perhaps, inex- plicable occurrence or phenomenon ; that it is due to supernatural causes is entirely dependent on the previous belief and assumptions of the parties.""^' The answer to all this is so very easy and obvious, that I give little credit for candour to those who have not seen it. It is all true that we do not know the extent of the powers of nature, but, then, there are some things of which we are quite certain that they are not within the range of natural agency. We certainly do not know anything like all the powers, psychological * Baden Powell, in "Essays and Remws," p. 107. ox TEE S UPERXA TURAL. 1 1 -3 or physiological, which operate in man's mind or bodily organization, but there are some exertions of which we are quite sure that they are beyond human strength. We give full credit to the recorded instances of the great sagacity of New- ton, when he guessed at scientific truths which have been established only by much later investi- gation, but every one sees at once (what Newton took such delight in expounding) that the greatest human shrewdness — that the shrewdness of New- ton himself — could not foresee what the Hebrew prophets foretold hundreds or thousands of years beforehand, — a long series of events, with minute incidents, brought about by a varied and un- conscious instrumentality. We have no doubt of the accuracy of the accounts given of the wonderful capacity for acquiring a variety of languages possessed by certain individuals ; but we know full well that uneducated fishermen and mechanics could not at once, and without being taught, have addressed a multitude of per- sons gathered from a variety of countries, each in his own language. We certainly have very little acquaintance with the forces which operate in the brain and nervous systems of the lower ani- mals, or with the instincts which guide them ; but we know enough to "convince us that the ass could not speak, except by a supernatural agency working in it. It might be ditiicult for the most 116 GENERAL REMARKS skilful physician to say as to certain maladies, whether they are or are not likely to be cured by human art, but he could have no hesitation in declaring as to certain organic diseases, that they cannot be healed on the instant, or at all, by natural means. There is much about the human body and soul which must for ever re- main concealed from us in this world ; but we know for certain that there is no power in any man to raise himself or his neighbour from the dead. In order to settle such questions, it is not needful that we should have explored all nature, or that we should have drawn out a list of her forces, and be able to specify their mode of operation. The most cursory observation of the man of ordinary sense leads him at once to the sound conclusion. Science, as it advances, con- firms the decision. Induction, as it widens, shews the extent of the dominion of natural agencies, but it shews, at the same time, that they all run in appointed channels, and in no others ; that they have all their fixed amount of force, and nothing more; and the very progress of science, in explaining so much, enables us, on firmer grounds, to declare as to certain oc- currences, that they are altogether and certainly beyond natural power. Nor does this conviction depend, as Mr. Powell would insinuate, on the 02i THE S UFERXA TURAL. 117 ncquirecl sympathies, the inexphcable behefs, and unreasonable assumptions of the parties, but on general principles, discovered by good sense and common observation, and sanctioned by the most advanced inductive logic. While it should be admitted that, so far as tlie establishment of the first miracle is con- cerned, the burden of proving that there is a power beyond nature lies on the defender of the supernatural, it does not therefore follow, that the same stringent condition can be exacted in regard to alleged miraculous occurrences, which are part of a supernatural system, or which come in under cover of other supernatural events, shewn to be so by the most rigid rules of evidence. The most confident believers in natural law should be prepared to allow this. There are mysterious occurrences in nature, which we should not be entitled to declare to be the result of pure cosmical agency, were it not settled by a wide induction, that general law has such prevalence. The established uniformity thus carries over to natural law many individual phenomena, of which we might not be able to say, if we looked at them apart, whether they are or are not the product of mun- dane agencies. Surely those who claim all this, as I think they are entitled, on the one side, should be prepared to allow, on the other, that 118 GENERAL REMARKS if once it be established on strict principles of evidence, that one grand miracle has taken place, — say the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, — it might bring in other miracles connected with it on easier terms. It will be shewn, as we advance, that the revelation which God has been pleased to make of himself, in the Old and New Testament, is a system with a compact structure and organization, and con- nected means and end. When it is shewn that, as a w^hole, it is supernatural, it should be con- ceded that portions which might not, of them- selves, admit of being shewn to be miraculous by stern rules of evidence, may be logically regarded as being so, as carrying with them the sanction of the w^hole of which they are parts. SECT. II.— THE POSSIBILITY OF A MIRACLE. Spinoza, the father of modern pantheism, was the first, so far as I know, who denied the possi- bility of a miracle.* He did so, on the ground * Natura itaque leges et regulas, quae aetemam necessitatem et veritatem involvunt, quam^is omnes nobis notae non sint, semper tamcn observat, adcoque etiam fixum atque immutabilem ordinem ; nee ulla sana ratio suadet, naturae limitatam potentiara et virtutem tribucre, ejusque leges ad certa tantum et non ad omnia aptas, statuere. Nam quum Adrtus et potentia naturae sit ipsa Dei virtus et potentia, leges autem et regulae naturae ipsa Dei decreta, omnino credendum est, potentiam naturae infinitam esse ejusque leges adeo latas, ut ad Oy THE S UFEENA TURAL. 110 that God and nature are one, that the jiotency and virtue of nature are the very Divine potency and virtue. This doctrine he sought to estabhsh by a formidable array of abstractions which he never compares with reahties, and by deductions from principles which are not self-evident, which are not sanctioned by reason, and some of which are obviously false. In the great metaphysical ferment which was stirred up in Germany, the last quarter of last century and the first quarter of this, a large body of the speculators were seized with a most extravagant admiration of the " thought bewildered" spectacle-grinder of Hol- land, and a number of them arrived at much the same view as he did in regard to miracles. In particular, J. G. Fichte, who made the whole external world the projection of a universal Ego (who can understand this ?) proceeding according to the self- evolving laws of the universal mind, comes to the conclusion that, though God could or should perform a miracle, it would be impos- sible for man to come to the knowledge of it, so shut up is he in the forms of his own mind.* Ever omnia, quae et ab ipso di\-ino intelloctu concipiuntur, se extendant. — Spinoza, Tract. Theol.-Pol. : vi. 11. * Es kaun also die Frage gar nicht davon seyn, wie Gott erne iiberaatiirliche "Wirkung in der Sinncnwelt sich also moglich dcnken, und wie er sie wirklich machen koune ; soudern wie wir uns eine Erscheinung als dutch eine iiberaaturliche Causalitiit Gottes gewirkt denkcnkonnen? Sec. — Fichte, Versiich Einer Kritik alter Offenharung^ \ 9. 1^0 GENERAL REMARKS since the days of Ficlite, there have been persons maintaining that a miracle, or the power on the part of man to discover a miracle, is an impos- sibility. Those holding the doctrine in this comitry, have seldom announced with clearness the- grounds on which they proceed, and we com- monly find them flitting from one defence to another, as may suit their purpose. So far as their arguments proceed, like those of Spinoza and Ficlite, on pantheistic principles, they are to be met by those facts which undermine pan- theism, that is — by standing up for the trust- worthiness and veracity of intuitive convictions, v/hicli Kant, and the schools which ramified from him, have entirely overlooked, particularly the in- tuition of self- consciousness — the consciousness of self as a person. Only admit this intuition, which has, to say the least of it, as deep a place in our constitution as space and time, or any other of those forms or categories of which the disciples of Kant make so much, and it at once saves us from a waste of energy in fighting with the spectres which the transcendental metaphysi- cians have raised up, and with which speculative youths still amuse themselves, though I rather think that no one now believes in them. Take this deep conviction with us, and it at once shews us tliat "all" is not "one," since we, ourselves, are persons, distinct from God on the one hand, ON THE SUPERNATURAL. 121 and the world on the other, and enahles us, with the aid of very ohvious ohservation, to reach a personal God above nature, wdio, indeed, w^orks in nature, but who also works independent of it. In our own country, David Hume, the sceptic, started every sort of objection to the evidence adduced on behalf of miracles ; but he nowhere denies the possibility of a miraculous occurrence. Mr. B. Powell everywhere charges alleged mira- cles with being contrary to reason, inconceivable by reason, and set aside by the inductive philo- sophy ; but he never attempts to shew how all this must be so, or that it is so, and instead of proof, he gives us reiteration after reiteration in very much the same phrases, which are nowhere explained ; and he does all this with a haughtiness of manner, and a dogmatism of tone, which may impose upon weaker minds which would save thought by leaning upon others, but which rather stirs into an attitude of opposition those who would part with any other attribute rather than their independence of thinking and judging. We are entitled to insist, that those who reject miracles specify the precise grounds on which they do so. The impossibility of a miracle can be main- tained, so far as I see, on two, and only two grounds, worthy of being looked at ; one is the ground of intuition or intuitive reason, and the 122 GENERAL REBlAriKS other the ground of an enlarged experience gathered to a point hy induction. Let us ex- amine each of these separately : 1. It is conceivahle that a miracle may he contrary to intuitive reason. I freely admit that there are truths ^yhich the mind sees at once, and hy intuition. If a miracle were contrary to this immediate vision of the soul, or the prin- ciple on which it proceeds, it would certainly he impossihle to establish it to our minds ; for the proof, however strong, could not have greater force than the original principle which it would set aside. But there is no intuitive perception, no fundamental law, no constitutional principle of the mind contradicted hy a miracle. I believe that there is a principle in our mind which leads us, on discovering an effect, to look for a cause. If a miracle were contrary to this law, it would be impossible to establish it. But it has been shewn, again and again, that a super- natural occurrence is not inconsistent with the mental law of causation.''' Our intuitive convic- tion does not require us to seek for a material ©5- ASft^fTtai- cause to eveiy effect, it is equally satis- fied when it meets with an adequate mental * As ty Thomas Brown— (" On Catm and Effect " — Note E.) — A miraclo is *' an effect that indicates a Power of a higher order than the powers which we are accustomed directly to trace in phenomena more familiar to us, but a Power whose continued and ever present existence it is atheism only that denies." Oy THE SUPErxNATUnAL. 123 cause. I seek for a cause of the movement of my arm, which a moment ago was still, but is now lifted up, and I am contented when I can refer it to my volition that the arm should he moved. I see traces of design m the construc- tion of that house or temple, and I must seek for a cause, but the mind feels that it has enough when it can ascribe it to the intelligence and taste of an architect. Nor does the prin- ciple of causation insist that eveiy effect in nature must have a cause in nature ; it is quite satisfied, when it cannot find a cause in nature, to discover it in an agent beyond nature. Thus it is that, not finding in nature a cause of the design in nature, we refer it to a supernatural intelligence. A supernatural event is not an effect without a cause, it is merely an effect without a cause in the agencies working in that system which we call nature. The intuitive principle has an important part to act in the process of reaching the supernatural power in the miracle — a part very much the same as that which it has to perform in rising from nature to God, as the author of nature. Not being able to discover a cause among natural agencies, the mental principle insists on a supernatural cause, and rejoices to recognize it in Him to whom all inquiry into causes ever conducts us, and in whom all power resides. 124 GENERAL REMARKS But here it will be necessary to distinguish between two things which have often been con- founded : — between the principle of cause and effect, and the principle of the uniformity of nature. The principle of causation insists, that every effect has a cause. I look upon this as an intuitive principle. It can stand the tests of in- tuition. It is self-evident ; the mind, on the bare contemplation of an effect, discovers that it im- plies a cause. It is necessary ; no man can be made to believe otherwise. It is catholic or uni- versal ; every one on discovering an effect looks for a cause. It is an internal principle, looking to and guaranteeing a corresponding external reality. To this law there are no exceptions ; to this law, I believe, there can be no exceptions. It holds good in nature ; it holds good beyond nature. Every thing that begins to be, must have a power producing it. It is thus we argue, that the world, as a structure produced and arranged, must have had a producing and arranging cause. Of quite a different character is the principle which leads us to believe in the uniformity of nature." We have seen (Bk. I., chap, iii.) that * It is one of the gravest defects of a work of great excellence, but of very grave defects — I mean the " Logic" of Mr. J. S. IMill — that the author confounds, all throughout his Chapter on Induction, our belief in Causation, with our belief in the Uniformity of Nature. I have commented on that confusion elsewhere. — Intuitions of the Mind, pp. 275—278. ox THE SUPERNATURAL. 125 it cannot stand the tests of intuition : — it is not self-evident ; it is not necessary ; it is not uni- versal. It is discovered, not by an immediate perception of the mind, but by a large and a long experience ; the experience of ourselves and others over an extensive range of facts. It de- clares, not that every effect has a cause, but that the common mundane occurrences have a cause in the agents at work in the mundane system. It declares that fire left to itself will burn, but it does not say that fire may not be counteracted by a higher and a Divine agency. It says that, con- signed to the processes in nature, man's body will die, but it is not entitled to affirm that man may not be brought to life again by supernatural potency. For scientific purposes, and in the way of widening our idea of the order of the universe, it is a most influential law. But to this law, it is quite conceivable, there may be exceptions, — to this law I believe there are exceptions. It is by observation and induction that we have discovered the law ; it is by them, and by them exclusively, that we discover the extent and the limits of the law^ This brings us to consider the other ground on which a miracle may be rejected. S. It is conceivable that a miracle may be contrary to experience. The first objection is commonly urged by metaphysicians, most com- monly by those who have been caught in the 126 GENEHAL REMAIIKS toils of pantheism. This second is more hkely to be advanced by physicists, who have fixed their attention so exclusively on the system of natural causes — mechanical, chemical, and vital — that they can see nothing else. What is it that the inductive philosophy has actually established ? . It has shewn that there is a set of agencies working in nature, and that there is uniformity in their operations. All this has been discovered by a very wide induc- tion, wilder than we have in favour of any indivi- dual law in any one department of science ; and I rejoice to go as far in this direction as the most advanced inductive philosophers possibly can. But wdien, not content wdth affirming, they make strong denials, I draw back, and I put myself on the defensive. I agree with them, without reserve, when they say that there are agencies working in a system ; I dispute with them wdien they declare that there can be nothing else, and I press them for their proof. If they appeal to reason or intuition, I meet them in the way I have done, and shew^ that, while every occurrence has a cause, this does not require that it must have a physical or mundane cause. If they appeal to experience, then on the field of ex- perience I meet them. And I tell them, at the outset, that it is not possible, in the nature of things, that they should ON THE SUPERNATURAL. 127 be able to establish the doctrine of the uni- formity of nature as a law which can admit of no exceptions. No general maxim can be shewn to be necessary by experience — by experience which must necessarily be limited. In ten thousand million of occurrences on earth we have found nothing but natural agencies ; — this will never entitle us, by any logical rule, to de- clare, dogmatically, that in no other occurrence can there be supernatural agency. In a court of law, the testimony of a thousand witnesses, that they did not see a particular individual commit a murder, cannot set aside the testimony of two credible witnesses, that they saw the deed done. On a like principle, the fact, that in common terrestrial affairs there is only natural agency, can never authorize us to set aside at once, and with- out examination, every case of alleged superna- tural interference. Our appeal being to experi- ence, we must be prepared to abide by the result of experience. If there be a prima facie case of supernatural action, it is, at least, worthy of our examination, and if it relates to some important matter in which God our Maker seems to be making intimation of his will, it demands our careful and candid attention. If the evidence advanced in its behalf be good, standing the usual tests of testimony and historical evidence, we ought to yield our assent, which we are in no 128 GENERAL nEMABKS way entitled to withhold on the ground of some general principle of the uniformity of nature, — a principle derived solely from experience, and which we must submit to be limited by ex- perience. And here it will be needful to refer to the wretched sophism which has been advanced, about its being unreasonable or impossible to suppose that God should work miracles, as this would be inconsistent with his unchanging pur- poses. His will, they say, is expressed in his works, and any action of a different kind would shew that God is changeable, and that his works in nature are not perfect, and not worthy of him. It requires \eYj little penetration to discover the quiet assumptions on which this reasoning is founded. It assumes, that because nature is an expression of God's will, there can be no other expression. It assumes, that be- cause God acts after a particular mode, no doubt for wise reasons in the circumstances, he can never have reasons for acting after a different manner in other circumstances. It assumes that an addition is an inconsistency ; that to superinduce anything farther upon some- thing previously existing is to declare that which thus existed to have been wrong or bad. It argues no inconsistency in the Divine plans, that there was first a long period in which there ON THE SUPERNATURAL. 