The Sphere of Religion 297 



holiness nor the judgement of sacredness, but upon the reality 

 to which these belong — the existence of the supernatural. The 

 supernatural is the special concern of religion, and nothing else is 

 concerned with it in the same way as religion. 



As here used the supernatural means the world which manifests 

 more than natural values, the world which has values which stir 

 the sense of the holy and demand to be esteemed as sacred. This 

 is the only way in which the distinction can be drawn, but in this 

 way we draw it quite simply every day. We cannot distinguish 

 the natural as the mechanical and the supernatural as the free, for 

 we do not know how much freedom there is in the natural or how 

 much law in the supernatural ; nor can it be divided as between 

 the ordinary and the miraculous, for nature is sometin^es the more 

 miraculous, and the supernatural the common stuff of our daily 

 experience. The two are not in opposition, and are constantly 

 interwoven, and there may be nothing wholly natural or wholly 

 supernatural, but our interests in them are perfectly distinct, and 

 very definitely distinguish aspects of our experience. Part of it 

 is natural, in the sense that its values are comparative and to be 

 j udged as they serve our needs ; and part of it supernatural, in the 

 sense that its values are absolute, to which our needs must submit. 

 We know the supernatural as it reflects itself in the sense of the 

 holy and has for us absolute value, directly and without further 

 argument, and henceforth we are concerned with its existence and 

 its relation to us and our relation to it. We can make no more out 

 of arguing abstractly about it than we should out of arguing 

 abstractly, as men long did, about the natural. The supreme 

 task, the task which has, more than any other, marked human 

 progress, has been to discover the true sacred, and that means 

 again to exercise the true sense of the holy. And, only on the 

 basis of the right j udgement inspired by the right feeling, can religion 

 with profit ask : What is the sacred reality and how is it related 

 to us and we to it .^ Thus there is only one sound reason for saying 

 it is personal, and this is, that, the more we have stood on our own 

 feet and thought and felt and acted for ourselves, the more the 

 whole universe has responded to us. In the same way, there is 

 only one sound reason for saying the supernatural is in front of us 

 and not something merely in the making, and this is that the sacred 

 requirement is ever in front of us, something not existing yet 

 always there to be realised. 



