THE NATURAL VERSUS THE SUPERNATURAL, n 



the case of Paul, was not genuine. It was genuine to them, but it 

 was entirely a subjective phenomenon, like the faith-cures we now 

 often bear about ; it was the power of the imagination working upon 

 the conscience. It is not a necessary or universal experience, even 

 among religious people. It may be said without any irreverence that 

 it has gone out of fashion. The predisposition for that kind of ex- 

 perience no longer exists. " The belief in witchcraft," says Milman, 

 "made people fancy themselves witches," and the belief in the efficacy 

 of sudden conversions led to these sorts of moral and spiritual earth- 

 quakes. 



Science looks upon religion as belonging to the sphere of the 

 natural ; it is the legitimate outcome of man's moral nature ; the term 

 that best expresses the complete development and flowering of all his 

 faculties. To define it in the guarded terms which Principal Tulloch 

 uses, namely, as " an inner power of Divine mystery awakening the 

 conscience," is to make it something external to man and more or less 

 arbitrary and theological. This view the world has long clung to, 

 but it must go is going. The Biblical writers had no theology ; the 

 Bible is strictly a religious book, and in no sense a theological treatise. 

 Paul developed or outlined some theological notions ; but wherein 

 was Paul great in his theology, or in his religious fervor ; in his 

 notions of predestination, or in his aspirations after righteousness ? 

 Jesus is as free from any theological bias as a child is from metaphys- 

 ics. He taught but one thing, namely, that the kingdom of heaven 

 is in the condition of the heart, a condition illustrated by his own life. 

 The vast and elaborate system of theology which grew up out of his 

 parables and his Orientalism, and overshadowed the world for fifteen 

 hundred years or more, and begat some of the darkest crimes the his- 

 tory of man has to show, is as far from his spirit and that of his dis- 

 ciples as the east is from the west. 



Undoubtedly, religion knows certain things in a more intimate and 

 personal way than science does; so does poetry, so does literature; and 

 science can understand how this is so. What we receive through the 

 emotions is more vital and personal to us than what reaches us through 

 the reason. The person in whose mind has been awakened a deep love 

 of Christ, comes to know Christ in a way the mere outside observer 

 does not ; his spirit takes hold of the Christ-idea, and is filled and 

 modified by it to an extent the other is not. An emotional process is 

 more potent than a rational process. The knowledge thus gained is 

 no more truly knowledge, but it is more vital knowledge. It is not 

 merely conviction ; it is attraction and affiliation as well. But this is 

 true not of Christ merely ; it is true of the whole range of our experi- 

 ence. If the flower, or the bird, or the rock awaken no emotion in the 

 obseiwer, will he ever come truly to know it ? Unless we love an 

 author, can we ever get at his deepest and most precious meaning? 

 Hence Goethe said, " We learn to know nothing but what we love." 