129 were only plants and the lower animals on tlie earth's surface, and that afterwards God placed man on our giohe ; on the contrary, distin- guished naturalists have argued, from the very animal forms which appeared in the early ages, that it must have heen the purpose of God the Creator from the beginning, to introduce upon the scene a being bringing out more fully the capacities of the type. It has been shewn, in last Book, that the natural seems to look for the supernatural. It will be shewn, in what is to follow in this Book, that the supernatural fits in most admirably into the natural system, and that the two form the joined and adjusted com- partments of one grand 'temple, designed from all eternity in the counsels of God, and now being reared in time, — the one being as it were the outer, and the other the inner apartment. " For there is a tabernacle made ; the first, wherein " are natural gifts " the candlestick, the table, and the shewbread, which is called the sanctuary; and after the second vail, the tabernacle, which is called tlie holiest of all," wherein are yet higher gifts, and an immediate revelation from God, " which had the golden censer, and the ark of the covenant overlaid round about with gold, wherein was the golden pot that had manna, and Aaron's rod that budded, and the tables of the covenant, and 130 GENERAL REMAEK8 over it the clierubims of glory shadowing tlie mercy-seat." We are now in circumstances to examine the statements of Mr. Powell, in the " Essays and Reviews." He is everywhere referring to the " fixed laws of belief, and our convictions of established order and analogy " (p. 106) ; but he gives no explanation as to what he j)i'ecisely means. The following is the most specific language wdiich we can find in his WTitings, and it is sufficiently vague : — " The entire range of the inductive philosophy is at once based upon, and in every instance tends to confirm, by an immense accumulation of evidence, the grand truth of the universal order and constancy of natural laws, as a primary law of belief so strongly entertained and fixed in the mind of every truly inductive inquirer that he cannot even conceive the possibility of its failure" (j)p. 108, 109). Again, " the enlarged critical and inductive study of the natural world cannot but tend poW'Crfully to evince the inconceivableness of imagined interruptions of natural order or supposed suspensions of the laws of nature " (p. 110). He addsj. miracles are "seen to be inconceivable to reason" (p. 126).''' I have searched through all his voluminous discussions as to the order of nature, without finding any- * I quote from the Fifth Edition of "Essays and Eeviews." ox THE SUPEUXATURAL. 131 thing more definite than the above. But, from such language, we cannot find on what grounds he woukl have us reject miracles thus summarily, and without inquiry into the evidence by which they are supported. Some of his expressions seem to mean that he would dismiss them at once, on the ground of some internal principle called " reason," or a " primary law of belief." Other expressions would rather imply, that he would have us set them aside on the ground of some law reached by observation and induc- tion — " by an enlarged critical and inductive study of the natural world." The impression left is, that we are justified in discarding the supernatural on both grounds; the inductive philosophy is represented as " based upon " a primary law of belief, and it " confirms it." But we cannot submit to be deceived by such a thaumatrope fallacy, in which the author appeals to fact when driven from reason, and goes back to intuition, or reason, when it is shewn that ex- perience cannot cover his position. Nor can we allow him to take advantage, as he seems in- clined, of both collectively, till he has explained and vindicated each separately. If his appeal be to reason — meaning intuitive reason, or fundamental laws of belief — then I meet his dogmatic assertion by a dogmatic denial. There is no primary law of the human mind which au- 132 GENERAL REMARKS tliorises us to reject a miracle without looking at its evidence. He tells us that miracles are " seen to be inconceivable by reason." If he means that we cannot have an idea of a miracle, that we cannot conceive it, in the sense of picturing or representing it to the mind, the statement is simply false, for we can easily form the idea or notion of an event in nature — say a person rising from tlie dead — with a cause beyond nature. If he means, by a miracle being incon- ceivable by the reason, that we cannot judge it or believe it to be true, I maintain, in opposition, that there is no intuitive law of belief which is inconsistent with a miracle ; and reason com^ mands us, in matters of experience, to be guided by observational evidence, and not by a 'priori principles. If, on the other hand, the principle to which he appeals is supposed to be the result of experience, then I maintain that experience can sanction no such wide negative law, and that the evidence of experience is in favour of the occurrence of certain miraculous events bearing testimony to a most momentous revela- tion from heaven. ON TEH SUPEHKATURAL. 1 oo SECT. III.— PURPOSES SERVED BY THE SUPERNATURAL. We advance a step farther in our discussions in this section, but it is only a single step. We are to inquire what purposes may be conceivably served by the supernatural ; but we are not, at this place, to endeavour to prove systematically that these ends are actually accomplished. This may be done more effectively, after we have looked in a more particular manner at the cha- racter of the supernatural revelation. But, first, it will he proper to shew that there are certain -ends which do not require supernatural agency to produce them, inasmuch as they may be se- cured by the natural. 1 . It is not needful that a miracle be wrought — say that one should rise from the dead — to convince us that there is a God. For all this is very evident from the frame of the world, and is pressed upon us by deep internal convictions. Some have maintained that the existence of God might be proven by the miracles recorded in the Scriptures. These, it is said, have come down to us as well-attested facts, which, in their character and mode of operation, argue a power above the mechanism of nature. I am not inclined to go so far as to affirm that there is no force whatever in this line of argument. I believe that the truths 134 GENERAL REM ABES revealed in Scrq)ture are so self- evidencing, and that the great facts of the New Testa- ment are so well attested, that they are fitted to impress us with the conviction that there is a living power ahove the dead universe. It is a matter of fact, that it is mainly by means of the Bible and its supernatural truths, that the idea of God is first suggested to those who have been brought up in a Christian land. I am also fully persuaded that to most minds the revelation of God in his Word is a means of strengthening and rendering more real the conviction which may be gathered from his works. Still, it is ever to be resolutely maintained, that " the in- visible things of God, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood from the things that are made — even his eternal power and Godhead." The Bible everywhere assumes that there is a God ; it presupposes that men believe in God, and it comes as the Word of that God. The Christian apologist who acts wisely should proceed on a previous demonstra- tion of the Divine existence, or rather upon man's conviction that there is a supernatural Being, and bring in that Being as the cause of the miracles which are recorded in the volume of inspiration. 2. AVe do not require miraculous operations to bring about the ordinary events of God's pro- OiY TEE SUTERXATURAL. 135 vidence ; to procure a supply to our bodily wants ; to secure us from danger, when God so means it ; to visit us with affliction, when the Divine faithfulness knows that we require it ; and to help on individuals and the race in the onward march of intelhgence and civilization. A pro- vision has been made for all these in the plan of nature, in which God has general laws, to which mankind can accommodate themselves, and fittings of one agent and law to another, whereby he accomplishes each of his special ends. In this economy, everything has been arranged from the beginning, with such wis- dom and foresight, that it does not need to be amended. God gives no encouragement, either in his Word or in his Works, to those who ex- pect him to work miracles to save them from the consequences of their own folly, or to help a cause which may be carried by human zeal and energy, aided by such predispositions as God may have made in his natural providence. But when all this is allowed, it does not go to prove that the supernatural is unnecessary. Man, indeed, must ever be careful not to go beyond his proper province, in making affirma- tions regarding what God may do or must do. Some defenders of Christianity speak of the " ne- cessity of a Divine Eevelation. The language is strong, as coming from a creature like man, 136 GENERAL REMARKS whose capacities are so restricted and oppor- tunities of knowing the possible ways of God are so confined. But while it should ever be far from us to dictate to Deity, we may carefully look at the state of things in which we find ourselves placed, and at the relation in which we stand towards God, and reverently observe how certain great purposes worthy of God, suited to our world, and bearing upon the crying wants, of man, might be served by a supernatural ac- tion or revelation, should God be pleased to grant it. Enough, at least, may be discovered to obviate those objections which proceed on the allegation that the added supernatural must be incongruous with the previous natural, and be a reflection on the consistency of God. It will appear that the supernatural fits into the natural, and carries out fully the Divine purpose, as manifested in the world. I. The principal ground on which we antici- pate a supernatural interposition of God is, un- doubtedly, the existence and universality of sin. "We have here a fact in nature to proceed upon, and we feel constrained to trace its relation to God and to his character, as revealed by nature without and nature within us. It is quite cer- tain, on the one hand, that sin exists; equally certain, on the other hand, that it is a violation of the law of God, and oflfensive to Him who hath ON THE S UPERNA TUBAL. 137 instituted it. We are sure that God condemns sin, and yet we have strong hopes that, somehow or other, he may provide forgiveness for the guilty. Nature shews that God is good, but ^lils to point out a way by which the sinner may be reconciled to that good God. It is at this point that the revealed fact of the Word comes in to meet the mysterious fact of nature. The incarnation of the Eternal Word, followed by the setting of a perfect example, by the working of a perfect righteousness, and by piacular suffering and death, is the great supernatural event, carry- ing all the others along with it, as the streams which feed it, or the rivers which flow from it ; as its antecedents, or its consequents ; as means towards it, or issues from it. Admit this grand occurrence, and we feel that we may admit a thousand more, provided they stand in a relation to it. We have now a new and a grander central sun than that of our natural mundane system, and we have no difficulty in conceiving that there may be many bodies rolling round it, as secondaries or dependencies. II. Another ground on which we may be led to anticipate the Divine interposition is to be found in man's distance from God, and igno- rance of him, coupled always with the desirable- ness of knowing God, and his willingness to be known. The circumstance now referred to pro- 138 GENERAL PiEMAIlKS ceeds from the other, but it comes to us with a pecuhar aspect. AVe discover two classes of facts in nature, which seem to imply a third class above nature, in order to reconcile them. Tbese natural facts meet us, whether we look to tbe world at hxrge or to our own individual re- Hgious experience. • Looking to m^ankind at large, w^e find, on the one hand, as Paul told the men at Lystra, that God " has not left himself without a witness in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness" (Acts xiv. 17), and on the other hand, that men have not attended to that wit- ness, or have not understood it aright. The heavens declare the glory of God ; but how few of those who have dwelt or do dwell on the earth have looked up to the heavens, and risen thereby to clear apprehensions of his nature and perfec- tions. God does reveal himself in these his works, and yet does it not look as if he were concealing himself behind them ? How few of his intelligent creatures have recognized him, or have worshipped him, except in the most horrid and tortured shapes, which are a caricature of his excellencies and a mockeiy of his greatness, in which his purity is omitted, and his good- ness turned into favoritism and caprice, and his spiritual nature reduced to sensuous forms ! It ox THE SUPEEXATURAL. 139 lias again and again been shewn, till it Las be- come commonplace — and men ^Yho bate com- monplace turn from it — but it is an established truth which no one can deny, and the impor- tance of which cannot be over-estimated, that no nation of itself has (and very few individuals have) risen to the knowledge of one God apart from a w^ritten revelation. This induction is as w^ide as any in physical science, embracing not only ancient but modern times, not only bar- barous and degraded countries, but semi-civilized countries of vast magnitude, such as India and China, and highly civilized countries, such as ancient Greece, and countries capable of the high- est political organization, such as ancient Eome. All history, too, testifies, from Greece downwards to modern Japan, that the picture drawn in the close of the first chapter of the Epistle to the Eomans is a true one ; that when men " knew not God, and glorified him not as God, neither w^ere thankful," they have everywhere been given up to uncleanness and other sins, such as murder, deceit, malignity, practised without public repro- bation, or an eflbrt being made to stay the evil — inasmuch as men not only " do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them." On the other hand, it is clear that God washes that he should be know^n ; and, as Paul taught the Athenians, that men " should seek the Lord, if 140 GENERAL REMARKS liaply they might feel after him, and find him, though he he not far from every one of us" (Acts xvii. 27) : and it is certain that the know- ledge of God is a higher knowledge in itself than the knowledge of his works, or than any other knowledge can he ; and that it has an elevating tendency upon the thoughts, and a purifying influence upon the morals of a people ; Avhile it brings to all, hut especially those in affliction, a thousand comfortable assurances. Is any man justified in dogmatically affirming that this God never has made, and that he never can make, a fuller and a comforting revelation of himself to his intelligent and anxious creatures every wdi ere seek- ing him — as they sliew by their very errors, and yet ever feeling that they have not found him — as they shew by their dissatisfaction and restless- ness? The human spirit seems to anticipate that, though God has " winked " at " this time of ignorance," yet he will, at the set time, break the silence, and " command all men everywhere to repeni" (Acts xvii. 27, 30) in order to a restoration to himself. I believe that he who has reflected deeply upon nature and all its mysteries, and upon the actual state of mankind and their relation to God, will be the most dis- posed to consider and to weigh the facts and arguments which might be advanced to shew that God has been pleased to make known a ON THE SUPERNATURAL. 141 way of access to him. He who perceives that it has heen by the Bible that God's unity and his higher perfections have in fact been made known to that portion of the human fjxmily which know and recognise these truths, will surely not be disposed a priori and peremptorily to decide that the book cannot possibly have come from God. Nor let any one urge that the light at present dif- fused over the professedly Christian world would remain on our earth even though the Bible were withdrawn as a heavenly luminary. From all that history teaches regarding mankind we may be sure that in such a case the light at pre- sent diffused, like the sun's beams through our atmosphere, so that many fail to recognise the luminous centre from which it proceeds, would soon lessen, and would finally disappear, among the great body of the people, were the Bible, as the source, withdrawn, — ^just as the day, after a brief splendour, sinks into twilight and darkness when the sun ceases to shine. Yes ; let us realize — it may be profitable for us — the position of our world were the Bible found by German critics or Oxford essayists to be so full of errors that no one could discover from it what was truth and what was error. What would the great body of the people in these lands now have to fall back upon? What would we now have to carry with us when we addressed the heathen or the 142 GENERAL EE3IARKS outcast? .Would not the great mass of man- kind feel licensed to abandon themselves to shameless ungodliness and sensuality, from which they would he roused only, by occasional religious awakenings, to feel that they were groping in darkness, in which they would find gods or demons, suited to their tastes or created by their fears, among imperfectly discerned natural objects? I believe that the very edu- cated, when the darkness had settled down, would feel God disappearing more and more from the view, and becoming, in fact, an un- known God — at best a mere point of light — " a postulate of reason," as some one admits him — seen in the incalculable distance, not as a sun shining all around, but as a star exercising no appreciable influence on our earth. The very same impression is left when, in- stead of looking at the world without, we listen to the breathings of our own spirits. In our deeper moods we feel as if these souls of ours had some affinity with God, and yet it is in our moments of deepest thought and emotion that we are made to feel most impressively that he is at an infinite distance from us. Many a profound thinker has felt, as Heraclitus of Ephesus did, when he describes the name of Zeus as " the one object of wisdom," which "wills not and yet wills to be spoken" (y.iysff&ui oh-/. ItJsXsi zai IdsXsi). He ON THE SUPERNATURAL. 