SOUNDINGS 



tinue to do, some appealing to one type of mind, or 

 — shall we say? — one stage of development, some 

 to another. The philosopher looks on and smiles, or 

 pities, and is content. 



II. THE NATURAL ORDER 



Even great thinkers like Mr. Balfour recoil from 

 naturalism and cheerfully embrace supernaturalism. 

 Mr. Balfour finds the key to the fundamental prob- 

 lems of life in the miracle of the Incarnation. He in- 

 jects into the natural order a theological concept, 

 and the riddle of man's life is solved. To the natu- 

 ralist such a conclusion is as impossible as to hope to 

 quench his thirst with the symbols, H 2 0. 



We may say every man born of woman is an in- 

 carnation of the Infinite spirit, and the hyperbole 

 may stand, but to affirm that one particular man in 

 the historic period was an incarnation in an en- 

 tirely other and more significant sense, is to read 

 magic into matters of common sense. It is an imag- 

 inary solution. It is an appeal from the natural to 

 the non-natural. It is offering an artificial solution 

 to a natural problem. One might as well attribute a 

 failure of the crops to one of the political parties, or 

 an epidemic of disease to an historical document. 

 The doctrine of the Incarnation is as far outside the 

 realm of natural law as is magic, and to see in this 

 the master key to creation is like ascribing all the 

 sin and misery of the world to Adam's transgression 



257 



