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An objection is raised-"A miracle is beyond usual law, and science declines to admit such weakness in Omnipotence." We reply-Law is administered and explained by such infinite variety of operation, that no man is able to limit the power of usual operation when an unusual element is introduced. It is gross presumption to imagine that we know all the operation of law, and are so acquainted with the whole course of things that we can say—“It would be a weakness in Omnipotence to act outside the course that we know of, in another course which we do not know."

This statement does not express the whole argument: demonstration may be given.

The highest act of creation is to produce free, responsible beings. We may be sure that a perfect God will perform perfect work and create these free beings. They must be finite beings: for everything created is so of necessity. These finite free beings, in the roll of infinite duration and varying cycles of experience, are liable to misuse their freedom: otherwise, they are not free. This freedom of action inevitably brings in new elements modifying law, requiring new procedure, necessitating special operations of wisdom and power. These special operations, not being in accord with the law hitherto prevailing, but manifesting new powers so as to co-ordinate novel relations, are miracles, actualities to meet necessities; yet not out of, but within the Divine plan; not marks of weakness, nor of short-sightedness, but proofs that omnipotence and omniscience control all existence.

The Studies-"Creative Words," "Days of Creation," "The Two Divine Accounts," "Pre-Adamite Earth" could not explain the two great mysteries, which must ever be buried in the depths of Divine existence, why God is, and how creation was possible: but they show that God was neither indifferent nor powerless as to the image of the universe eternally imprinted on His Intelligence: He realised it as a manifestation of Himself. The might of God was the worker ; the love of God was the inspiring motive; the wisdom of God was the guide. Divine Intelligence is not circumscribed as is our intelligence, and certainly it is better to speak

of God's attributes as those of mind rather than those of

matter.

If so, a

Did God create the world from without Himself? being acting from without himself is not infinite, but as a sculptor who fashions from marble.

Did God act upon chaos, as Anaxagoras said-Mind moving inert matter? or, as the Demiurgos of Plato-impress luminous ideas of the good and beautiful? or did the world, being eternal, in virtue of God's secret aspiration, as Aristotle would say, move towards Him who attracteth all things; yet in His Solitude and Bliss, regardeth them not?

Put it otherwise :-Did God create the world from within Himself? then the world is Himself, His substance, His life: this is Pantheism. Did He create the world from without Himself? then He is not infinite.

How are these difficulties, as to a personal God and as to Pantheism, to be overcome?

A personal God is an Individual, not an absolutely abstract notion which we form concerning infinitude and universality, but the I Am, the self-existent, all-perfect Being. Do we, by this Personality, represent to ourselves a superb idol who truly may dwell in heaven-that is, a limited space; yet, though we load him with brilliant gifts and magnificent attributes, is but a dwarf in comparison with the Infinite whose abode is immensity, whose duration is eternity? Certainly not for the more we meditate upon personality and creation, the surer becomes our conviction that all difficulties arise only from our ignorance; whereas Pantheism contains fatal contradictions.

Pantheism reproaches Scripture for making God like man, yet falls itself into something lower than anthropomorphism— grossest materialism; by attributing the properties of matter and the imperfections of creatures to the Creator. There is nothing more contrary to the idea of perfection than that it should develop; yet this is the Pantheistic illusion. Pantheists liken God to the activities of the universe; make Him a being who changes, who develops; and, consequently, is infinitely short of perfection. Nor is that all: their God, without the world, is incomplete; a God-wanting essence, a power

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without effect, a cause-without activity, wisdom-without purpose, love without object; such a God, without the world, is no God; and His extinction takes place with the extinction of Nature.

Our God, the Personal God, is the Principle, the Spirit, the Universal, who inhabits heaven, earth, infinity, eternity. He is not, in creating, as a Michael Angelo, who draws forth Moses from a block of marble. He is not, in His own life, as a grain of wheat germinating; not as an oak extending its branches; with profounder energy and more sublime activity than matter can exhibit, or we conceive, He exists and creates. He is not to be conceived of as under the necessity of acting from within or without Himself; such conceptions are human and finite, have their limits in space, in time; God is Infinite, Eternal, Perfect, Self-sufficient, but the world is in course of development. God is in eternity-the Eternal; the world is in time-the temporal. The moments of time do not compose eternity; time is neither within nor without it; yet, eternity is the reason of its being. In like manner, the world. which is incomplete-but becomes complete, is not strictly either within or without Him-the Eternally Complete; yet He is the reason, cause, founder of it. The relation is unique, incomparable, mysterious, but a relation certain and demonstrated. Whatsoever is gross in words must be laid aside and the inner spirit regarded: God, in eternity, eternally sees time, space, the world. In time, He sees the expression of His Eternity; in space, the expression of His Infinity; in the world, the expression of the communicable powers of His Infinite Being. Our happiness consists not, nor will it ever, of full possession-nothing further to know, no more to desire: continual progress will find new pleasures, ever discover new perfections in the Infinite and Eternal.