143 seems as if He were offering us cominunion with himself, and yet we are ever baffled and beat back in our efforts to enjoy the privilege. We are ever induced to mount, but as we do so by natural means, we hnd that, after all, there is no atmosphere to float us beyond a very short height, and that we never get beyond the gravity of earth, which, in the end, draws us back to its hard and cold surface. There are times when our spirits, as if at the invitation of God, would boldly go up to heaven's gates only to find them shut and silent, and we come back sulky and disappointed. How often have we felt our prayers ascending as vapours, drawn up by a genial heat as we think in the heavens, only to return as snow to damp and cool, or as hail to smite us. All these natural facts and intima- tions combined seem to shew that God is dis- pleased with us, while yet he loves us; not countenancing us in our sins, and yet sparing us in the midst of them ; shewing his disapproval of our conduct, but yet waiting to be gracious and showering favours upon us in order to melt us into gratitude. Could any man, living in a heathen land, be giving offence to that God, were he to pray that He would reveal Himself more fully, and shew the way by which the sin- ner may approach him ? But if God is to provide a reconcilement of 144 GENERAL RE3IAEKS these chasms, that reconcilement must be pre- ternatural, and if he is to reveal this method of reconciliation, it must be in a supernatural way, — the revelation itself is supernatural, it is a voice out of and beyond the natural sphere. To preclude God from suj^ernatural action, is to shut him out from providing a remedy for the evils which sin has entailed. To make it im- possible to prove the supernatural, is to shut out man from ever knowing that there is forgiveness and peace. But if God is to reveal his will it must be in a way intelligible to man, and the intelligent nature of man requires that there be evidence that it is God that speaks. III. God may prove to us a supernatural revelation by miracles of evidence wrought on natural agents, but by an action beyond the sphere of nature. For if God is to reveal the supernatural to us, say that his Eternal Son became flesh and made reconciliation, it must be through the natural. In saying so, I do not speak of any absolute necessity in the nature of things, but of a necessity arising from the nature of man, and of the mundane system in which he is placed. A revelation to man is a revelation to a being within the sphere of nature. Not only so, but that revelation must be made by means which can reach him. It must be made immediately to his soul by intimations to it, or ON THE SUPERNATUPxAL. 145 it must be made externally throiigii liis bodily senses. I suppose that to the inspired prophets v f' the revelation was made by a mental represen-«.|>i tation, accompanied by a conviction very analo- '^ 16g THE SYSTEM IN CHAPTER II. THE SYSTEM IN THE SUPEENATUEAL. SECT. I.— THERE IS SYSTEM IN THE SUPERNATURAL. By system we are to understand things arranged, objects or truths set in order. There are such systems in nature. The sun and the bodies rolhng round him constitute such a system. There are evidently systems in the starry heavens. The atmosphere, with its rarefactions and condensations, with its cahns and its storms, is a system ; as is also the ocean, with its evapo- rations, and the counterbalancing flow into it of waters from the land. Every organism, vegetable and animal, is such a system, — all the means are ends, and all the ends means. And as there are systems in nature, so nature as a whole is a sys- tem. The phenomena are all correlated, as causes and effects, or by mutual resemblances and affinities. Persons are accustomed to ex- press this, by saying that all things are governed by law. But there has been an immense amount of confusion, and not a little error, in the views TEE SUPERNATURAL. 167 entertained by many as to the nature of physical law, and the relation of law to God. The lan- guage often employed implies that there is a necessity laid on God to proceed by natural law. And it should at once be admitted, that every act of God is, and must be, conformed to his own moral law, that is, moral nature. But it has been shewn again and again that law in morals and law in the occurrence of physical phenomena are not the same things. It should be allowed, too, that law, in the sense of system or co-ordi- nation, rules everywhere in nature. But it is rash in the extreme to affirm that God should, or that he must, act in this way and in no other. The order of nature has all the appearance of an arrangement or device for the accomplish- ment of w4se and beneficent ends. It is a fact that it is made to supply the w^ants of God's creatures, and to^ render nature intelligible by the intellic^ent creature. Whatever else natural law may be, it is certainly an expression of the Divine wdsdom, as a wise means of accomplish- ing a good purpose. I am to shew^, in these Sections, that in the supernatural dispensations of God there is a grand system, wdth subordinate systems, — a sun with planets, and planets with satellites, — an or- ganism made up of living organisms. But let us understand precisely how much, and how 168 TEE S YSTEM IN little, is meant and implied in this language. It is not to be interpreted as involving that God behoves to proceed by natural law, we being judges ; or that from the necessity of his nature, or of things, he can proceed no otherwise. No doubt, all that God does must fall out according to a purpose in the Divine mind; but the indi- vidual occurrences may, or they may not, be dependent on created agencies. It should not be allowed, for one moment, that we are not at liberty to look upon an event as springing from the supernatural power of God, unless it can be shewn to be a link in a concatenated combina- tion. There is a loose and empty style of speak- ing in our day, about miracles being, after all, referable to a higher law, which either has no definite meaning, or may be understood in a misleading sense, and, at the best, is in no way fitted to gain the opponents of supernaturalism, who, by law, always mean one consistent thing, and that is, natural law. If it is meant that miracles can all be referred to some higher natural law, discoverable or undiscoverable, the impression may be left, that they are like meteors or like mesmerism, simply mysteries which may yet come within natural explanation, and which cannot, therefore, be evidential of supernatural action. If it is meant that they can all be referred to some supernatural law, TEE S UPJERNA TURAL. 1 G 9 known or unknown, the assertion is made with- out a warrant from reason or from revelation. It would be most presumptuous in us to affirm that we can, in every case, discover the law to which the supernatural operations belong, or so much as be sure that there is a law. It is quite conceivable, indeed, that there may be some such law beyond our ken, but of what use can it be to appeal to a law unknown and un- knowable. It is quite as conceivable, that God may have wrought in our world an isolated occurrence, having no connexion, physical, causal, or dependent, with any other mundane occurrence, except the profound relations which all things have one to another in the Divine mind. But keeping these explanations steadily in view, we may reverently inquire whether there is not system in the supernatural revelations and dispensations of God ; and as we do so, we shall find not a few traces of connexion and plan. I speak of traces, for in many cases we have nothing more than prints, — such as we have seen in the snow, giving evidence of a living creature having moved in a particular direction, but scarcely in- dicating what the animal was. Seldom can we rise to so full an apprehension of the superna- tural system as we have attained in these last days of the natural. A number of reasons can 170 TEE SYSTEM IX be given for this. An obvious one is, that we have scarcely so kirge a body of clear facts out of which to rise to the knowledge of the law by generalization. Another certainly is, that we seldom see the clear^^and undisturbed operation of the supernatural and spiritual law — in most cases we obtain only interrupted glimpses. How difficult did astronomers find it for long ages to determine the precise path followed by the planets, not because the planetary motions are irregular, but solely because no one ever saw them performing a full revolution; all that could be seen was, that they were in one position at one time, and in a different position at a different time, and it was out of the individual observa- tions that they had to gather the law by compu- tation. We are in much the same position when we would settle the law of supernatural occur- rences. We see that there is a course pursued; \^e may even anticipate it to some extent, — as in ancient times they could predict the time of the rising of a planet, when as yet they were igno- rant of the precise law of the planetary move- ments; but we may commit great blunders if we dogmatically affirm that we know its precise orbit as it moves through space and time, — quite as great as the ancients fell into when they settled prematurely the planetary paths into cycles and epicycles. A third reason may very possibly be, TEE SUrETtXATURAL. ITl that the laws of the supernatural may, in their very nature, he heyond human comprehension; their cycles may he more sweeping than those of the farthest travelling comets, or the largest starry constellations ; they may run from eternity to eternity, or come out from eternity into time, or their rule may lie altogether in the Divine in- telligence and will, and not he disclosed to us hy a positive statement, or hy an ohservable series of connected occurrences. Making these abatements, we may yet maintain that we discover clear indications of ordination and subordination in the supernatural dispensa- tions of God, analogous to, though by no means identical with, those of the kingdom of nature. There are every^vhere relations, evidently heaven- designed, of one thing to another. There are parts related to parts, and all constituting a con- nected whole. There is an apparatus instituted to produce a grand result, and, everywhere in the process, means producing ends, and ends which are means to higher ends. There are series flow^ing on like rivers in their appointed channel, and bearing their ^vaters, and much wealth that floats on them, to their appointed destination. There are times and seasons — like the days and years and geological epochs of the natural ^vorld — which begin at a point and reach a consum- mation. There are correspondences among cha- 172 THE SYSTEM IN racters and ordinances not unlike those beautiful homotypal, homologous, and analogous corres- pondences which later science has been dis- covering everywhere in the vegetable and animal kingdoms. There is a gradual advance in light and knowledge, and a development like that of the plant — till seed is brought forth ; like that of the geological ages — till the earlier types are all fully unfolded and embodied in an archetype. There is more than a conglomerate of systems, there is a group, there is a system, of systems. AVhatever other centres the inferior systems may have, they all form part of one grand system, circling round an attracting body, which keeps them in their places, and illuminates them as they rotate around it. Need I say that this ob- ject is Jesus Christ, in his incarnation, his life, his death, and ascension. The supernatural dispensation has respect throughout to God, to his law, and his glory, on the one hand; and to man, to his sins, and his restoration to peace and holiness and com- munion with God through a mediator, on the other. It is said to originate in the Divine love, to be the product of the Divine wisdom and power, and to manifest the Divine righteousness and faithfulness. It brings peace to man, plants him on the elevation from which he had fallen, and sends him forth on a career of evangelical THE SUPERNATURAL. 173 obedience. It is not needful to quote isolated passages to prove this, — it is written on the very face of the Word of God, it is woven into the very texture of the supernatural system. It is briefly expressed in the song of the multitude of the heavenly host, " Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." There are intimations not obscure in Scripture of particular economies holding a relation to the great one devised in the counsels of a past eter- nity, wdiich is being executed progressively in time, and is reaching forward to the coming eternity. It is very often described as a covenant. David speaks of it as " an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure" (2 Sam. xxiii. 5). Of that covenant Jesus is the mediator (Heb. xiii. 6). That covenant takes special forms in different circumstances and in successive ages. It is, for example, a covenant with Noah, with promises given to him and his posterity, and obligations laid on them (Gen. vi. 12). It is a covenant with Abraham, concentrating titles and privileges in him and in his seed (xxii. 17, 18). It is a cove- nant with the children of Israel at Sinai, in which a most instructive but somewhat burden- some ritual is enjoined, while large assurances are held out to them (Deut. iv. 13, &c.). It is entered into specially with King David as the father of a seed (Ps. Ixxxix, 3). The later prophets speak 174 THE SYSTEM IN of the covenant in its older form giving way in favour of a new covenant. "Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah." " After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts, and will he their God, and they shall be my people (Jer. xxxi. 31, 33). In interpreting such passages, the word covenant has often been stretched far too rigidly, to bring heavenly things down to the level of human transactions. Still, the language points to a counsel of vast depth which we cannot fully fathom, and to an arrangement with obligations and sanctions entered into with men, in all cases through a sacrifice — the typical sacrifices in the older dispensation, and the real sacrifice in the New Testament. The word ordinance is applied by the inspired writers to the arrangements which God has made in nature. " Thou hast established the earth, and it abideth; they continue this day according to thine ordinances, for all are thy servants" (Ps. cxix. 90, 91): compare Job xxxviii. 33 ; Jer. xxxi. 35; xxxiii. 25). It is the word applied in Scripture to those orderly injunctions which God laid down to the Church as to the services required of His people. The covenants of God had all ordinances of Divine service (Heb. ix. 11). THE SUPERNATURAL, 175 In the Okl Testament Church there was in the priesthood an order of Melchizedek (Heh. V. G, 7), and an order of Aaron (Heb. vii. 11). The sanctuary and its furniture were all made after a pattern shewn by God to Moses on Mount Sinai (Heb. viii. 5). There are also traces of a plan in the New Testament. It is a kingdom, a kingdom set up on the earth, not a kingdom of this world, but the kingdom of heaven upon earth, with a living king, but to be established and defended not with carnal but spiritual weapons (John xviii. 36; 2 Cor. x. 4). It is a house, a building in which Christ rejected is the corner-stone, and built upon him are, first Apostles, and then all his followers, each in his own place, as living^ stones. The company of the faithful is at first a very small one, meeting in an upper room at Jeru- salem ; but, in consequence of a predetermined and prayed for outpouring of the Spirit — tlie re- ward and the first-fruits of Christ's work — the number is largely and rapidly increased ; and in an age or two the Gospel is preached for a wit- ness in all the provinces of the Roman empire. But in the midst of these triumphs there are intimations tliat antichrist is already working, that there will be a long falling away, and that the Church will have much to sufi'er (2 Thess. iii. 3 1—2 ; 1 Tim. iv. 1—8). The inspired 176 THE SYSTEM IN volume closes with a prophecy of thmgs that " must be hereafter" (Rev. iv. 1), in which there is a book of Providence with seven seals opened, and seven angels sounding trumpets, and seven vials poured forth, all shewing that there is a pre-ordained system in the evolutions, and battles, and final triumphs of the Church. The history of that Church is symbolized in the life of its earthly head. Descending from heaven, its earthly birth is in the stable at Bethlehem ; it goes on doing good, and spreading a hal- lowed influence around it, in lowliness and com- parative obscurity ; and in the conflict in which it seems defeated it gains its greatest triumphs, and when it seems buried out' of sight it rises and reigns for ever. In the Sections which follow, I am about to shew that Revelation is systematic throughout. After this has been done, the reader will be in a better position to appreciate the advantages arising from this mode of procedure. At this place it will be enough to indicate them in rude outline. The systematic character of the alleged revelation, its close connexions, and its varied relations to God and to man, enable us to estab- lish with more ease and certainty, that it is a real revelation of God. The general super- natural character of the revelation also takes out of the region of the natural a number of THE SUPERNATURAL. 177 events wliicli we could not certainly pronounce to be miraculous, unless from their connexion with the system. The whole becomes more comprehensible by the mind of man, which seeks after the correlations of things, when we see somewhat of the plan of the procedure and the ends contemplated. Nor is it a small advan- tage of tlie orderly character of the revelation of God, that when we apprehend it, w^e are able at once to set aside certain pretensions to super- natural action — just as the naturalist, from his acquaintance with the homologies of nature, at once turns away from the stories about the unicorn and the sea serpent. Nor is it to be omitted, that as the knowledge of natural laws gives us prescience, and enables us so far to anticipate the future, so the systems of types, of prophecy and doctrine, and the general laws of the spiri- tual economy, open far ranging views of the coming destiny of our world, and give us glimpses through the rolling mists of the world to come. M 178 THE SYSTEM IN SECT. II.