MAN IN NATURE 495 



subject to the laws of the universe, yet free and intelligent 

 and liable to error, in bodily constitution freed from many of 

 the limitations imposed on us, mentally having higher range 

 and grasp, and consequently masters of natural powers not 

 under our control. In short, we have here pictured to us 

 an order of beings forming a part of nature, yet in their 

 powers as miraculous to us as we might be supposed to be 

 to lower animals, could they think of such things. This idea 

 of angels bridges over the great natural gulf between humanity 

 and deity, and illustrates a higher plane than that of man 

 in his present state, but attainable in the future. Dim per- 

 ceptions of this would seem to constitute the substratum of 

 the ideas of the so-called polytheistic religions. Christianity 

 itself is in this aspect not so much a revelation of the super- 

 natural as the highest bond of the great unity of nature. It 

 reveals to us the perfect Man, who is also one with God, and 

 the mission of this Divine Man to restore the harmonies of 

 God and humanity, and consequently also of man with his 

 natural environment in this world, and with his spiritual en- 

 vironment in the higher world of the future. If it is true 

 that nature now groans because of man's depravity, and that 

 man himself shares in the evils of this disharmony with nature 

 around him, it is clear that if man could be restored to his 

 true place in nature he would be restored to happiness and 

 to harmony with God, and if, on the other hand, he can be 

 restored to harmony with God, he will then be restored also 

 to harmony with his natural environment, and so to life and 

 happiness and immortality. It is here that the old story of 

 Eden, and the teaching of Christ, and the prophecy of the 

 New Jerusalem strike the same note which all material nature 

 gives forth when we interrogate it respecting its relations to 

 man. The profound manner in which these truths appear in 

 the teaching of Christ has perhaps not been appreciated as it 

 should, because we have not sought in that teaching the 



