finite minds, it is true, in the impenetrable glory of Divinity, but whose laws of wondrous comprehensiveness and perfection we ever perceive in operation around us. We are no longer disturbed by visions of fitful interference with the order of Nature, but we recognize that the Being who regulates the universe is without variableness or shadow of turning. It is singular how little there is in the supposed revelation of alleged information, however incredible, regarding that which is beyond the limits of human thought; but that little is of a character which reason declares to be the ‘wildest delusion.’ Let no man, whose belief in the reality of Divine Revelation may be destroyed by such inquiry, complain that he has lost a precious possession, and that nothing is left but a blank. The revelation not being a reality, that which he has lost was but an illusion, and that which is left is the truth.”
In another volume recently written by Mr. Congreve, the Positivist, the author maintains in the plainest possible language, what is the immediate and practical object of the small sect to which he has allied himself:—“The professed servants of Humanity must lead in the struggle to eliminate God; and that this is the essential element in the whole existing perplexity is forcing itself upon all.” Again, man’s duty is said to be “openly and avowedly to take service in one or the other of the opposing camps; to bring face to face the two beliefs; the belief in the Past, the belief in God, and the belief in the Future, the belief in Humanity; and to choose deliberately between them.” Furthermore, he avers: “We contemplate the Trinity of our religion, Humanity, the World, and Space.” A Christian critic has made the following terse comments on Mr. Congreve’s book:—
“The chief feeling which possesses us in reading these Essays is one of sorrow for the writer. It is really sad that a man of education should lend himself to such a delusion. The ‘Religion’ itself is ridiculous; indeed it has not so much as a theory. Not even on paper can its doctrines be stated, for the simple reason that it has no doctrines whatever. But it is always melancholy to watch a naturally good intellect under the sway of a fantastic idea, or to see an educated gentleman writing 500 pages on the ‘Worship’ of what does not exist. The sensation of the reader, as he turns page after page, is expressed in such an inquiry as this: Since the writer himself believes in nothing whatever, how can he invite my conversion?”
THE MIRACULOUS IN CHURCH HISTORY.
“And He said unto them, Go ye into all the World, and preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.
“And these signs shall follow them that believe: In My Name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover.”—S. Mark xvi. 15–18.
CHAPTER II.
THE MIRACULOUS IN CHURCH HISTORY.
What has been set forth above in opposition to that theory is still more pointedly expressed in the following remarkable passage:
“The natural philosopher when he imagines a physical impossibility which is not an inconceiveability, merely states that his phenomenon is against all that has been hitherto known of the course of Nature. Before he can compass an impossibility, he has a huge postulate to ask of his reader or hearer, a postulate which Nature never taught: it is that the Future is always to agree with the Past. How do you know that this sequence of phenomena always will be? Answer, Because it must be. But how do you know that it must be? Answer, Because it always has been. But then, even granting that it always has been, how do you know that what always has been always will be? Answer, I see my mind compelled to that conclusion. And how do you know that the leanings of your mind are always towards truth? Because I am infallible, the answer ought to be; but this answer is never given.”[13]
Of course no Christian will deny the following elementary propositions here briefly stated, before the general subject is further discussed. First that man consists of body and soul, the nobler and more important part being the soul, which is spiritual, immortal, and eternal. God, the Creator of all things, is a Spirit; and, in this particular, man is made in the image of God. Destined to dwell on the earth for a while, during an appointed period of probation, man passes by death, which is a temporary separation of soul and body, to the life beyond the grave. Man’s duty here, therefore, ought to fit and prepare him for a future state, and teach him better the value of his soul and the reality of the Supernatural.
Now the Almighty, in calling man into being here, and making him “lord of the whole earth,” giving him, in fact, dominion over the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, and the fishes of the sea, has established in connection with him a two-fold order, the natural, which relates to the visible world, and the Supernatural or miraculous, which concerns the spiritual and invisible. The natural order comprises the law of nature, by which the World created by God is governed, and concerns man in his dealings with nature. But the Supernatural concerns him in his relations with God and the world of spirits. Both orders are alike from God, and each has its appointed sphere. The Author of both is the controller of each. And, as if to indicate to man from time to time that God has something to say in His own creation, and will not be totally excluded from it by man’s forgetfulness, the Supernatural is wisely and mercifully interwoven with the natural, to remind man, by the Glimpses occasionally vouchsafed of the former, that, though the World has been made for his use and advantage, many things in it speak eloquently of a continued existence in the future, though now the same World’s fashion most surely passeth away. How prone man becomes, by constantly contemplating the natural, to thrust the Supernatural aside, is the experience of many. And this being so, how merciful is