— THE TYPICAL SYSTEM OF REVELATION, Every man of science knows that there is a system of types in nature. Tracing it from the geological ages down to the present time, we find it characterized by several marked features. First, there is a set of agencies in nature pro- ducing orderly results. We see this even in inanimate creation, in the spheroidal shapes of the planets, in the elliptic movements of the bodies moving round the sun, and in the motions of the stars through space. We may perceive it on the earth, in the regular crystalline forms which minerals assume, and which bring them under rigid mathematical laws. Every one may observe it in the forms of plants and animals, and in the cycles which they run as they advance from their germ through settled stages to their maturity, and then die and disappear. The cell out of which the whole structure is formed has its regular shape and constitution. Every mem- ber has its model form ; the stem in the plant, the bone in the animal, being typically a column enlarged at each end. Every organ of the plant, be it leaf, or branchlet, or root, is made to take its own form, and there is a typical shape for each of these in eveiy species of plant. There is, likewise, a model for every vertebra in the THE SUFERXATURAL. 179 backbone, and for every limb of the animal. l>y the combination of the several typical parts, the whole plant and animal is also made to take a general typical form, which allies it with tlie members of the organic kingdoms, and a special typical form, which distinguishes it from all others. Secondly, the agencies at work produce a series of orderly results in succession, each growing out of others antecedent. It is thus that we have the " herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself after his kind," and the animal begetting an offspring after its own likeness. It is thus that in the geological ages we have every epoch arising out of the preceding one, by causes natural or supernatural. Some have supposed that the whole can be accounted for by natural causes still operating, and have certainly ex- plained much in this way, though they have hitherto failed to give any account of the intro- duction of the first organism, or of successive orders of plants and animals. Others have been more inclined to think that the production of new species of animated beings has proceeded from natural causes undiscovered, perhaps un- discoveraljle by man, and certainly not acting in the present state of things. Others at once call in a supernatural power to account for the pro- 180 TEE STSTE2I IN duction of every new species of living being. It is not lieeclfal for our present purpose to take any side in this controversy, except to declare that natural causes certainly seem utterly inca- pable of producing such a being as man, and that the statement of Scripture that man was created by a special act is in full accordance with the facts of science. It is certain on all the theories that, by an agency of God, natural or supernatural, one state of things has arisen out of another; part of the causes, those bearing on the inanimate portion of the earth, being allowed on all hands to be natural, and the whole being resolved, on every hypothesis, by the religious man, into the counsel of God. Coming down to the human and historical period, we find the present state of things to be the issue of all that has gone before. Thus the civilization of these times is the product of a long series of causes, among w^hich we must place the learning and refinement of Greece and Eome, which again were influenced by still older and eastern states of society. We get only glimpses of the order of the geological epochs, and of the very complex march of historical events, and there is quite as much need of restraint as of encouragement being bestowed on the rash theories which are being promulgated to account for the whole process. But we see enough to convince us that TILE S UFERNA TVRAL. LSI tliere is a pre-ordained geological, and, we may add, social plan, in which the present has a relation to the past, and proceeds out of it according to the arrangements of an all-wise counsel. Thirdly, natural agencies produce a succession of results in which there is progress. For there is certainly a law of progression, and of develop- ment too, in the mundane system. Speculators, indeed, have often misinterpreted and perverted it, some setting aside all Divine agency in favour of mere physical causation, and others admitting God only pantheistically, as acting in nature hut not ahove it. Still there has heen, and there evidently still is, an advancement from the lower to the higher, and the springing of a farther stage from a simpler state of things. Geology shews an advance, from seaweeds up to the plants yielding the richest fruits and to the trees of the forest, and from zoophytes up to quadrupeds and to man. In our own epoch the discoveries of science and the inventions of art are new powers added to help on the advance- ment of the race ; and they make the ground yield a larger produce ; and they give to human beings a greater power over the elements ; and tliey increase the number of rational creatures in proportion to the irrational ; and they provide a better sustenance for mans wants; and they 182 THE SYSTEM IX lessen disease and prolong life ; and they help on our advancement in knowledge and refine- ment. All this is evidently predetermined by God, for it is palpably the result of agencies which he has instituted. Fourthly, there is a still more peculiar ele- ment in the typical system of nature — the earlier is a sort of prefiguration of the later. The seed contains what is to become the full-grown plant. The embryo has already what is to expand into the full-grown animal. The earlier geological ages shew rude types, with capacities which be- come developed only in the more finished forms of later vegetable and animal life. The language of our two greatest living natu- ralists cannot be too frequently quoted as to the prophetic plan of nature. " It is evident," says Agassiz," " that there is a manifest j)rogress in the succession of beings on the surface of the earth. This progress consists in an increasing similarity to the living fauna, and among the vertebrata especially in their increasing resem- blance to man. But this connexion is not the consequence of a direct lineage between the faunas of different ages. There is nothing hke parental descent connecting them. The fishes of the Palaeozoic age are in no respect the ancestors of the reptiles of the secondary age, nor does * Agassiz and Gould's Comparative Physiology, p. 147. TEE S UFERXA TUllA L. 1 S 3 ^liin descend from the mammals wliicli preceded him in the tertiary age. The hnk hy which they are connected is of a higher and immaterial na- tm*e ; and their connexion is to he sought in the view of the Creator Himself, whose aim in form- ing the earth, in allowing it to undergo the successive changes which geology has pointed out, and in creating successively all the different types of animals which have passed away, w^as to introduce man upon its surface. Man is the end towards wdiich all the animal creation has tended from the first appearance of the first Paleozoic fishes." The language of Ow^en is equally ex- plicit''' : — " The recognition of an ideal exem- plar in the vertehrated animals proves that the knowledge of such a being as man must have existed before man appeared; for the Di- vine Mind wdiich planned the archetype also foreknew all its modifications. The archetype idea w^as manifested in the fiesh long prior to the existence of those animal species that ac- tually exemplify it. To wdiat natural laws or secondary causes the orderly succession and pro- gression of such organic phenomena may have been committed, we are as yet ignorant. But if, without derogation of the Divine power, we may conceive of the existence of such ministers, and personify them by the term ' Nature,' we learn * On Limbs, p. 86. 184 THE SYSTEM IN from the past histoiy of our globe that she has advanced with slow and stately steps, guided by the archetypal light amidst the wreck of worlds, from the first embodiment of the vertebrate idea under its old ichthyic vestment, until it became arrayed in the glorious garb of the human form." Let us inquire w^hether there may not be some- thing analogous to all this in the dispensations of grace. I. There is an order and a method in the supernatural dispensations of God. In nature there is a uniformity of composition and structure, and a unity of aspect, which enable the experi- enced eye to distinguish at once between' the works of God and the w^orks of man, betw^een the actual phenomena of the world and the creations of human phantasy. There is a like unity in the revelations of God. From the beginning, they appear as an announced provision for saving a people from the effects of the fall, through a Deliverer sent from heaven, but taber- nacling on the earth. This idea, without being fully unfolded, runs through all the dispensations of the Old Testament, is embodied fully in the work and death of Jesus, and is declared cate- gorically by the apostles in their epistles. This gives a unity to the doctrine — it all hangs on the circumstance that God has provided a ransom for sinful man ; a unity to the events of provi- THE SUPERNATURAL. 185 dence — to the deliverances, for example, wrought for God's people in successive ages ; a unity to the ordinances and worship, — they invite us as sinners to approach God, propitiated by an atonement ; a unity to the very characters set before us for* contemplation, — they are all justi- fied by free grace, and they walk by faith, and are seeking to become holy. II. One dispensation rises out of another. In geology there are mineral, but more especially fossil characteristics, which enable us to group the strata into systems.' If we compare the older with the later, we find them difi'ering very widely from each other — thus we seek in vain below the Tertiary Formation for any species of animal now living. But on the other hand, we discover a unity of type running through the whole series, and if we compare the immediately successive formations, the differences do not appear so great, and farther research is tending to fill up the breaks. There are, in like manner, systems or economies in the supernatural dispensations, as revealed in the Word, such as the antedilu- vian, the patriarchal, the jMosaic, the prophetical, consummating in the Christian. There is, no doubt, a vast difference between the light enjoyed by us in Christian times, and that vouchsafed to the patriarchs, indeed, to any who lived before Christ — " he that is least in the kingdom of 186 TEE SYSTEM IN heaven" is greater than the most privileged of those who hved in these early times. In the palaeozoic times, if we may so call them, patri- arch and prophet have an antique aspect, and a stiff and rigid shape, compared with the more flexible forms of life in Christian times; but there runs a unity of type through the whole doctrine and all the characters, and the one system ever slides into the other. We can see that -the Christian dispensation, though an advance, grew out of the Jewish, and how the Jewish sprang from an older economy. III. There has been progress in the religious systems. In geology there have been fanciful, and false, and atheistic theories of development ; but there is, after all, a true doctrine, and this whether men have or have not been able to seize it. With not a few partial breaks and anomalies, there has been an advance from the lower vege- table and animal to the higher ; and also an advance from the more general and rude to the more specific and adapted ; from a loose life spread over the organism to a more localized and intense life ; from organs suited imperfectly to many purposes, to organs fitted admirably for more special ends ; from rude instruments of defence and attack, to a more refined apparatus for preservation ; from vague to more peculiar instincts ; from instincts which go on blindly to THE SUPERNATURAL. 187 a purpose, to instincts which can vary the action to suit the circumstances, and on to rudimentary reason. There is a parallel advance in rehgious knowledge and spirituality in the reign of God, as a system introduced into our world. It is the same God that is revealed in the Book of Genesis, in the Book of Isaiah, and in the Epistles ; hut surely he is more fully disclosed in the last of these than in the two previous, and in the second than in the first. It is the same method of reconciliation made known to fallen man in the sacrifices of Ahel, of Noah, of Ahraham, and of the Levitical institutions ; and a^ain in the life and death of Christ, and the commentary on the whole, which we have in the Epistle to the Hehrews ; hut in the former the figure is veiled, and we see only the general form, whereas in the latter it is fully unfolded to our view ; in the former it is seen in the dawn ere the sun rises, in the latter under the light of day. The morals of the Old Testament and the New are fundamentally the same ; hut in the former they take a more prohibitory and minutely technical shape than they do in the Sermon on the Mount, where our attention is called not so much to tlie form as to the spirit which animates it. There was an advance in the knowledge of the disciples, from the time of their early pupilship, when they shewed such 188 THE SYSTEM IN ignorance, and fell into such blunders, down to the time when they w^ere guided unto all truth by the Spirit. It may even be admitted, under certain restrictions, that there is development in the Christian Church. There is, indeed, no addition to the truth revealed, no change in the rule of faith and morals. But surely w^e who dwell in these later times, with all the lights kindled by those who have gone before, and specially with the beacon lights kindled on the rocks on which many have been shipwrecked, are in better circumstances to appreciate the full spirit of the Word ; and it is certain that the knowledge of Divine truth is every year covering a larger portion of the earth's surface. IV. There are prefigurations in the super- natural dispensations. In particular, there are events, institutions, and persons that look for- ward to Christ and to Christ's day. These con- stitute what is usually called Scripture types by theologians. But the typical system, of the Word of God is of a vastly more comprehensive cha- racter than divines have conceived it to be. In order to determine its precise nature, and to illustrate the whole subject, it will be needful to inquire somewhat minutely into the meaning of the phrases by which this peculiarity of the Divine dispensations is set forth by the writers of the New Testament. THE SUPERNATUPxAL. 189 In the Word of God the plimse '' type" and analogous words (r-jTrog, {j^KOTh-ir^^aig^ Mp(pri^ iM6p(p(^(Sig, bih/fia, i/xoag/7/Aa, and derivations, such as buyiMari^ca 'Trapadsr/ojum^u) are used to oxpress a very deep idea running through the whole Divine economy resemhhng the "idea" {Idea and Ag) and the "pattern" (cra/?aai/i/&/a) of Plato, the "form" of Aristotle {s'Idog), borrowed from him by the school- men, by Bacon, by Kant, and logicians generally, the " law" of modern physical science, and the " type" of natural history. This meaning has been very much lost sight of by divines, in con- sequence of their constructing a system of theo- logical (so they avow) instead of a system of Scriptural types. The words I refer to signify literally a form, likeness, specimen, or image. They are employed in Scripture to set forth a great truth, which has seldom been seized in all its width or in all its particularity. They denote that, in the spiritual economy of God, things are fashioned after a pattern, just as the natural sciences have shewn that there are types or model forms all throughout the works of God. Taking the word type (ru'^og) and its com- pounds, we tind it used in its literal sense, as when the Apostle Thomas declares, " unless I shall see in his hands the type of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe" (John XX. 25). The children of Israel are repre- 190 THE SYSTEM IN sented as taking up in the wilderness " types or images of Moloch and llemphan, gods whom they worshipped" (Acts vii. 43). Becoming somewhat more metaphorical, Claudius Lysias is spoken of as writing a letter after the " type" or manner that follows (Acts xxiii. 25). Moses is commanded to make the tabernacle of witness *' according to the type that he had seen" (Acts vii. 44). Paul tells us that Moses, when he was about to make the tabernacle, was commanded to make " all things according to the type shewed" him in the mount. (Heb. viii. 5.) Turning to the passage in Exo- dus, we find that the word used is " tehegit,'' meaning form or exemplar, and it is translated in the Alexandrian version 'paracleigm {'irapdhr/ij.a), the very word so often employed by Plato. Paul represents the first man as a " type of him that was to come" (Rom. v. 14). The same Apostle speaks of behevers everywhere, as being examples or types to others. Thus the Thessalonians are described as " types to all that believe in Mace- donia and Achaia" (1 Thess. i. 7). He exhorts the Philippians, " be followers together of me, and mark them which walk so as ye have us for a type" (Phil. iii. 17). He speaks of himself as working with labour and travail night and day, that he might not be chargeable to any, in order to " make ourselves a type to you to copy" (2 Thess. iii. S). Jesus Christ is represented THE S UPEENA TURAL. 101 as shewing forth in Paul, " nil long-suffering for an under- type (ucroTj%&)(r;j) to them which should hereafter helieve on Him to life everlasting" (1 Tim. i. 16). Peter exhorts elders to he " types to the flock," and points to the chief Shepherd as ahout to give the reward when he comes (1 Pet. V. 9). There are said to he types not only of persons and of character, hut of doctrine. The Roman helievers are spoken of as " having oheyed from the heart that type of doctrine which was delivered" them (Rom. vi. 17), and Timothy is exhorted to " hold fast the undertype (■l-z6-vxu6ig) of sound words wdiich he had heard of Paul (1 Tim. i. 13). There are said, too, to be types in the administration of God in punishing the wicked, as when he overwhelmed those that sinned in the wilderness. " These things w^ere our types, that w^e should not lust after evil things as they also lusted," and the Apostle adds : " All these things happened unto them for types, and they are written for our admonition, upon w^hom the ends of the ages are come" (1 Cor. x. (5, 11). Other phrases are employed to present the same general truths. Thus Sodom and Go- morrha, and the cities ahout them, are *' set forth as a sample {hTyiia)^ suffering the vengeance of eternal fire" (Jude, verse 7). It is said of Christ that having hy liis cross " spoiled principalities 192 THE SYSTEM IN and powers he made a sample of tliem (sdny/xaTiffsv), openly triumphing over them in it" (Col. ii. 15). Paul says of the priests that offer gifts according to the law that they serve " unto the exemplar {h'Trohiyiia)^ and shadow of heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle, for see, saitli he, that thou make all things according to the type shewed thee in the mount" (Heb. viii. 5). The same apostle, speaking of those who rebelled in the wilderness, exhorts us to labour to enter unto rest, " lest any man fall after the same example {I'jrohiiyfia) of unbelief" (iii. 11). Using the same word, Peter speaks of the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrha as " an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly" (2 Pet. ii. 6). James employs the same phrase when he exhorts us to take " the prophets who have spoken in the name of the Lord for an example of suffering affliction, and of patience" (v. 10) ; and our Lord says, " I have given you as an example that ye should do as I have done to you" (John xvii. 15). Man is everywhere represented as made after the likeness of God (xa^' oiJ.oio)Civ dsov, James iii. 9). Jesus Christ is represented as being made in the likeness (o^o/w/Aa) of men (Phil. ii. 7), and as being sent in the likeness of sinful flesh (Rom. viii. 3). The Apostle Paul often brings out the analogy between Christ's crucifixion and death and his THE SUPERNATURAL. 