328 THE POPULAR SCIEJSrCE MONTHLY. 



his persuasive voice, and every movement toward righteousness is the 

 impulse of his impending presence. 



According to his word, God is in man, living and moving of his 

 own good pleasure ; not beyond his reach nor without him, but in him 

 and of him, and may be recognized in every stone and star, in every 

 glint of beauty and waft of fragrance, in every touch and tone of ten- 

 derness, and in every strain of melody and movement of intelligence. 

 What, then, would be the use or the value of the supernatural in 

 nature ? 



As to the scientific dogma of the evolution of man from monad 

 through monkey, the New Theology is as ready to accept it as to re- 

 ject it, according to the evidence ; but in no event does it see the 

 necessity of nor admit a special divine interposition to complete any 

 stage in the process, and it is unscientific to assume it. The divine 

 immanence is constant, and is sufficient for every evolved condition 

 without aid from or resort to unnatural or supernatural supplementa- 

 tion to the uniformity of nature ; and, whether evolved or not, man is 

 consciously and practically a moral being, capable of virtue and vice, 

 and justly censurable for evil and worthy of commendation for good. 



But, more than any other, the topic which has made the New The- 

 ology most conspicuous is that which is denominated a second proba- 

 tion, which is yet illy conceived and variously presented. Consistent 

 thinkers not only accept the doctrine of rewards and punishments, but 

 hold that neither can adequately express the Divine attitude toward 

 holiness and sin, nor man's sense of propriety and justice, unless they 

 be eternal. They do not assume to describe the rewards or the pun- 

 ishments of the future, nor to know their constituents, but presume, 

 from their appropriateness, and from the consistency in the order of 

 divine things, that they will be similar to or identical with the peace 

 and joy of believers, and the commotion and wretchedness of sinners 

 on earth. From this point the New Theology shades off gradually 

 from the Old. It holds that sin involves death or permanent dis- 

 ability, and that continuous sinning becomes increasingly disastrous, 

 undermining and weakening the moral nature, until it becomes so 

 enfeebled as hardly to be able to perform or to enjoy the pleasures of 

 a virtuous deed, and logically terminates in the extinction of moral 

 being. But since, according to Scripture and science, nothing is made 

 in vain, or to be destroyed, there must be hope where there is life, and 

 since the annihilation of any existence implies a useless act in its crea- 

 tion, or an error in the calculation of its author, it assumes that being, 

 especially moral being, is an assurance of immortality, and that so 

 long as there is a spark of vitality there is a possibility, or, according 

 to the nature and course of things, a probability of an awakening to 

 a higher life and its eternal development. And if, with the diminu- 

 tion of moral energy referred to, there is, as is claimed, an element of 

 pain as a corollary of transgression, it is an additional evidence of the 



