NATUEAL TEESUS SUPEENATUEAL 51 



perception has come and is coming to more minds 

 to-day than ever before — this perception of the 

 modernness of God, of the modernness of inspiration, 

 of the modernness of religion ; that there was never 

 any more revelation than there is now, never any 

 more miracles or signs and wonders, never any more 

 conversing of God with man, never any more Garden 

 of Eden, or fall of Adam, or thunder of Sinai, or 

 ministering angels, than there is now ; in fact, that 

 these things are not historical events, but inward 

 experiences and perceptions perpetually renewed or 

 typified in the growth of the race. This is the 

 modern gospel ; this is the one vital and formative 

 religious thought of modern times. 



The mind that has fully opened to this percep- 

 tion no longer divorces its faith from its reason, no 

 longer rests in the idea of a dualism in creation or 

 opposition between God and the world, and cannot 

 feel at ease until its religious belief is in harmony 

 with its natural knowledge. The two must not be at 

 war. What we hope for, what we aspire to, must 

 be consistent with what we know. Paith and sci- 

 ence must, indeed, go hand in hand. The concep- 

 tion of religion as a miraculous scheme for man's 

 redemption interpolated into history, God's original 

 design with reference to man having miscarried, is 

 entirely undermined and overthrown by the percep- 

 tion of the unity and consistency of creation as re- 

 vealed by science. 



Who does not see that it adds vastly to the credi- 

 bility of a doctrine or theory to find that it fits in 



