SYNTHESIS OF THE NATURAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL 



bitter feeling of the friends of religion to science is seen in 

 any direction we like to turn in the world of education. It 

 is very manifest in our theological colleges. They call to 

 their consideration of life and the world not only students 

 of the Bible, but also students of science. They thus 

 manifest the growing consciousness that supernatural 

 teaching, which stops short of the knowledge of the world 

 in which we live, is mischievous — the possession of fire 

 without the knowledge of how to use it. " Two things are 

 necessary in order to attain any end," said Principal John 

 Caird at a social science congress in Glasgow, ** the desire or 

 disposition to achieve it, and the knowledge how to 

 accomplish it. It is the function of religion to stimulate 

 the former ; but that achieved, in order to any wide or 

 lasting result, it must call in the aid of intelligence, of 

 science, of the knowledge of human nature and human 

 society, to which only the most careful observation can 

 attain, and without which all fervor of religious zeal will 

 be comparatively useless — sometimes even dangerous and 

 noxious." This, uttered more than thirty years ago, is a 

 .striking expression of the conviction which has come home 

 to this generation that religion and science must work 

 together in the creation of the ' ' new heaven and the new 

 earth." 



III. 



But it is important to note that this alliance is between 

 a purified supernaturalism and an open-minded science. 

 No doubt the word supernatural is still to many suggestive 

 of its old superstitious associations. We are shy of it. 

 It carries with it, in addition to its essential truth, 

 suggestions of the uncanny and the unnatural : invisible 

 persons, not in nature, but outside of it, and intruding into 

 it in ghostly fashion, sometimes for good and sometimes 

 for evil. I^ike many other words it needs to be born again. 

 It needs to have a rational soul breathed into it. Thus it 



