224 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION 



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 otherwise 

 impassable gulf between humanity and deity, and 

 illustrates a higher plane than that of man in his 

 present state, but attainable in the future. Dim 

 perceptions 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 supernatural 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 environment 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 dis-harmony 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 environ 

 ment, and so to life and happiness and immortality. 

 It is here that the old story of Eden, and the teaching 



