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definition of the words nahtre and supernatural. Perhaps in 
this I am too exacting ; but as my tendency is towards the 
analytical rather than the synthetic view of things, I wish to 
know in the first place what we all mean by the words we 
use. 
Our author says, We do not deal with the controversies 
amongst believers, nor with scepticism in some of its ration- 
alistic doubts, but with those who deny supernaturalism, who 
refuse to believe in a personal God, our Creator, our Preserver, 
our Father (p. 3). 
That nature is the constituted order of things is a definition 
wliich cannot be accepted by these, for it implies the existence 
of a Being that has constituted all things as they are. On the 
other hand, loe cannot accept the definition that nature is the 
order in which things have constituted themselves. 
We start asunder thus at the very opening of the question. 
We look on things, as they exist, with different eyes; and 
the sentence I have quoted shows the belief of the writer that 
there is a fault not in the head, but in the heart, of those who 
do not see as we see. 
They give us ever-increasing evidence of the marvellous 
perfectness of design and adaptation in those things which 
meet our observation ; and even more especially in those parts 
of the universe, whether the infinitely great or the infinitely 
little, which lie outside the ordinary experience of humanity.* 
And, they ask us, Why, if all these things are ^ consti- 
tuted,^ as we say, by an infinitely wise Mind, is there so much 
of evident evil and misery ; especially in man, who must, 
by consent of all, be considered the crowning work of the 
whole ? 
To this the sentence quoted gives an implied answer, that 
these persons are wrong in not accepting the explanation, which 
we believe to have been given by the Creator himself, in 
another revelation, without which the present visible Kosmos 
is but an insoluble enigma. 
In this revelation we are told that The invisible things of 
a line of research from sheer love of the subject, without any notion of 
being able, without co-operation of others, to arrive at any such accuracy as 
I desiderate in definition. 
Perhaps the question may now meet with more successful treatment by 
those who I may hope will follow me in the direction indicated. 
* The Duke of Argyll well says : — “ The new discoveries which science is 
ever making of adjustments and combinations, of which we had no previous 
conception, impress us with an irresistible conviction that the same relations 
to Mind prevail throughout .” — The Beign of Law, p. 36. 