193 people being crucified and dying unto sin, and between his resurrection and continued life and tlieir conversion and spiritual life. In particu- lar, " If we have been planted together in the likeness {o/^otM,u.a) of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection" (Rom. vi. 5). Christ Jesus is represented as being " in the form {fj^op -^ ^ that, on more careful inquiry, he found that the days on which it rested were Sundays ; he would now have the general rule, hut hd^would also, have the rule of the exceptions, and he would see the propriety of hoth — tlie one being for secular good, and the other to proniote sacred ends. The case is very analogous to what we have in our w^orld ; we observe a uniformity in nature to meet man's intelligence' and 'con- venience, and possibly to serve many other ends ; but our attention is also called to a course of supernatural action, coincident with the natural, and joining on to it, to meet man's spiritual wants, and to harmonize heaven and earth, — the two being, after all, the essential parts of one comprehensive system, the outward and inner compartments of one grand temple. II. This systematic character of revelation makes it impossible for us to explain it by natu- ral agency. It is now acknowledged, that the old natural- istic explanations , are all failures. Every one now sees that we cannot account for the Chris- tian religion by a studious deception. This hypothesis, with the aid of a considerable straining and perversion, might be held as explaining certain very small parts here and there; but it furnishes no plausible account of the whole, which, because of its comprehen- 326 THE EVIBENCES siveness, could not have proceeded from one mind, and because of its consistency and con- nexions reaching through long ages, could not have sprung from a concurrence of minds all bent upon deceit. It is just as clear that it could not have been fashioned by enthusiasm and superstition, whi(di, in their extensive sway, shew that man is a religious being, but which, from their very nature, lead only to incongruous and inconsistent results. Nor will the union of the two, — of deceit with genuine but deluded feeling, — render any reasons for a system which embraces holy doctrine and high morality, and connected events, which run through long suc- cessive ages, and are brought about unconsciously by persons utterly ignorant of the ends accom- plished by them. The more modern theories equally fail. The hypothesis of Paulus, that the Gospel narratives were natural occurrences misunderstood and mis- interpreted, has now no supporters. Whatever superficial plausibility it might have, as applied to a veiy few isolated incidents, it was seen to be utterly incapable of accounting for the whole series in its integrity and connexions, and it had no explanation to give of the high morality and the holy doctrine which are imbedded in the heart of such an accumulation of supposed mis- apprehensions and perversions. This weak sup- OF CHlilSTIAXITT. 327 position has given way to another — the hist re- source of infidehty, — and it, too, is now being seen to be as signal a failure as the others. It is alleged that the whole supposed super- natural system has sprung from those principles of human nature which produce myths in all countries. As long as it wraps itself up in vague general statements, it is difficult to fight with this theory, which, when it is caught in one shape, quickly assumes another. But when it takes the form of affirming that the Scriptures are a myth, or a series of myths, it can be satis- factorily met and overthrown. Of late years a vast amount of curious infor- mation has been collected, and a great deal of speculative and learned sense and nonsense has been written, about myths. Myths are, in fact, stories embodying and expressing a pre- vailing belief or feeling in a family, a district, or a nation. Sometimes they had a foundation in historical incidents, which, however, have been so buried in the accumulated additions, that it is impossible to find the fact in the fable. Sometimes they are mere fictions got up (like the modern romance) to please the phantasy and move the feelings — not unfrequently, I sus- pect, of chil(h-en, and in all cases of a people credulous as children. At times they are after- inventions to explain or justify certain beliefs ^ ^ o THE EVIDENCES and prepossessions. In order to be myths, and not mere tales or legends, they must express a reigning sentiment in a community, and it is thus they pass so readily from individual to in- dividual in the region in which the feeling pre- vails, and are handed down from one generation to another, and often go in a somewdiat modified form with colonists into their new country. The myths may relate to anything that interests a people, to the honour of the family or nation, to the romance of love or of war, or to the character and worship of the gods. The religious myth is expressive of the reli- gious beliefs of the tribe or country. It arises out of the anterior sentiments of the people, and it reacts upon these sentiments, especially in the way of giving a form to what was before germi- nant but shapeless. It springs spontaneously from certain deep mental tendencies : — it has its root in the religious instincts of our nature; and the tale is fashioned to gratify the phantasy or imaging faculty; and to furnish a body in which the feeling may dwell, and become objective and visible. Existing first in a floating oral form, it may have a permanence given to it by being embodied in written poetry or prose ; at times a selfish interest has been created in its favour by its becoming associated with a particular shrine or temple. Eeligious myths spring up in all OF CHRISTIANITY. 820 countries, till the critical spirit rises, to suppress them, or mankind have something hetter sup- plied to them in the Word of God. As they are the product of human nature and of the circum- stances of the people, so they fully reflect these. It has heen shown that they follow some sort of laws, which have heen traced with amazing eru- dition and excessive ingenuity by German critics. All these laborious researches have only shewn how wide the difference between the myths of the Gentiles, and the narratives of the Old Testament and the doctrines of the New Testa- ment. It holds true of all myths, that they are polytheistic. They originate always in a state of society in which it is the tendency of mankind to call in a multitude of gods, to meet their rude w^ants, and to account for what they see. This is the first and a fundamental distinction be- tw^een them and the Scriptures, which are throughout a protest against polytheism. Again, the tales comprised in the myths, at least when they become numerous, are always incongruous and inconsistent. Springing up in divers places, and variously reported as they pass from mouth to mouth, no attempt is made to render them harmonious till the critical ages arrive, and then they cease to have power. All later historians have ceased to try to bring a connected train of 130 TEE ETIDEXCES events out of myths; Mr. Grote, for example, makes no attempt to draw history out of the hunting of the hoar of Calydon, of the Argonau- tic expedition, and the siege of Troy. This is a second point of difference between myths and the writings of the Old and New Testament, in which we have a long series of connected narra- tives palpably consistent with one another, and with external history — despite the few seeming discrepancies which we may not be able to clear up. No one attempts to confirm Homer, or He- siod, or the gigantic myths of Brahminism and Buddhism by historical incidents, such as we can bring to corroborate Scripture from the tombs of Egypt, from the sculptured slabs of Nineveh, and from the works of such writers as Josephus and Tacitus. Myths, as they spring from human nature, so they faithfully represent it — in its strength, but also in its weakness. In giving expression to the religious fears and hopes of man, they likewise display the foibles, the aberrations, the sins of humanity. Proceeding from the human heart, they can never rise above the level of the fountain whence they issued. They are all marred, less or more, by caprices, by impurities, or by awful cruelties, supposed to be perpetrated by their very gods. This is the tliircl and the most important point of difference betweeu OF CHRISTIANITY. Ooi lliem and the views of God, and of Christ, and of morahty, presented in the Scriptures, say in the Discourses of our Lord and the Epistles of Paul and John. It has heen maintained, that these last are myths growing out of the religious consciousness of the times. In opposition to this allegation it has heen shewn, that the Gospel narratives and the Epistles appeared far too soon after the time of the death of elesus to allow of the growth of myths. It has heen shewn, too, that there was nothing in Jewish feeling, nothing in Phariseeism, or Sadduceeism, or Essene mysticism, nothing in Eastern or Alexandrian theosophies, nothing in the reli- gious feeling of all these countries, to generate those high and yet tender, those suhlime and yet practical, views of God and his interest in mankind wdiich are given in the New Testa- ment. But the strongest ground which we can take up in reply to the mythic theory is, that no Gentile myths have ever given us any such high and holy pictures, as we have pre- sented to us in the life of Christ, and in the doctrine and precepts of tlie New Testament. These arose, it is said, out of the religious con- sciousness of the times ! But how do we get a religious consciousness that would yield such a product — an earthly soil or an earthly seed which w^ould produce such a plant ? It has heen o 32 THE EVIBENCES shewn again and again, that there are far greater difficulties involved in supposing that the life of Jesus is an idea evoked out of human nature, than in at once allowing it to be a reality/'' The extensive inductions which have been gathered by later research as to myths, their nature and their laws, all go to prove that the Scripture narratives and doctrines differ from them in their whole letter and spirit. But wdiile all this is resolutely maintained, it is not needful to affirm that there is no resem- blance whatever between any portion of Scripture and the spontaneous myths of the Gentile na- tions. It is conceivable that a likeness might arise from two circumstances, both of them quite consistent with the inspiration of the Word of God. One is, that the deeper religious myths are the expressions of the religious feelings of mankind, which ever hold in solution a consider- able body of important truth. I believe that this arises in part from the traditions of primitive faith which have been preserved in most nations, but mainly from the fact that man has a deep religious nature which ever seeks an outlet. In particular, man has ever spontaneously held by two deep convictions, that there are supernatural * It is scarcely necessary, in this connexion, to refer to two such, well-known works as "Taylor's Eestoration of Belief," and "Young's Christ of History." OF CURISTIANiry. 333 powers, and that lie as a sinner has given offence to them. Out of these two strong impulses have arisen, in heathen countries, a body of rites and concomitant myths, which bear a rude resem- blance to certain ordinances and narratives of Scripture, bearing on the relation of God and man. It may be admitted, that in some of the Eastern religions there is a dim appreciation of the duty of rising above the pollutions of the flesh ; that in Buddhism, and many forms of mysticism, there is an ill-directed aspiration after a closer communion with God ; and that even in those stern superstitions which demanded that on great emergencies parents should make their children pass through the fire, there was a sense of the need of an atonement ; and from these profound causes myths may at times have some things in common with Scripture. Nor do I see evil likely to arise from making a farther admission. We have seen that the natural mind of the prophet was not destroyed in the utter- ances which came from him. As Moses and Ezekiel both used the Hebrew language as they found it, it is also conceivable that the former may have taken some of his symbols from Egypt, and the latter much of his imagery from the figures on the temples and palaces of Assyria. It is certain that the inspired ideas of the older pro- phets would, if left to their spontaneous flow. oo-i: TEE EVIBEXCES come out in forms analogous to the myths of the poets and sages of tlie Gentile nations; and I see no reason why God should have interfered with the sinless powers of the prophets in the way of mutilating them, — the more so as what came naturally from the heads of the waiters would go home most effectively to the intelli- gence of the readers. But all this applies only to the earlier prophets. In the course of ages there came to be a set of wTiters educated up to higher conceptions, and a class of readers ready to understand them. In the New Testament the special resemblance to myths altogether ceases. There are still parables and symbols addressed to the phantasy, and narratives of such simplicity that babes drink them with eagerness, but these have no likeness to myths ; and mingled with them we have brief sentences, which combine the lights from a thousand points into one bright focus which renders everything luminous. III. The circumstance that there is a super- natural economy in the midst of the natural, entitles us to regard certain events as preter- natural, which we might not have been able to prove to be so, had they stood alone and isolated from the system. The most rigid believer in natural law, were he to look at certain phe- nomena apart from his settled belief in tho OF CHRISTIAmiY. ^oJ prevalence of uniformity, might be inclined to admit that they are under no law, but holding by his general conviction he at once declares them to be natural in spite of appearances. It may, in like manner, be admitted liy the most determined adherent of superuaturalism, that there are incidents recorded in Scripture which, if viewed apart from their connexions, might be represented as flowing entirely from human or mundane agencies ; but when we find them to be parts of the heavenly revelation, we declare, and are entitled to declare them to be super- natural, or at least providential. Just as our reasonable conviction of the existence of a natural system makes us claim for nature much which we might, on the first impression, have been inclined to place beyond it, so our equally rea- sonable conviction as to a supernatural economy authorizes us to refer to the immediate opera- tions of God not a fev\^ things, which we might otherwise have ascribed to the agency of mun- dane causes. IV. The systematic character of revelation enables us to get tests of the supernatural. It is in consequence of nature being a system, that we are able to determine, in most cases with con- siderable ease, what is natural and what is not natural. Nature has everywhere a certain method or style or aspect, which enables us to 336 TEE EVIDENCES recognize what belongs to her domains, and to distinguish between what is natural and what is artificial or unnatural or preternatural. We can commonly distinguish at once between what is produced by physical agency and what is effected by human skill. The naturahst rejects at once the stories about the mermaid, the unicorn, and the sea serpent, because such creatures are not in conformity with the homologies of the animal kingdom. We pay no attention to the common ghost stories, because they carry us into a pre- ternatural region. But Revelation comes to us also as a system, with its laws, its analogies, and its doctrines. It all revolves round one central point, — round the Incarnation of the Son of God for the purpose of bringing a lapsed world into a state of reconciliation with its own Governor. By the careful examination of it we may, in a general way, ascertain what is its method of pro- cedure ; what is in accordance with it, and what is not in accordance with it; what are the means it may employ, and what the means it cannot sanction. It may now be asked. How should we deal, according to the principles reached in these discussions, with the common pretensions to pre- ternaturalism ? Some one tells us an ordinary ghost story, about a person whom he knows Laving in a dark night seen a white figure OF CHRISTIANITY, 337 moving and glaring at him. How are we to treat the narrative ? It is clear, on the instant, that the supposed facts do not connect them- selves with that supernatural system for which we have such a body of evidence. The story, tlien, cannot derive any prepossession in its favour from Eevelation. It must stand or fall on its own merits. Now, it has been ascertained, by a long induction not contradicted by any authenticated case, that ghosts are not among mundane agencies; that the dead do not rise again to take a part in the affairs of this world. In the cases of the kind wdiich we have been at the trouble to inquire into, we have found the tale to grow very much in the reporting and as it passed from mouth to mouth ; and when, at last, we got at the exact facts, we found that the supposed supernatural figure was simply an earthly object imperfectly seen, or that it w^as a mental image called up by fear, which so affected the brain that the person imagined that what he saw was an actual figure. Believ- ing that the whole can be accounted for in this, or in a similar way, we fall back on the uni- formity of nature as the general law, and think ourselves quite justified, while important duties devolve upon us in this busy world, to make no farther inquiries into the matter. In acting thus, we do not go the unreasonable length of Y 338 THE EVIDENCES affirming, that a narrative of a jDreternatural event — that even a ghost story — could not pos- sibly be true, or could not possibly be proven. Still less do we act on any principle which would, in the least degree, interfere with the powerful evidence, derived from so many sources, which we have in favour of Christianity. We simply say, that we have no proof, and are not likely to get any proof, to counterbalance the improbability of such a preternatural occurrence, which is in its whole nature different from the miracles of Scripture. These same principles may guide us in the view which we should take of mesmerism, and clairvoyance, and spirit-rapping. As to mes- merism, there is every reason to believe that there is a series of phenomena which may go by this name — till their nature has been more thoroughly explored. But mesmeric affections so connect themselves with certain pathological states of the body and psychological facts, that we at once declare them to be natural, and hope at last to discover the laws which they obey. As to clairvoyance, it is certainly opposed to the whole analogy of nature as disclosed by modern science. It is also and equally inconsistent with the whole analogy of the supernatural reve- lation of God in the Word, for nowhere in that revelation is there a miraculous event reported OF CHRISTIANITY, 339 except as vouching for, or as a part of, the plan of redemption. Clairvoyance has thus the analogy hoth of the mundane and revealed system, against it. I do not say, that it could not possibly be substantiated by evidence, but the proof urged in its behalf is of far too uncertain, and at times suspicious, a character to bear up the superstruc- ture. In regard to most of the pretended cases, I think we are entitled at once to reject them without farther inquiry, and, as to others, which may look more fair and plausible, it is enough to ask the supporters of them to submit to such scientific tests as those to which table-turnincr was subjected by Faraday. What is now said of clain^oyance applies also to spirit-rapping. But if ever such phenomena are established on good authority, — which they have not hitherto been, and, as I think, are not likely to be, — we would seek to construct them into a system, natural, or preternatural, or half way between ; and then we might have rules by which to disthiguish be- tween real and pretended cases. Meanwhile, the established systems of God, both natural and supernatural, are against all such pretensions. The principles here enunciated, and so far applied, shew at once how we are to answer Mr. Powell, when he would place the record of the miracles of Scripture alongside of the ordinary tales about ghosts, mermaids, and witches. 