The Studies of Divine Operation in the various creative Works of the Days, evidenced the reality, definiteness, comprehensiveness, simplicity, complexity, of the Scripture narrative. The Study, "Variety in Nature," was of the endless versatility in Nature: Law is not bound with links of Fate. but beautiful in capacity of adaptation, and a means of

trial and discipline for improvable and responsible creatures. The Study of "The Invisible Universe" regarded worlds as a vast procession from the unseen to the seen; to return in due order from the House of Time to the Eternal Dominion. By "Follies of the Wise," we learn that there is a wisdom of the world which is proved to be folly.

The argument, in all the Studies, has been variably and variously conducted. The inquiry progressed unrestrainedly along many lines of thought, that through intelligent intercourse with ourselves and Nature we might see by reason, by conscience, by science, that the Bible is the Book of God: not an evolution or a product of unaided human intellect, but a Divine Revelation of things wholly unknown, that our disciplined freedom may partake of more glorious Freedom, of some greater Reality.

"The Kingdom of God," our present Study, has several times and meanings allotted to it: 1. The Gospel period; 2. The kingdom for which we pray-"Thy Kingdom Come;" 3. The kingdom of Glory. Not in any of these senses, but in the large meaning of God's Providence and Spiritual Rule amongst men, is it now to be considered. Our investigation therefore, is as to Religion in the world generally, and will aim at the establishment of sound knowledge concerning our Christian Faith: according to which Faith we believe that God is distinct from the world-is a living God, possessing His Own life, a God to be worshipped-the Creator.

Religion and History possess a kind of organic existence, which enables us to explain, by general laws, many past and present phenomena of human life. We calculate and enumerate special faults, habits, and vices of mixed communities; and see the agreement of immense multitudes as to traditions and beliefs, "quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est," extending from remotest periods to present time; from primitive culture until the high Faith of Christianity stands complete in doctrines, in rites, in ceremonies. It is thought that we can trace the growth of Faith in the world, as were it of human origination-a product of human culture. It is asserted that evidence as to the ancient phases of religious

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consciousness; evidence concerning the nature, meaning, practice, of rites and ceremonies; evidence of their transmission, expansion, restriction, modification; gives a natural explanation of the most sacred and high powers of religion.

The fault, or weak part, in the assumed Natural Philosophy of Religion is, that as the culture of science and art, of history and philosophy, displays a world-long evolution of civilisations wrought out wholly by men in their ascent toward highest development; the same process is assumed as to religion, but the great fact of the Supernatural, on which all religion rests, and without which all religion is vain, is either denied or persistently ignored. Ignored-despite the truth that, from earliest days till now, the universal consciousness, conscience, intelligence of mankind, accepted and accept the Supernatural. Denied despite the fact that Christianity, Mohammedanism, Brahminism, Buddhism, Zoroastrism, and all other Faiths down to lowest brutal Fetishism, claim Divinity in their origin and continuance.

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The folly of ignoring the miraculous becomes more evident when we learn-"the relation of savagery to barbarism and semi-civilisation lies almost wholly in pre-historic or extrahistoric regions. . . . Direct history hardly tells anything of the changes of savage culture. . . . Perhaps no account of the course of culture in its lower stages can satisfy stringent criticism." The philosophy of religion, which professes to account for the origin, nature, development of religion, is confessedly ignorant of that origin, and can trace only a few steps of its backward course. Moreover, Mr. Tylor says"Separation of intelligence from virtue which accounts for so much of the wrong-doing of mankind, is continually seen to happen in the great movements of civilisation." He adds -"ethnographers consider the rude life of primeval man under favourable conditions to have been, in its measure, a good and happy life." Knowing, further, the fact thus expressed by Bishop Butler-" Mankind are for placing the stress of their religion anywhere rather than in virtue;" it seems, if the doctrine or philosophy of a natural evolution of religion "Primitive Culture," vol. i. p. 35: Edward B. Tylor. 2 Ibid. vol. i. p. 25. 3 Ibid. p. 27.

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