THE NATURAL VERSUS THE SUPERNATURAL. g 



the angels, etc. It is from the type of mind that conceived such 

 notions of the universe as this that we inherit our theology. But it 

 may be replied, men may be feeble in science but great in religion. 

 True, the fathers, many of them, were great in religion, they were 

 great on the moral and spiritual side ; but the system of theology they 

 founded aims to be a science ; it deals with exact propositions ; it is 

 not the work of their subjective religious natures but of their scien- 

 tific faculties, and as such it is just as artificial, just as puerile and un- 

 real, as the notions of the physical universe to which I have adverted. 



The whole Christian dispensation, as expounded by the popular 

 theology, is as little in keeping with the physical order of the world 

 as disclosed by science, or with the natural moral order as disclosed 

 by the conscience, as Indian medicine is in keeping with modern pa- 

 thology. The whole scheme hinges upon the fall of Adam in paradise 

 as an historical event, an act of disobedience on the part of the origi- 

 nal progenitor of the human family, in consequence of which sin and 

 death entered the world, and the suffering and death of Jesus became 

 necessary to bring about a reconciliation between an angry God and 

 rebellious man, etc. ; with the attendant doctrine of the mystery of the 

 atonement, of salvation by grace, of the eternal punishment of the pre- 

 Christian nations, etc. Now this conception as science, or as a rational 

 explanation of the world as it is, and of man's salvation, is on a par 

 with Cosmas's theory of the earth with the sky glued to the outer 

 edges. It shows the working of the same type of mind, it rests upon 

 the same arbitrary and artificial view of things. 



But, in all these matters, the question now is whether the ancient 

 or the modern point of view shall prevail ; whether evolution, or 

 revelation, is the law of the world. The ancient point of view, as we 

 have seen, was exclusive and arbitrary ; it looked upon the universe 

 as something made and governed by a being or beings external to it. 

 In medicine, it regarded all disease as the work of evil spirits, that 

 were to be exorcised by charms or amulets or incantations. In poli- 

 tics, it inculcated the divine right of kings, that the king can do no 

 wrong, etc. In political economy, it taught that the interests of na- 

 tions were mutually antagonistic and destructive of one another. In 

 physical science, it encouraged the notions we have seen. The fathers 

 taught that all men were under condemnation from the moment of 

 their birth, and that at death the souls of unbaptized infants went 

 straight to hell. St. Augustine taught, and the Catholic Church still 

 holds, that when water from the hands of a priest falls upon the head 

 of an unconscious infant, a miraculous change is wrought in its spirit- 

 ual nature a change by which it becomes essentially a new and a 

 higher being ; and the Church says, with characteristic charity, of him 

 who believes not this impossible doctrine, " Let him be accursed ! " 



It is this type of mind which fostered alchemy, astrology, sorcery, 

 witchcraft, and demonology. The air and the earth and the waters 



