NATURAL VERSUS SUPERNATURAL 69 



Talleyrand who replied to some enthusiast who pro- 

 posed to start a new religion, that he advised him 

 to begin by getting himself crucified and to rise again 

 on the third day ? As a new cult founded upon 

 reason alone, or as a natural religion alone, Chris- 

 tianity could not have coped with the supernatural 

 religions that then possessed the world. Men's 

 minds were not prepared for it, and it is probably 

 equally true that the mass of mankind are not yet 

 prepared for a religion based upon natural knowledge 

 alone. But the time is surely coming, and natural 

 science is to be the chief instrument in bringing it 

 about. The religious sense of man is less and less 

 dependent upon thaumaturgical aids. It is begin- 

 ning to hear God in the still small voice ; not in 

 the tempest, or in the earthquake, or in the fire ; 

 not in the marvelous, the extraordinary, the irra- 

 tional, but in the quiet and familiar facts of nature 

 and of life. The vulgar mind asks for a sign, a won- 

 der ; but science has no sign, no wonder to show. 

 It points to the simplest fact. Its relation toward 

 the old theology is like that of Elisha toward Naa- 

 man. When Naaman came to the prophet to be 

 cured of his leprosy, he expected Elisha to do some 

 wonderful thing, some miracle. " Behold, I thought, 

 He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call 

 on the name of the Lord his God, and strike his 

 hand over the place, and recover the leper." Instead 

 of which the prophet simply told him to go and wash 

 seven times in the Jordan and be clean. "My 

 father," said his .servant to the indignant Naaman, 



