THE SUPERNATURAL IN NATURE.

STUDY I.

IS INTELLECT DIVORCED FROM PIETY?

"Christianity did not appear in a barbarous age, nor win acceptance because nations were unintelligent. The Greeks were people of highest natural power in freshest vigour, with radiant intellect pervading the sense of youthful beauty. The Roman is a symbol of the bold and clever leader, with whom to dare is to do. Men of the early Church were of earnest, heavenly-minded character-their saintly aspect was in itself a revelation."

IT has been very confidently asserted that we have not to reckon with religion; its day is gone by, the best minds of our age have forsaken theology, take no account of it, and that this is preparatory to a general abandonment of belief in the Supernatural.

The statement is improbable. All that we know of faith and intelligence assures us that the sum total in the twentieth century will be the offspring of the nineteenth, as the nineteenth is of the eighteenth, and must be-unless special, that is miraculous, illumination be given. It may be taken as certain that whatever change takes place in the symbols by which religious faith is expressed, religion, in all essential respects, will remain unchanged. Summarily to throw away ancient beliefs and institutions, to discard the universal growth and experience of moral discipline, can in no case be the work of an individual intellect, or of one age. No one individual nor age has ever succeeded in remodelling society to a prescribed ideal.

Lord Bacon says,-"Are we disposed to survey the realm of sacred or inspired theology, we must quit this small vessel of human reason, and put ourselves on board the ship of the Church." It were better not to quit "the small vessel of