THE NATURAL VERSUS THE SUPERNATURAL. 3 



of his life, does not mean sameness or identity of all physical processes, 

 but it means identity of these processes under like conditions. Given 

 the same conditions, and the same results always follow. Water obeys 

 its laws under low temperature, and iron its. It is not long since that 

 the Bishop of Carlisle urged as an argument against the uniformity of 

 Nature the fact that the weather is changeable ! If his lordship could 

 have shown that the laws which govern the formation of clouds, and 

 the precipitation of rain and snow are changeable, or ever work in- 

 versely, he would have made out his case. The fathers of the Church 

 believed that the flesh of the peacock never decayed. St. Augustine 

 said he had ascertained by experiment that this is a fact. If this were 

 so, it would indeed be a remarkable exception ; but the man of science 

 would at once set about ascertaining its natural cause, without for one 

 moment attributing it to a supernatural one. But without trying the 

 experiment ourselves, does any sane man to-day doubt that either the 

 saint deceived himself, or else that he was not honest ? His statement 

 is incredible, because it contradicts all the rest of our knowledge relat- 

 ing to the decomposition of animal tissue. 



I suppose the last thing our fathers would have thought of doing, 

 would have been to try to reconcile their conception of Christianity 

 with their stores of natural knowledge. They did not feel the need, 

 which we to-day feel so keenly, of any such reconciliation. They 

 cherished their faith as something apart, something not founded in the 

 order of this world, something to which science and all that pertains 

 to the " natural man " are necessarily strangers. The order of this 

 world is carnal ; it is full of evil, and is separated by an impassable 

 gulf from the sacred and the divine. A vast number of most excellent 

 and pious people still feel in this way about their religious belief ; it is 

 all the more sacred and precious to them because it has no relation to 

 the natural course of mundane things. It forms for them an escape 

 from the humdrum, from the failures, and from the materialism of life. 

 Who can recall without deepest sympathy and love the religious be- 

 liefs and observances of the many simple and credulous people he has 

 known in his youth, perhaps of his own parents or grandparents, with 

 their fervid piety but merciless creeds, their faith in their church and 

 in the saving power of its sacraments, their unquestioning belief in 

 the literal truth of the Bible, every word of it the Fall, the Flood, 

 the miracles, and all ? What a refuge their faith was to them in times 

 of trouble ; what an avenue of escape into spiritual and ideal regions ! 

 It saved them ; why can it not save us ? For the simple reason that 

 it is no longer credible to us : we are born into another world ; we can 

 not believe the old creed, try we never so hard. It was adequate to 

 their knowledge, to their development, but it is not adequate to 

 ours. The old terms and symbols satisfied them, but they are fast 

 becoming obsolete to us. The whole aspect of the universe has 

 changed. But our salvation is to be had upon essentially the same 