34.0 ANALOGY BETWEEN THE NATUIiAL CHAPTER IV. ANALOGY BETWEEN THE NATURAL AND SUPEE- NATURAL SYSTEMS. The word " analogy" is frec[uentlj used in our common literature as synonymous with " resem- blance," and denotes a likeness of any kind. But it has a more narrow and technical signifi- cation, and denotes a resemblance of relations. Thus we speak by ''analogy" of a particular prin- ciple acting as the foundation of an argument, meaning that the principle has a like relation to the conclusion, as the foundation has to the building erected on it. In natural history, the wing of a bird and the wing of a butterfly are not reckoned the same organs, but they are said to be analogous, because to the animals they dis- charge the same functions. In this Chapter the pln-ase is employed in the more rigid sense. I am to gather out of the preceding discussions the points of resemblance between the natural and supernatural systems, in their relation to God on the one hand, and to man on the other. I do not go so far as to maintain that this single AND SUPERNATURAL SYSTEMS. ^^i circumstance does of itself prove the religious ?ysteui to be supernatural and to have the sanc- tion of God. But taken along with other facts and considerations, it has a considerable amount of force in shewing that the two came from the same Being. In a negative way, it has great power in answering objections derived from the alleged anomalous or lawless character of the supernatural. Taking the lowest ground, it should lead all who believe in the natural as a manifestation of God to give their candid con- sideration to the professedly supernatural system, which so corresponds to and so fits into the natural. I. In both we discover a plan developed in connected acts. Nature is not a wayless waste ; it is a rich territoiy, divided, allotted, and fenced with alleys to walk in, and a provision for the wants of those who dwell in it. There are dif- ferent systems in nature — as there are different systems in the animal body ; but as in the animal frame the various parts constitute one living being, so in the physical universe the different portions are made to constitute one Cosmos. But we have seen that there is a like ordination and subordination in Revelation. The parts, such as the history, the ordinances, the prophecy, the doctrine, constitute systems, which again combine in one grand system, with the 342 ANALOGY BETWEEN THE NATURAL Loo'os as thfe central attraction and the central light. The order of the universe shews that it had been purposed^ in the Divine Mind in eter- nity; it also makes it comprehensible by man, and invites him to derive instruction from it, and to accommodate his actions to it. Similar ends are accomplished by the methodical charac- ter of revelation ; we are enabled thereby to rise to some comprehension of it, to fall in practically with its mode of procedure, and to discover in it a manifestation of the Divine perfections and the evolution of an eternal counsel. II. In both there is a progressive plan. The progressive plan of nature is seen specially in the science of geology. It should be freely ad- mitted that we cannot at this present time draw out a perfect reconciliation of Scripture and geology, as to the appearance of the hving beings on the earth's surface. On the one hand, we are not quite sure how to read the record in the two opening chapters of Genesis ; and on the other hand, geology, in opening new truths, is at the same time ever disclosing new mysteries. But on the very face of the two records — the record on parchment and that on stone — there is a general correspondence. Both tell us that there w^as a time when there were no plants, no animals on the earth. The latest science seems to accord with the Word of God, in declaring AND SUPERNATURAL SYSTEBIS. 343 that the earth is older than the sun ; that there were epochs in our earth's history when it was illuminated by a general light, ere that light had been concentrated into a central sun. Both an- nounce that there has been a progression, from the lower to the higher, in the appearance of plants and animals on the earth's surface. Both assure us that man came upon the scene at a comparatively late date. These are surely very wonderful correspondences, which should keep all men of science from scoffing at the narrative in the Word of God. For when science was entirely ignorant of all this, it was written there in a Book, the general meaning of which is clear and explicit.''' * I have often tiLOught that, in order to settle the questions agitated, we would require to know what was the nature of the transaction tvhich issued in man appearing upon the earth. Can we be wrong in guessing that the mystery which yet hangs over the thorough reconciliation of the two records, Mosaic and Geological, will be cleared up when the nature of this transaction is made known to us, — it may be, in this world as science advances, it may be, only in the world to come ? Who will venture to afl&rm that the God who has proceeded from the beginning in our Cosmos according to the method of type, that is, model or exemplar, by animal type in the geological ages, by human but still outward type in the Old Testament dispensation, and even now by more spiritual iy^Q in the New Testament Church, may not have proceeded by type likewise in that necessarily wonderful transac- tion which ushered man upon the scene ? Yon Baer has shewn that the development of the animal in the womb proceeds according to a prede- termined plan, advancing from the more general to the more special- Professor Owen and Dr. Carpenter have shewn pretty satisfactorily, that there is a parallel advance in the production of animals in the geological ages, — an advance from the more general to the more special. 344 ANALOGY BETWEEN THE NATURAL But the correspondence to which I refer under this head, is not that hetween geological science and the Book of Genesis, but between the pro- gressive work on the earth's surface and the progressive character of the work of redemption. In geology, we have stratum superimposed upon stratum in due order, and a pre-ordained advance from the lower to the higher plant and animal, the earlier being prefigurations and prognostics of the later. And in the history of redemption we have layer added to layer, and lower life ever If these views be correct, — and they are held by the highest authori- ties, — then the growth of the higher animals in the womb is of the same type as the successive creations revealed in geology. It has also been shewn by geologists that the existing order in organic forms is a type of the geologic order in time. Who will venture to say, then, that the mysterious transaction at man's creation was not an epitome, a type, of what had gone before, just as the scarcely less mysterious transac- tion of the infant's growth in the womb is a type of all Palseontology .> The account in Genesis may thus be a description of six literal days, aa representative of six epochs, just as our Lord's prediction of the destruc- tion of Jerusalem has, through it, a reference to the final day. Every student of ecclesiastical history knows that the experience of the individual Christian is an epitome of the experience of the Church at large, as a heavenly life in the midst of opposing corruption. Should there be any truth in this view, the transaction recorded in the opening of Genesis may not be a mere vision, but a reality, — a reality supernatural, but in harmony with all natural operation, which is, after all, Divine operation, — a reality instructive as any vision, — a reality which retains the natural days, as after the type of the natural epochs, and keeps the seventh day as a true day, and yet a prefiguration of the Sabbath of rest which remaineth for the people of God. This view will thoroughly fall in with the account given of the garden of Eden, which we may regard as a reality on the earth, yet a prefiguration of the inheritance of the saints in heaven. AND SUPERNATURAL SYSTEMS. 345 rising to a higher, and a typical system consum- mated in Christ the Great Archetype. III. Both have a very special relation to man. They have also, hoth the one and other, farther relations towards other worlds and towards God himself, some of which we may discover, but all of which can never be known to us. But both have a regard to man which we can discern, and which we are expected to observe. The natural system has a manifest relation to man ; it provides a supply for his animal wants ; it fur- nishes enjoyments to his emotional nature ; it is admirably suited to his searching and contem- plative intellect. We are told here and there in the Scriptures, that the grand supernatural event, the Incarnation of the Son of God, has a respect to other worlds ; but it has a special reference to man, to his restoration and regeneration ; being addressed to his higher and deeper, as the other is to his superficial and material wants ; having in view to elevate his moral and spiritual charac- ter, as the other has to improve his intellectual and emotional constitution. IV. Both are so far understood, but neither is fully understood. Wo do understand so much of nature, and we are ever understanding more, and are encouraged to seek after higher and ever higher knowledge. Still we can never compre- hend the whole. Placed as we are in the centre 346 ANALOGY BETWEEN THE NATURAI^ of boundless space, and in the middle of eternal ages, we can discern only a few objects imme- diately around us, and the others fade in outline, as they are removed from us by distance, till at length they lie altogether beyond our vision. Nay, it would seem as if the wider the bounda- ries of knowledge are pushed, and the greater the space illuminated by the torch of science, the greater in proportion the bounding sphere into which no rays will penetrate, — -just as when (to use an old comparison) we strike up a light in the midst of darkness, in very proportion as the light becomes stronger so does also that sur- face, black and dark, which is rendered visible. It is the same with the supernatural light vouch- safed. All who are blessed with the light of revelation can know something of the action, something even of the laws and of the theory of the mediatorial work of Christ. Every one can see what God intends by it; every one may know what he ought to do to secure the bless- ings. We all see enough of the Gospel to dis- cover it to be the Power of God, and the Wisdom of God, and the Goodness of God. By a closer study of the Word, and by an experimental acquaintance with its truths, many obtain a deeper view of its mysteries — that is, of truths once hid, but now revealed. But, after all, there is much which remains, and must ever remain AND SUPERNATURAL SYSTEMS. 347 uncomprehended and incomprehensible. In re- gard both to natural and spiritual things, we live in a world " where day and night alternate," — in the light, we go everywhere accompanied by our own shadow. V. In both we can accommodate ourselves to modes of procedures on the part of God which we do not fully comprehend. Thus, in God's natural economy we all act upon laws, the precise nature of which is very much unknown to us. Mankind conformed to and profited by tlie regularity of the seasons, long before they knew any thing of those cosmical arrangements which give us the return of seedtime and harvest, of summer and winter. We act upon empirical knowledge as to the springing and growth of the plant, while we are entirely ignorant of the chemical and vital agencies by which the regular result is effected. We guide and control magne- tism and electricity, and turn them to most important practical uses, and all the while the most advanced science cannot tell us what is the nature of these agents. It is much the same in the supernatural economies of God. As much is always revealed as enables us to exercise faith, and to conduct courses of practical action, but seldom enough to make us understand all the bearings and relations of the doctrine. It is thus that we must believe in much which we cannot fully 348 ANALOGY BETWEEN THE NATURAL comprehend ; believe in the eternity of God, while we cannot grasp it as a positive concep- tion ; believe in the triune nature of God, while we cannot explain the mysteries of the relation of the one to the other, and of the three to the one. It is thus, too, that we use the appointed means for securing the spiritual blessings, and pray for the Spirit of God to give efficacy to them, while we are entirely ignorant of the way in which the Spirit works, and of the relation between his operations and the instrumentality which we have employed. VI. In both we use means, and yet know that the end may depend on arrangements which are made by a Higher Power. It is thus that, in the affairs of this world, all prudent men are active and industrious in the hope of reaching, if not wealth, at least a competence of earthly neces- saries and blessings ; and it is usual that these means are made to secure the desired result; yet it will happen not unfrequently that these virtues may be sedulously practised — and the en- pected consequences fail, because of some cross incident occurring in the providence of God, because of the folly or treachery of some one who had been trusted apparently on good grounds, or by a calamity which the person had no reason to fear, produced by agencies over which he had no control. By this double provision of God s AND SVPEHNATURAL SYSTEMS. 349 natural providence, mankind are at one and the same time allured to activity and made to see that their exertions may after all be unsuccessful; encouraged to persevere, and yet taught impres- sively that they are dependent on the plans of a Higher Wisdom. In hke manner, the believer is commanded to labour and pray, to work out his salvation with fear and trembling; and he is encouraged to do so by a reasonable prospect of success ; but he is taught at the same time that eveiy spiritual grace is wrought in him by the power of God, and that it is God that worketh in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure. No doubt there is this difference between the two king- doms — the kingdom of nature and the kingdom of grace — that in the former the means themselves tend to produce their ends, and do produce them except vvdien they are thwarted by natural agen- cies ; v>^hereas in the latter the means secure the end only so far as there is a Divine Power work- ing in them. But this dijBference of the mode only evinces the need of supernatural power to accomplish high spiritual ends, and impresses us the more with the correspondence of the two economies, wdiich thus secure similar ends by a difference of means. VII. In both, the moral is higher than the spiritual. Bishop Butler has shewn, that when we properly interpret our moral nature, it is 350 ANALOGY BETWEEN THE NATURAL found to declare not only that moral good is to be commended, but that it is higher than any other good, higher than the merely pleasurable, hioiier than the simply beautiful ; and other moralists have shewn, from the intimations of our moral reason, that the law of God is eternal and immutable. But every one who has taken a profound view of the Gospel provision knows that all this is presupposed in it, and that it was because of the everlasting and essential holiness of God and of the unbending character of his law, that the Son of God behoved to suffer and to die, in order that God's everlasting purposes of grace might be carried out. VIII. The one system fits into the other. This is the most characteristic and wonderful point of correspondence. The tw^o have not only a likeness in mode and manner, in style and means, but the one is adapted to the other, — as in the natural kingdom the mineral is adapted to the plant and the plant to the mineral, and the sky above to the earth beneath. Where the one ends the other begins, where the lower fails the higher comes in and succeeds. The natural cries out for something which it feels that it w^ants, the supernatural answers the cry, and supplies what is needed. And yet the supernatural does not destroy the natural, but uses it, elevates it, and sanctifies it. The super- AND STTFERNATURAL SYSTEMS. 