THE NATURAL VERSUS THE SUPERNATURAL. 13 



and good" ; or when he says with Mieah, "And what doth the Lord 

 require of thee but to do justly and to love mercy, and to walk hum- 

 bly with thy God ? " or when he says with Solomon that " the fear of 

 the Lord is to hate evil " ; or with Jeremiah, " He judged the cause 

 of the poor and needy was not this to know me ? saith the Lord " ; 

 or when he says with St. James, " Pure religion and undefiled before 

 God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their 

 affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world," he gives 

 utterance to sentiments that appeal to the best there is in every man, 

 and that agree with the highest wisdom of all ages and races. Science 

 can understand it and verify it. 



But when he talks to us about Jesus in the language of the evan- 

 gelical churches about the atonement, original sin, sanctification, sav- 

 ing grace, etc. he simply uses a jargon that may mean something to 

 him, but can mean nothing at all to an outsider. He states things as 

 facts which have no ground either in reason or experience ; they belong 

 to a world apart, which neither the rest of our knowledge nor our natu- 

 ral faculties of reason and observation can put us in communication 

 with. He might just as well talk about the elixir of life or of the 

 philosopher's stone. The traditional theology has undoubtedly proved 

 itself a good working hypothesis with crude and half-developed minds, 

 but upon what thoughtful and cultivated person does it now make an 

 impression ? No race has been lifted out of barbarism without the aid 

 of supernatural machinery. Once lifted out, how prone we are to dis- 

 credit the machinery ! We have no further use for it. We have out- 

 grown it. But the mass of mankind are slow to outgrow it. To the 

 mass of mankind the miraculous element of Christianity still seems 

 vital and of first importance. Discredit that, and you have discredited 

 religion itself in their eyes. But not so with the philosopher, or with 

 the man who is bent on seeing and knowing things exactly as they are. 



I think it is in accordance with the rest of our knowledge that 

 Christianity could not have made its way in the world, its superior 

 ethical and moral system could not have gained the ascendency, with- 

 out the cloud of myths in which they came enveloped. What a seal 

 of authentication is put upon it by the myth of the resurrection of 

 Jesus ! How this fact stuns and overwhelms the ordinary mind ! 

 Was it Talleyrand who replied to some enthusiast who proposed to 

 start a new religion, that he advised him to begin by getting himself 

 crucified, and to rise again on the third day ? As a new cult founded 

 upon reason alone, or as a natural religion alone, Christianity could 

 not have coped with the supernatural religions that then possessed 

 the world. Men's minds were not prepared for it, and it is probably 

 equally true that the mass of mankind are not yet prepared for a re- 

 ligion based upon natural knowledge alone. But the time is surely 

 coming, and natural science is to be the chief instrument in bringing 

 it about. The religious sense of man is less and less dependent upon 



