distinct. The relatively supernatural becomes the natural beneath the next higher economy in the ascending series. The plant economy, supernatural relatively to the inorganic fabric, becomes natural relatively to the animal economy; and so on, upward through all stages and ranks, until we reach the great source of order and life— the Lord God Omnipotent reigning. But to acknowledge the reign of the Supreme Being, does not necessarily displace the reign of Law. Law has its sphere. It is universal; but not absolute. This is not a new discovery; it is a truth shining with as much clearness in every page of Scripture as in the " Principia" of Newton. Regarding this principle, both Science and Scripture are at one; the difference lies in the variety and extent of its applications-a difference always dependent on the progress of scientific discovery. But while we acknowledge the prevalence of natural law, and admit that hidden laws may be applied by higher beings to produce what to us are supernatural results, we cannot, in homage to an imperfect philosophy, dissociate the Lawgiver from the works and the laws which he has framed. While admitting that the Divine Government proceeds ordinarily by the use of natural agencies, we are justified in firmly refusing the statement already adverted to, "that there is no reason for believing that God ever acts otherwise," because the facts of science, as well as the intimations of Scripture, reveal actions without means. To institute means originally, is itself evidence of acting without means. To establish laws, is proof of work without laws. The reign of law is not self-originated. God began it, and his Will must be the rule of its continuance. Proof is accumulating. Natural Philosophy has already demonstrated that the present cosmical system has not been eternal-that it began to be, and that it is passing on to change and overthrow, unless some power, not now acting, interpose. Geology has proved that there has been a commencement to our rock structure, and Biology has also attested for Life a beginning that is supernatural to all that previously existed. We are therefore justified in assuming that there are results without self-originating means; and it does no such violence to our intuitions and our reason to connect them with the sovereign Will of God, as it does to throw back the beginning of all things into the mists of a measureless eternity, and to assert that explanation is "inconceivable." Throughout the "Natural," in the fullest extent which may be claimed for it, there is abundant evidence of the introduction of Supernatural influence; and if Christianity is indeed a system from the same hand which framed the heavens, it would not be in harmony with the facts which appear in the lower economies, if the manifestations of a supernatural presence in it were not at least equally distinct. CHAPTER XVI. - CONCLU EVIDENCE OF THE SUPERNATURAL IN CHRISTIANITY-RE- The truth which really and only accounts for the establishment in this our human world of such a religion as Christianity, and of such an institution as the Church, is the truth that Jesus Christ was believed to be more than man, the truth that Jesus Christ is what men believed him to be, the truth that Jesus Christ is God.-CANON LIDDON. HAVING tested the historical statements in Scripture by evidence in other records, having noticed the peculiarity with which prophecy and its fulfilment have invested the Bible, and having traced in the "Natural" the mysterious tokens of a Power working in sovereignty behind its economies, we cannot escape the impression that the same Being who hath introduced into the physical world new conditions of structure and life, and into mental history those ideas which strangely or superhumanly represented future facts, centuries before their realization, hath also placed in the higher world-the Mental, the Moral, and the Spiritual-those historical facts, those miraculous changes, and those doctrinal truths which lay beyond the reach alike of man's physical and intellectual resources. Physical changes for which no known natural forces can account, and prophecies for which, in the domain of thought, no satisfactory explanation, apart from the Will of God, has ever been offered, constitute of themselves sufficient warrant for receiving the Bible as a divine revelation, and Christianity with all its miracles as a divine system. Christianity claims to be supernatural. It reveals truths beyond the range of human thought, and that is supernatural; it records miracles, and they are supernatural. The two are inseparably inwrought with one another-the miracle of revelation itself, and the miracles which are recorded in the Scriptures. The proposal to accept the Bible without its prophecies, and Christianity without its miracles, is to deprive both of almost every vestige of moral value. The traces of the supernatural are so abundant in the Bible, and so distinctly characteristic of it, that to efface them or cut them out would be to render the book and its system of truth so utterly meaningless, that it would become a piece of incongruous and useless patchwork, with no trace whatever of its connection with the works of God in Creation, and that union of the works and the word which has recently become better known in the light of science would be unappreciated. The systematic study of Nature alone creates a disposition to look for and acknowledge the supernatural in any higher system of truth which might be brought within man's reach, and accordingly the Scriptures are so pervaded by tokens of a controlling presence above all that is merely human, that they harmonize with the evidence in Nature of the supernatural. That there is development in the life of every individual, and that there is evolution in separate systems or economies, every one admits; but there is not the least evidence to prove, as has been already fully stated, that the one system has been evolved from the other; that the different systems of inorganic bodies, and of organized beings, have been evolved from some very simple beginnings; and that the intellectual and moral nature of man has been evolved from either inorganic matter, or from some molluscous creature. But supposing that both development and evolution should be found to extend much more comprehensively in breadth and depth than we yet imagine, the result should not in the least degree affect our confidence in the dispensations of providence and the means of grace. There are higher laws than this material framework, with its plant and animal existences, can ever exhibit; there is the Sphere of Providence as it regulates individual, domestic, and national histories; but beyond and above it there is the Economy of Grace, or the Plan of Redemption, and every student is responsible for an accurate knowledge of its doctrines and its duties. On turning our attention closely to the Word of God, that the economy of grace may be known aright, we naturally expect that the same method of manifesting truth will be exhibited which appears in God's works around us; and we are not disappointed. The natural and the supernatural reappear in forms still more distinctly recognizable, and the progressiveness which we have already described as apparent in the adjustments of the globe and in the development of life-forms, is still more obvious in the development of revealed truth and in the unfolded means of grace. At the very commence |