351 natural, though far ahove the natural, joins on to it, and embraces and canopies it, as the heavens do the earth. Some may he inclined to look on the analogies we have traced merely as furnishing profitable matter for meditation, fitted to excite admiration and kindle adoration on the part of those already believers in revelation. Even so, they will have served a good end. But I am inclined to think that they have also considerable force as evi- dences of the truth of Christianity. The two do look as if they had the same all wise and good God for their author. We discover everywhere a certain style, and method, and end in God's operations, which enable us easily to recognize them as His works. The plant is not the same as the animal, the crystal on the earth is not the same as the star in heaven, but we see at once that he who made the one also made the other. It should be acknowledged by all that the natu- ral structure is not the same as the spiritual ; but there is a sameness in the style and plan which suffice to shew that they are both designs of the same Great Architect. It should be observed that the argument is not drawn simply from a vague general resem- blance. It is derived from the relation of each to God and to man, from the fitting of the one into the other, and from the common ends of 352 TEE NATURAL AND SUFHENATVUAL. beneficence and of righteousness served by them. We have a right to demand of the opponents of Christianity that they shew how this correspon- dence could have arisen. The supposition that it has been produced by studious design, on the part of the human framers of the supposed supernatural system, needs no confutation. But it is scarcely less preposterous to suppose, that it can have proceeded from the unconscious opera- tion of human nature through long ages. The correspondence is far too free in its manner to allow of the former supposition ; it is far too congruous and consistent in its method to allow of the latter ; it is far too moral and spiritual to admit of either. The most reasonable conclu- sion is, that the two are compartments of one great building; not antagonistic, but adaptive; not conflicting, but corresponding ; not contra- dictory, but complementary. ' " Truth, so far, in my took ;— the truth which draws Through all things upwards; that a twofold world IMust go to a perfect cosmos ; Natural things And Spiritual." APPENDIX. Art. 1.— oxford PHILOSOPHY. Within the last eventful age we have had two impor- tant religious movements originating in Oxford — the one coming to a head ahout thirty years ago, and the other making its appearance within the last few years. It has been shewn again and again that these two have a closer connexion than the superficial thinker might imagine. There is the old maxim of extremes meeting, of extremes producing each other; there is the more modern law of action being followed by an equal re- action. Plutarch shewed liow it is that superstition produces atheism : thinking men, put into a state of merriment or of pain by the absurdities of an abject su- perstition, are tempted to cast away all faith. But, in addition to the action of these more general laws, the leaders of the medieval school had exposed those who looked up to them to more particular and fatal in- fluences. They took special pains to shew that not only human reason and natural religion, but the Word of God itself, cannot be relied on. Their sincere aim was to induce their followers to hand themselves over unreservedly to the teaching of the Church. The dis- ciples went so far with them. They gave up the ordi- nary arguments for the existence of a personal God, and faith in the Bible as an infallible guide ; but many of them became restive when they were taught to fall back on Church principles, and, following out the premises given them., they have arrived at con- clusions very different from those which their precep- tors anticipated. z 354 APPENDIX. But, instead of speculating on the causes which have produced what has ah-eady taken place, it is of more importance to inquire what is likely to he the issue, in the next few years, of the causes operating at this pre- sent moment. So for as I have means of judging, it appears to me that the two philosophic lights in Oxford at the present time are Kant, as modified hy Sir W. Hamilton and Dr. Mansel, and Mr. John S. Mill in his integrity. Let us inquire how the youth is equipped who has to form an independent opinion, on the great religious questions started, after having heen disciplined in the forms of Kant, and having drunk into the spirit of Mill. Kant has taught him that there are deep speculative principles in the mind, but that these have no objective value whatever, and guarantee nothing as to the real world, nay, land us in contradictions when we suppose them to have an application to things. He is told that cause and effect have links given them by the mind^ but may have no connexion in the actual world or beyond it. He is instructed that we caniQOt prove the existence of God from his works, and is referred to some other way of reaching the Divine Being which the student does not very well understand ; but so for as he com- prehends it, he does not deem it very satisfactory, for if the speculative reason be delusive, why may not the moral reason also be deceptive ? I have frequently taken occasion to express my high opinion of the philosophy of the late Sir W. Hamilton. I believe that he has added immensely to our know- ledge of every department of the human mind, and that his criticism of the philosophy of the Absolute has not been answered, and never will be answered. But I have always regretted that he adopted so many of the principles of Kant. He allows that the mind starts with phenomena in the sense of appearances, and not with thu)gs, and that the mind, in its knowledge of objects, adds elements of its own. " Suppose that the total object of consciousness in perception= 12 ; AITEXBIX. 355 and suppose that the external reality contributes 6, the material sense 3, and the mind 3 ; this may enable you to form some rude conjecture of the nature of the object of perception " {Mctajjh. vol. ii. p. 129). His philo- sophy, beginning in nescience, must end in nescience. He thus sums up the results reached by him in com- paring his philosophy of the Conditioned with that of the Absolute : "In one respect both coincide, for both agree that the knowledge of nothing is the principle or result of all true philosophy ; ' Scire Nihil — studium quo nos laetamur utrique.' But the one doctrine main- taining that the Nothing must yield everything is a philosophic omniscience ; whereas, the other holding that Nothing can ^deld nothing, is a philosophic nescience. In other words, the doctrine of the un- conditioned is a philosophy confessing relative igno- rance, but professing absolute knowledge ; while the doctrine of the conditioned is a philosophy professing relative knowledge, but confessing absolute ignorance " {Discuss, p. 609). Following out these principles, he declares that the argument for the Divine existence, got by human intelligence, is inconclusive ; and, though he stands up for it, I cannot see how even the moral argument remains, if " good and bad " (Discuss, p. 604) are subject to the same all-sweeping system of relativity and nescience. Time and space are forms of the mind ; our conviction as to cause and effect is a mere impotency, implying no objective existence ; and the highest effort of philosophy is to shew us that God is unknowable in his real nature. Nor is his position much amended by his handing us over, after he has landed us in nescience, to a faith of which he gives no account, and which is well described by Dr. Dorner as the despair of knowledge rather than anything else.* * For years past, T have been callino: on the school of Hamilton to give us some account of the nature and claims of that unexplained faith, oa which they ever fall back, when their nescience leads thtm to conclusions which alarm them. An able and faithful disciple admits, " Tiie absolute or infinite is cast beyoud the sphere of thought and science; it is still, however, allowed by Hamilton to remain in some sense in consciousness, 356 APFENJDIX. I have ever felt great pleasure in giving my feeble testimony to the pre-eminent merits of Dr. Mansel, as a scholar and a philosopher. I am prepared to main- tain, that his objections to the a priori theologies of the absolute have not been answered, and that his services, in so thoroughly undermining the ambitious speculations which were coming in upon us, directly or indirectly, from the schools of Schleiermacher and Hegel, have entitled him to the perpetual gratitude of all sound thinkers and friends of Christian truth. But I have ever regretted that he should have adopted so many of the principles of Kant, and that he should have followed so implicitly the nescient philosophy of Sir W. Hamilton. Eminently successful in attack, I cannot see that he has any body of fundamental truths on which to rear a sound philosophy, or by which to lend positive aid to Christian theology. The works which have been called forth by these discussions, such as those of Chretien {Letter to Mr. Maurice^ ; of Young (Reason and FaitJi) ; of Calderwood {Philo- sophy of the Infinite^ Second Edition) ; of Robins {A Defence of the FaitJi) ; of Professor Goldwin Smith {Rational Religion, &c.) of Timologus {Seoto- Oxonian Philosojjhy) — shew that there are minds of a high order which cannot be made to submit to the philoso- phic and religious nescience w^hich it is attempted to impose on them. In particular, there has been a general disposition to take exceptions to the view wdiich is given of the conceptions of morality furnished by the moral reason ; these. Dr. Mansel thinks, are and must be relative to the structure of our minds, and may not at all represent the absolute or divine morality. But, in fact, these defective views of our for it is grasped by faith, and faith is a conscious act. The question, accordinsily, at once meets us — In what sense, and how far, can there bo an object within consciousness, which is not properly within thouifht or knowledge ? In other words, how far is our faith in the infinite intelli- gent and iutcllijiible ? This point demands fartlier and more detailed treatment than it has met with either at the hands of Sir AV. Hamilton himself, or any one who has sought to carry out his principles." — Imp. Diet. Univ. Biog. Art., Hamilton, Sir W., by J. V. (Professor Veitch.; APPENDIX. 357 moral cognitions originate in a defective philosophy, which sets out with the dogma that we cannot know anything as it is. I ventured, at a very early date, to intimate my ap- prehensions that the principles which lie at the foun- dation of the philosophy of Sir W. Hamilton might be turned to sceptical purposes {MetJiod of Dlcine Govern- ment, Appendix to Fourth Edition, 185-i, and subse- quent Editions). Very soon after the publication of Mansel's Limits of Religious Thought^ and when the religious press was unanimous in approving of it, I pointed out fundamental defects in the principles pro- ceeded on, which I feared that those opposed to reli- gion might not be slow to turn to purposes of their own (Article in North British Review, February, 1859, on Intuitional Theology and Limits of Religious Thought, and Intuitions of the Mind, 1860), I am sorry to say that these fears have been too speedily realised. Mr. Mill {Logic^ I. iii. 5), for his own purposes, quotes with approbation the language of Hamilton — " All that we know is, therefore, phenomenal, — phenomenal of the unknown." Professor Alexander Bain, of the same school, seizes on the doctrine of relativity, and vshows that we are not entitled to look on mind or matter as independent existences {The Emotions and the Will 641 — 646). Mr. Powell has called in the same philo- sophy to his aid, and quotes with approbation the state- ment of Dr. Mansel, that " creation is to human thought inconceivable" {The Order of Nature, p. 256). Dr. Duncanson, of the Westminster Review School, has drawn the religious conclusion, which I fear many others will draw — " There is a still more advanced stage of opinion, but as it has as yet been entered by a very few, it is unnecessary to do more than notice it here. All knowledge is of phenomena ; things by themselves cannot be known from the very nature of knowledge." " To represent the supernatural as spiri- tual, is to assume that it may be known. When we say that the supernatural is the spiritual, we offer an 358 AFJPENDIX. explanation of it, for we class it with personal agenc5^ The supernatural agent may he represented as more mysterious than a human heing, hut he is conceivahle only to the extent he is assimilated to humanity. But a thing that is explained must be part of the system which supplies the explanation ; so that the super- natural, when explained, ceases to he supernatural. The spiritual may be the highest form by which we can symbolize the supernatural, but it is far from representing the unknowable, as the most concrete and sensible form. The supernatural, then, is not the spiritual, but simply the unthinkable, the uncondi- tioned, or infinite" (The Providence of God, 87, 88.)* To complete the succession, Mr. Herbert Spencer avows that he is to rear his huge system of what most men w^ould call atheism, on the principles given him by Hamilton and Mansel, and has actually begun to raise his structure with great intellectual vigor, but with sad defects in his original principles, and mighty gaps in his deductions. (See Circular announcing his Works, and FiJ^st Principles^ Turning to Mr. Mill, we find him represented by competent witnesses as the person who, at this pre- sent time, exercises the greatest influence over the young thought of Oxford. M. Taine opens an ar- * It is curious to observe how nearly a writer in the North British Review comes to this nescience. An able and elaborate article in the number for May, 1861, thus closes: — " Truth, like the Deity, is bid in darkness. It is not that we are xmable to divine the mysteries of the soul and God ; the simplest plienomenon of sense defies our wit. Of the future destinies of philosophy it is in vain to speak. Phenomena we can observe — their laws we are able to ascertain — existence is beyond our ken. The riddle of the sphynx has never yet been read. The veil of Isis has never yet been drawn. The hieroglyphics of the universe are yet undeciphered/' If it is meant that wo do not know existence apart from things existinfj, I admit the statement, which is worth nothing, for there can be no such thing as existence apart from things existing. But if it is meant that we do not know things, say ourselves or God, as existing, the statement may form the first stone in a system of universal scepticism. I liave evidence that in Scotland the younger metaphysical talent at present runs along the " conditions" and " relations" of Hamilton— as along rails set for it ; just as, thirty years ago, it flev/ off with the " feelings" and "suggestions" of Brown. It remains to be seen what influence this " Know-Nothing" phiVa- sophy is to exercise on the religious thought of Scotland. APrENDIX. 359 tide on " Contemporary English Philosophy" in the Revue des Deux Monties for March, 1861, by telling us that when he was at the meeting of the British Association for the Promotion of Science, at Oxford, in 1860, he met a young Englishman of genius whom he catechised as to the philosophy of his country. After listening to the scientiiic papers, and going through the museums, the Frenchman says to the Englishman, ^* You have no philosophers. You have savans, but not thinkers." The young English- man, thrown upon his defence, names, as the ori- ginal thinkers of England, Mr. Jowett, of the " Essays and Reviews," and Mr. Mill ! The answer is quite characteristic of a young Oxonian who has caught the present spirit of his university. Testimonies to the same effect might be quoted from late Numbers of Macmillan^s Magazine, and the Literary Gazette, as to the sway which Mr. IMill has over thought at Oxford. I suppose we may reckon the Saturday Review as a fair sample of Young Oxford (quite as much so as the equally clever and equally flippant and arrogant Edinlurgh Revieic, at the beginning of the century, was of the then Young Edinburgh) ; and any one may see that certain writers in that Review are erudite in Mr. Mill, and erudite in no other philosophy. Every one who has himself learned to think must speak with profound respect of Mr. Mill. His opi- nions on all questions of social science are always worthy of being carefully weighed. Many of the principles of his inductive logic are well founded. But underneath all his opinions on more practical matters there is a fundamentally defective philosophy, which is ever cropping out. As I have said elsewhere : — ■ "The only satisfactory admission of Mr. Mill is, ' whatever is known to us by consciousness is known beyond the possibility, of question.' {Logic, Introd. p. 6.) What does this admission amount to ? First, as to self, or mind, he says^ ^ But wdiat this being ODU APPENDIX. is, al though it is myself, I have no knowledge, other than the series of its states of consciousness.' As to body, he says the reasonable opinion is, that it is the * hidden external cause to "vvhich we refer our sen- sations.' (I. iii. 8.) Sensation is our only primary mental operation in regard to an external world, and perception is discarded ' as an obscure Avord.' (Compare Dissertations, vol. i., p. 94.) ' There is not the slightest reason for believing that what we call the sensible qualities of the object are a type of anything inherent in itself, or bear any affinity to its own nature.' ^Why should matter resemble our sensations V {Logic, I., iii. 7.) Speaking of the feelings which are excited by bodies, and the powers or properties whereby they are excited, he says that he includes these ' rather in compliance with com- mon opinion, and because their existence is taken for granted in the common language, from which I cannot deviate, than because the recognition of such powers or properties appears to be warranted by a sound philosophy.'" Mr. Mill labours to shew that there is no necessary truth, and that it is quite con- ceivable that, at a reasonable distance beyond our world, the principle of cause and effect may not operate. It is also well known that he is by far the ablest and most plausible defender of utilitarianism in our day. Now the question arises, What sort of new school is likely to rise out of Oxford under these influences ? I put the question, and it is for those who watch over the principles of the rising generation in that university to answer it. What I fear is a combina- tion of the empty forms of Kant, with the phenomenal philosophy of Comte and Mill; and the impression left will be, that it is useless to inquire into religion, since no certainty can be attained on such a subject. To all this I have no doubt a vigorous opposition will be offered, but I anticipate it will be on extreme grounds^ Avhich can issue only in a rationalism or ATJPEXBIX. 