NATUEAL VERSUS SUPERNATUEAL 57 



cerned, the fathers of the church, and the f ramers of 

 our popular theology, were mere children. Consid- 

 erations were all-powerful with them which to- 

 day would not have a feather's weight with a man 

 of ordinary intelligence. Children readily, even 

 eagerly, believe almost any impossible thing you 

 may tell them about nature. As yet they have no 

 insight into the course of nature, or of the law of 

 cause and effect, no fund of experience to serve as 

 a touchstone to the false or impossible. The same 

 was true of the fathers, and of the races that wit- 

 nessed the advent of Christianity, — great in moral 

 and spiritual matters, but mere children so far as 

 the development of their scientific faculties were 

 concerned ; and it is from the scientific faculties 

 that theology, as such, proceeds. Theology is an 

 attempt to define to the understanding the basis of 

 man's religious convictions and aspirations ; it aims 

 to be the science of God's dealings with man and 

 nature, and as such it is bound to share the infirm- 

 ity of the logical and scientific faculty of the times 

 in which it arises. 



The contemporaries of Jesus thought it not un- 

 reasonable that John the Baptist should come to 

 life after his head had been cut off; that the pro- 

 phet Elias should reappear upon earth, or that Jere- 

 miah should come back. These notions were in 

 strict keeping with the belief in the marvelous and 

 the supernatural that then possessed men's minds. 

 The four Gospels were a growth out of this atmo- 

 sphere, and the current theology is a continuation of 



