CHAPTER XV.

RECENT THEORIES REGARDING THE SUPERNATURAL AND THE REIGN OF LAW- EVIDENCE IN NATURE OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

The battle against the supernatural has been going on long, and strong men have conducted and are conducting it; but what they want is a weapon. The logic of unbelief wants a universal. But no real universal is forthcoming, and it only wastes its strength in wielding a fictitious one. -THE REV. J. B. MOZLEY, B. D.

THE careful study of the Bible constrains those who are not wedded to some foregone conclusion, to acknowledge impressions or ideas of a supernatural influence such as are created by the perusal of no other book. The brief review which we have taken of history in its relation to prophecy, has shown an enlightening and a controlling power which is not recognizable within the sphere of ordinary records. But in advocating the existence of supernatural influences, we have to confront relentless opposition.

Animated by an intense love of nature, and sensitively jealous of even the slightest reference to the supernatural, some influential writers are not only repudiating every agency which is independent of physical tests, but assigning to the laws of nature an executive or administrative function. They are investing them with powers which can only be legitimately connected with intelligence and purpose; and the scorn with which they repel

every allusion to direct control by a personal Deity, is no less perplexing than it is saddening. The repudiation of the supernatural is, with them, axiomatic; they put the cause out of court; they can see in nature nothing more than a rigidly regulated system, and they limit the basis of their philosophy to those forces and phenomena with which alone physical science is conversant. They do not hesitate to assert that the Creator "cannot be imagined as acting on the line of cause and effect, and that even by his own hand no law can be deflected or reversed. He has not the liberty of acting, except within the lines of a fixed routine; and in the moral government of the human race he is without freedom of volition apart from those laws which keep in harmonious movement the everlasting machinery of the universe.

The enthusiasm with which researches have been prosecuted in physical science, has predisposed some to originate, and many to accept theories, of which nothing would have been ever heard if there had been similar earnestness in the counterpoise study of metaphysics. Opposite tendencies would have been balanced, and in the peaceful walks of science and philosophy we should not have been meeting bigotry and intolerance as narrow, sharp, and unrelenting as have ever confronted the student of purely theological controversies. The conclusions which have found in Britain a large measure of sympathy, if not avowed acceptance, may be best estimated through the language of their advocates. A few statements may be sufficiently historical and expository not only to induce a careful examination of the tendency

of British skepticism, but to show the probable effect of those concessions which some of our ablest Christian apologists are making in the struggle to counteract, its progress.

As the late Rev. Baden Powell, Savilian Professor of Geometry in the University of Oxford, was among the first to utter, with fearless emphasis, what others were holding "with bated breath," and as he expounded to the youth of one of the first universities in the civilized world convictions which were warmly welcomed, we at the outset submit his conclusion:

"It is the province of science to investigate nature; it can contemplate nothing but in connection with the order of nature; it cannot point to anything out of nature. The limits of the study of nature do not bring us to the confines of the supernatural."* "From the very condition of the case, it is evident that the supernatural can never be a matter of science or knowledge; for the moment it is brought within the cognizance of reason, it ceases to be supernatural. If nature could really terminate anywhere, then we should not find the supernatural, but a chaos, a blank-total darkness-anarchy-atheism."t "The supernatural is the offspring of ignorance, and the parent of superstition and idolatry; the natural is the assurance of science, and the preliminary to all rational views of Theism."

Without carrying his demands so far as to exclude the supernatural as altogether unreal or unimaginable, he insisted that a "theism of omnipotence, in any sense devi

"The Order of Nature," p. 231. t Ibid., p. 232. Ibid., p. 248.

ating from the order of nature, must be entirely derived from other teaching," that is, from the Bible. While asserting that "creation," and the ideas we attach to it, are derived from the Scriptures, and demanding that they be not confounded with those ideas which are of purely scientific origin, he admitted their value, but traced them to faith. The school to which he belonged has moved considerably in advance of his opinions. Herbert Spencer, who may be regarded as among the foremost expositors of its present beliefs, rejects, as utterly "unthinkable" and "unknowable," that which Baden Powell, notwithstanding the fervor of his love for physical science, held fast as coming from another source. The supernatural in its highest relations, Spencer displaces and disowns as "unscrutable," and in reference to the forms of religion, he declares "that no hypothesis is even thinkable."

The Deity is virtually, though not formally, excluded; and the supernatural, in both its relative and absolute aspects, is consequently repudiated. What is unknowable or unthinkable is equal to nothing, and the whole system must be ever destitute of emotional fervor and moral value. There is nothing in it to engage our sympathies, sustain our hopes, stimulate our services, and develop brotherly kindness.

But the principles of this school demand logically a much wider application than British thinkers generally are disposed to make. There is evidently no restingplace short of that which French writers have taken and *First Principles," p. 46.

defended; but the former shrink from it as a course whose inevitable issue is Materialism. The boldness of continental reasoning sheds light on the end to which its logic is guiding the disciples of that school; and its conclusion must be repudiated or accepted.

"If we do not enter on this discussion," says M. Havet, "it is from the impossibility of doing so without admitting an inadmissible proposition, namely—the mere possibility of the supernatural. Our principle is to hold ourselves constantly from the supernatural-that is, from the imagination. The dominant principle of all true history, as of all true science, is, that that which is not in nature is nothing, unless as an idea."*

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Positive philosophy," writes M. Littré, “sets aside the systems of theology which suppose supernatural action."

M. Renan has said with equal boldness: "For myself, I believe that there is not in the universe an intelligence superior to that of man; the absolute of justice and reason manifests itself only in humanity; regarded apart from humanity, that absolute is but an abstraction. The infinite exists only when it clothes itself in form."†

These principles have been warmly welcomed and vindicated by some eminent physicists and metaphysicians who, although prosecuting different studies, and adopting in some instances contradictory propositions, have shown in their conclusions remarkable similarity.

*Revue des Deux Mondes, August, 1863.

† Quoted in Pressensè's "Jesus Christ: his Life and Times," pp. 10, II.