361 intuitionalism which overridos the Word of Clod ; and religious thought "will go, as it has done for the last agOj hy oscillations — ever swinging past the point of rest. Bacon says, " As concerning Divine Philosophy, or Natural Theology, it is that knowledge or rndiment of knowledge concerning God, which may he obtained by the contemplation of his creatures ; which knowledge may be truly termed divine in respect of the object, and natural in respect of the light. The bounds of this knowledge are, that it sufficeth to convince atheism, but not to inform religion" {Advcmc. of Learning, Bk. II). It can easily be shewn that this is the posi- tion which has been taken by the great divines of the Anglican Church, and by British theologians generally.* They have maintained with wonderful unanimity that man's reason, intellectual and moral, can do something in religion, but that it cannot do everything ; that it can conduct us to thoroughly ascertained and positive truth concerning God, though it cannot announce how we, as sinners, may approach him with acceptance. The few divines in our country, such as Bishop Peter Browne of Cork, who held that man cannot rise to any proper knowledge of God by the light of nature, have never had much influence over thought, or been sup- posed to speak the general mind of the Churches of these lands. On the other hand, those who have given to natural reason a sufficiency in itself, or have consti- tuted it into a " verifying" faculty to determine what we should take and what we should reject in Scripture, have been characterized as rationalists, and have never been held as representing the Christian Churches in these lands. I look on the position thus taken up by the great body of British theologians as the right, the * This is scarcely the place (another opportunity may present itself) for offering any more elaborate defence of this position from the objections taken against it, and against me for holding it, by Dr. Dorner, of Gottia- gen, in his long, and able, and candid review of Hamilton, Mansol, Maurice, Fitzgerald, and myself, in an Article (occasioned by my " Letter to the German Churches") in the *' Jahrbiicher fur Deutsche theoloqie'^ fur 1861. 362 AF FEN BIX. wise, and the safe one ; and we peril tlie cause of re- ligion if we depart from it to one side or other. I believe it to be the very position taken by the Apostle Paul in the opening of the Epistle to the ^Romans, and indeed by the inspired writers all throug^hout the Scrip- tures. The Bible comes to us as tlie Word of God, — pre-supposing that we believe in God, on the natural evidence supplied by h:s works without and convictions within. Pre-supposirg that God and his eternal power and godhead may be thus so far known — yes, known (voohij^iva za^puTai is the language used, Rom. i. 20)-^it comes to us to make him more fully known, as to what he is in himself, and as to what he has done for man. The great philosophers of our country have held, with Bacon, " that by the contemplation of nature, to induce and enforce the acknowledgment of God, and to demon- strate his power, providence, and goodness, is an excel- lent argument" {Adcanc. of Learning, Bk. II.) ; and I hope they will continue to do so in England and in Scotland, despite the authority of Kant and Hamilton. The great theologians of our country, and of Germany too, have drawn their most powerful arguments in behalf of the Bible as the Word of God from the reve- lations given to man by the " law of conscience which is a sparkle of his first estate," of the perfect and un- changeable morality of God; and I trust they will never allow themselves to be drawn from this by the temptation held out to them, of lowering the pretensions of rationalists by taking lower and negative grounds on the subject of man's moral reason. On the other hand, they must beware, lest the extreme position taken by the nescient school should allure them to go to the opposiiL' extr 'me, and to ascribe to unaided human reason a suffii-iency^ which all history and all experience shew that it has never realized. The constant appeals which are being made in our day to the idea of the in- finite and the moral reason, should induce all thinkers to set about an earnest inquiry, pursued in the induc- tive manner, as to the precise conceptions and beliefs AFPEXBIX, 363 Avliicli the liuman mind entertains in regard to infinity, and as to the intimations actually made by the con- science. As the result of such an investigation, it will be found that we have positive and very profound con- ceptions on such subjects, but that they are utterly, and obviously, and deplorably insufficient " to inform religion." AiiT. ll.-BUNSEN AND GERMAN THEOLOGY. As the name of Bunsen has been employed for a purpose in one of the " Essays and Reviews," and as I have had occasion more than once to refer to that distinguished man, I feel as if it w-ere due to his memory to give some particulars of the delightful intercourse which I had with him, several hours every day for five successive days, in the month of August, 1858. It was on the afternoon of Tuesday, August 4, that I waited on him at his pleasant villa, at Charlotten- burg, near Heidelberg, with a letter of introduction, with which I had been favoured, from a distinguished British nobleman^ a special friend of Bunsen's. As I went up to his residence, a carriage passed out having in it a gentleman of a singularly grave and noble countenance, and I was sure this must be Bunsen himself. Not finding him at home, I left my card and introductions, and the same evening I had a kind letter from him inviting me to visit him next day, and pressing me to give him as much of my time as possible. Next day I secured my first interview with him^ and on each successive day, to the Sunday following, inclu- sive, I waited on him by appointment, at dinner, or for cofiee, or for tea, and on each occasion had lengthened conversations with him. And what a talker ! Inte^ resting as many of his writings are, they are not nearly so much so as was his conversation. The man himself ^O-i AFFEXBIX. was an object of the highest interest to all who could appreciate him. AVith a head that rose like a dome, he had a heart from which there f^lowed a genial heat as from a domestic fire. lie talked of education in Germany and in England, of religion, of theology, of philosophy, of the state of the Romish and Protestant Churches on the Continent, and interspersed the grand theoretical views which he delighted to expound with anecdotes of kings, statesmen, philosophers, and theo- logians of the highest name, with whom he had been intimate. But his noble enthusiasm ever kindled into the brightest flame when he spread out before me his own intended works, as illustrative of the Bible, of philosophy, and history, and fitted to help on the education of the race. I have met with many talented men, with many good men, with not a few men of genius ; but I have had the privilege of holding con- fidential intercourse with only three whom I reckoned " great men." One, the greatest, I think — Dr. Chal- mers — ever rises up before my memory as a mountain, standing fair, and clear, and large. The second, Hugh Miller, rises as a bold rocky promontory, covered all over with numberless plants of wild exquisite beauty. The third, Bunsen, stretches out before me wide, and lovely, and fertile — like the plains of Lom- bardy which I had just passed through before visiting him. I have referred to the fondness with which he dwelt on his contemplated publications. He was now, in his retirement, to give to the world the views on all subjects, historical, philosophical, and theological, which had burst upon him in their freshness when he spent so many of his youthful years in Rome. I confess, however, that, deeply interested as I was in his specu- lations — as these came forth with such a warmth and radiance from his own lips — I had all the while an impression that he would require to live to an ante- diluvian age in order to commit all his theories to writing, — and also a very strong conviction that his APPENDIX. 365 views belonged to the past age rather than the present, and that some of them would not, in fact, promote the cause of religion which he had so much at lieart. It ever came out, that he drew no distinction between the natural and preternatural. He was a firm believer in mesmerism and clairvoyance (in fiivour of them he mentioned some circumstances which seemed to me to have no evidential value), and was apt to connect them with the inspiration of the writers of the Bible.* He talked in terms of intense affection of Alexander von Humboldt, with whom I had had some intercourse a short time before. My interview with tliat illustrious man was held by appointment (through Ilerr Sydow w^ho had introduced me to him), in his own house in Berlin, on June 15th of the same year, only a few months before his decease. The conversation began by his referring to my published views as to the corres- pondence between the ramification of the plant and the venation of its leaves, as shewing that there is a unity of plan and structure throughout the plant, — to the general doctrine he gave his decided adherence, and said that he had himself noticed the correspon- dence. He passed on to discourse of the injurious imputations which had been cast on his religious prin- ciples by certain Jesuits, and in doing so, spoke in terms of strong indignation of the way in which the great German Leibnitz, had sought to prejudice the Electress of Brandenburg against the English Newton, because of the supposed irreligious tendencies of his w^orks. He branched off into the latest discoveries in science ; shewed me curious natural objects which he had picked up in various parts of the world ; he talked of the plurality of worlds, which he believed in as * Siuce writins? the above my eye has ali'sfhted on a passacfe in one of Schleierniachcr's Letters, written in 1817 (Z-//^, translated b// F. Itoiran, p. 260), in which, speaking of animal magnetism, he says :— '' My opinion, in regard to the nature of these mental phenomena and to their truth is this: any distinction between tlie natural and supernatural, between the comprehensible and the incomprehensible, I do not, upon the wliole, reco"-- uize. " 3G6 AFFEXDIX. being most consonant witli his conception of God ; and he encouraged me to speak of religion and of the recon- ciling work of the Saviour. " You are going to visit Bunsen," he said ; " you must by all means do so ;" and he proceeded to speak of him in the language of the greatest admiration and affection, adding, " I do not understand some of his writings, hut I have formed the very highest opinion of his Bibelwerk." It is not for one who had so imperfect an acquaintance with Humboldt as 1 had to attempt to reconcile what he said to me with harsh expressions about Bunsen scat- tered throughout his letters to Varnhagen. Were his feelings towards Bunsen softened in his later days ? Or was he rejoicing in the Bibelwerk because he saw that it would further very different ends from those contemplated by Bunsen ? On my reporting to Bunsen how kindly Humboldt had spoken of him, he said, " I am bringing out a certain portion of my Bibelwerk before other parts which should come earlier^ in order that it may fall under the eye of Humboldt ere he is removed from us." The way he said this shewed the great love he had for Humboldt ; and he intimated pretty plainly that he hoped the part of the Bibelwerk to Avhich he referred might help to draw Humboldt towards deeper religious convictions. Whether any such end was accomplished, I have no means of knowing. I have doubts as to whether the means were fitted to attain the object fondly desired. For Bunsen was already in a very ambiguous position in his own country. Respected and beloved by all — except the enemies of civil and religious liberty — his speculations^ philosophical or theological, carried, I found, very little weight in Germany. The great divines of the orthodox school, while they loved him for his piety, just regretted the more that in his opinions as to the authenticity and inspiration of the Old Testa- ment he was adhering to views which had been very prevalent in the earlier part of the century, but had been for years abandoned by all who had given their yipp:EXDix. 3G7 attention to the subject. The rationalists, who, in the days of their strength, had hated Bunsen for his warm evangelical piety, were rejoicing, now that the tide was against thcni, that they had in him an unconscious auxiliary in their work of undermining the inspiration of the Bible, — but they set no value whatever on his own speculations and opinions. His venerated name is being extensively used by the rationalists of this country; it is right that they should know that he ever spoke of rationalism in terms of strongest disapproba- tion and aversion, and he wished it to be known every- where that he identified himself with the living evangelical piety of Britain. While Bunsen was abfe to retain his piety, in spite of the vagueness and wan- derings of his speculative opinions, it is difficult to see how any young man trained in the creed left to Bunsen could ever rise to a belief in the Saviour. What I have now said Indicates pretty clearly the state of theological belief of late years in Germany. The rationalists of the two last ages, though their im- mediate power was restricted to their students in the universities, had yet, through them, as they scattered through the country, spread a most baleful influence, resulting in a general disregard of rehgion among all classes, beginning with the educated and going down to the lowest. But since 1848 — when the country became alarm.ed at the extremes to which infidelity led — there has been a reaction in favour of orthodox doctrine and evangelical sentiments. This has been specially felt by students intending for the pastoral office, \\\\o have very much abandoned the old rationalistic and Hegelian professors, and are crowding the class-rooms of those who defend the inspiration of Scripture and the old doctrines of salvation by the cross of Christ. The great Germ.an theologians of tlie age now passing away, and of the present age have, with unmatched erudition and pro- found speculative ability, defended the Bible from the assaults made upon it ; and as it was from Germany we got the bane, so it is from Germany, or rather from 368 APPENDIX. English writers who can use the stores of German learning, that Ave must look for the antidote. But to return to Bunsen. I am able to say — what I believe I can say of no other with whom I had so much intercourse — that we never conversed during these five days, for ten minutes at a time, without his return- ing, however far he might be off, to his Bible and his Saviour, as the objects that were evidently the dearest "to him. Some of my British readers will be astonished when I have to add, that one evening he told me that he ^' was not sure about allowing that God is a Being, and that he certainly could not admit that God is a Person." The question will be asked. How was it possible for one entertaining such theoretical views to love his God and Saviour, as Bunsen seemed to love them, supremely? Having a considerable acquaintance with the Hegelian philosophy, and having only a short time before listened to the lectures of some of the most devoted disciples of that school, I think I can under- stand this inconsistency, though I would never think of defending it. Bunsen had been trained in the first quarter of this century, when Schelling and Hegel (of whom he always spoke with profound admiration) ruled in the universities, and he had so lost himself in ideal distinctions and nomenclature, that his words were not to be interpreted as if the same expressions had been used by another man. He was for ever talking, in Kantian phraseology, of the forms of space and time, and of the manifestations of God in space and time. I labom-ed to shew that there were other intuitive convic- tions in the mind as well as those of space and time, and, in particular, that we all had an immediate consciousness of ourselves as persons, and that this conscious personality, duly followed out, raised our minds to the contemplation of God as a Being and a Person. One evening, in his house, I thought I had shut him up to a point, but the conversation was interrupted by the breaking up of the large company. We met next day, by appointment, to resume the dis- APPENDIX. 369 cussion^ but amid the flow of his grand conceptions I never o-ot him back to the point at which we had broken off. The kist day I passed with him was a Sabbath — a Sahhath indeed — for I never in all my life spent a more profitable day. In the forenoon, I sat with him in his seat in the University Church at Heidel- berg, where we had the privilege of listening to a powerful Gospel sermon from Dr. Schenkel. I spent the afternoon in his house, where he read to us in German, or in English translations, out of the fine old devotional works of his country, interspersing remarks of his own, evidently springing from the depths of his heart, and breathing towards heaven — to which, I firmly believe, he has now been carried. 2 A ERRA TA. Page 16, line 14, for tvas^ read is. ,, 122, lines 23, 24, delete or mental. „ I'iO, line 12, delete the in in Jits in. „ 189, line 3, for derivations, read derivatives. ,, ,, line 4, for Tra.^a'hti'yavirl^ca, read 'yflJoa^a/y^aT/|(!tf. ,, ,, line 7, for jra^aBuviwa, read 'yrx^d'huyfAx. ,, 258, line 4, for as, read m. „ 292, line 1 from foot, for Tahrbucher, read Jahrbuchcr. „ 314, line 13, for attest, read test. „ 322, line 17, for them, read it. DR. McOOSH'S WORKS. A.^^ . I. THE METHOD OF THE DIVINE GOVERNISIENT, PHYSICAL AND MORAL. Svo, ^2 OO. " The work is of the compact, tlioug-ht-elevating coniploxion which men do not w^illino;ly let die ; and we promise such of our readers aa may possess themselves of it, much entertainment and instruction of a high order, and a fund of solid thought which they will not soon ex- haust." — Huah Miller. II. TYPICAL FORMS AND SPECIAL ENDS IN CREATION. Octavo, ^3 OO. " It is a noble and eminentlj' successful attempt to advance natural theology to a higher level than it has yet attained." — Monunr/ Post. III. T II E INTUITIONS OF T II E i\I I N D INDUOTIYELr INVKSTrGATED. 8vo, $,2 OO. " The work surveys, more or less completely, all the ground indicated by its title. The principles which it cliscusses are the most vital in modern metaphysics. The appearance of tlie volume is pre-eminently seasonable ; its plan symmetrical and comprehensive ; and its temper admirably, we may say, characteristically, candid and catholic. No philosophic student can afford to be ignorant of its contents. No phil- osopher before Dr. M'Cosh has clearly brought out the stages by which an original and individual intuition passes — first, into an articulate but still individual judgment, and then into a universal maxim or principle. Nor has any one before him so clearly or completely classified and en- umerated our intuitive convictions, or exhibited in detail their relations to the various sciences which repose on them as their foundations." — 2'/ie London Rcvicio. IV. THE SUPERNATURAL IN RELATION TO THE NATUP.AL. 1 2 in o , SI 3 5.