that are unfavourable. Some of the life is a poor life, and there seems but a hair's breadth between it and no life at all. All this is natural. If we take a flock of pigeons of all the sorts in form, of every shade in colour, of every variety as to marking, to an uninhabited island, and let them fly wild in the woods: after many years, all the distinctiveness of separating shapes, colours, and variety of marking, will have disappeared. A dark slaty blue, and two black bands on each wing, take the place of all the former beautiful variety. A garden, filled with the finest varieties of roses and strawberries, left uncultivated during many years, degenerates into the dog-rose of the hedges, and the wild strawberry of the wood. A man, or nation, not cared for, not endeavouring to attain better habits, higher life, good thoughts, would, if allowed due time, so deteriorate as not only to become a worse, a lower man; but sink and sink into the wild and bestial savage state. This is natural; and, as to man, it seems to indicate that the capability of knowing God and righteousness is piecemeal destroyed. The beauty of a transfiguration came over all things. The change was great as that of the old chaotic world into the present symmetrical harmonious universe. The process, all along, was by operations, quite natural; the originating Cause was not the chaos, but something that came into it, an energy from the Supernatural. The natural is thus revealed as the shadow of the Supernatural; the visible emblem the temporal; the husk of the eternal thrown off, so to speak, in the production of something more permanent. The natural nowhere enters the supernatural, except in effects; but the supernatural everywhere, as revealed in nature, falls within the domain of science. It is not only the basis, but the illumination of the constitution and course of nature. It is the meaning and power of the natural parable. It is that great precipitate, or concrete, by which, as with an alphabet of physical laws, of things and persons, mind and spirit are able to rise higher in the scale of creation. The supreme principle of continuity, which becomes more splendid as it is understood, shows that the characteristic differences of parts and tendencies of thought, not less form the harmony than the complexity of the universe, and are radii uniting in a common central principle; whose basis is law, truth, goodness. The whole is Supernatural, with great naturalness in the use of means as to every part. Once there was no life in our earth, and we do not accurately know in what manner it began. We believe that it came from some pre-existent life; but, as there was no life in the earth, and science asserts that it could not be borne hither in a natural way from any other physical world, it seems to have been originated by an influence of the Supernatural exerted on the natural. Since then it has been maintained, and handed on from generation to generation, by natural parentage. The earthly world is filled with living things, whose origin was as by a flower from the Supernatural making itself natural in very wonderful fruit. There is no guessing here. The supernatural is a universal and welding principle. Things did not grow up of themselves out of little or nothing. Life was not born of the rocks and stones, nor by any marriage of the Sun and the Earth; it was a new thing that came from above. We turn aside from hypotheses which are not logical; we base all our reasoning on real knowledge. By the coming down of some living form and power into this dead world, were inorganic atoms made organic; and out of this potentiality did the waters, the earth, and the air, bring forth and multiply. Even the minerals were born from above, and the ground was made fruitful by a celestial greeting. The passage from one kingdom to another, the inorganic to the organic, the organic to the mental, the mental to the spiritual, is all by a power from above. The plant pierces down to the dead world beneath, brings up materials to be transformed and ennobled in the living sphere; and these materials, by the Breath of God, are quickened to life divine in men. Then the souls of men, with their own high faculties, see the Kingdom of God. The bridgeless abyss is bridged. The one incommunicable gulf, the gulf of all gulfs, is passed; and the naturally impossible becomes an actual natural reality. By a link formed from above, which united the above and the below, was the natural, endued with supernatural energy. Men talk of evolutions in astronomy, in geology, in botany, in physiology; as if one star was made out of another star; as if the strata rolled themselves out of one another; as if the first moss had in it our beautiful flowers and noble trees; as if the first clot of jelly, that had a bit of animal in it, was the great forefather of Shakespeare. Better men are learning of a nobler architecture, that brings all things into precise relation to a power of Will, which includes all times in one eternity, and all worlds within one rule. Think of the earth, the crystal, the plant, the mammal, the man : the differences are made by a something added; and the same rule holds with those, regarded as distinctly supernatural endowments, which belong to our life in Christ. There is no limit to the penetration of this supernatural, it is everywhere; and it explains all mystery, except itself the only mystery. The Divine veracity of this argument; gives great power to men of genius, high truth to science, deep meaning to art, and inspiration to the poet "Thou fair-haired Angel of the Evening, Now, whilst the sun rests on the mountains, light In timely sleep. Let thy west wind sleep on William Blake, To the Evening Star. The spiritual life, the regenerate state, is distinct ; and is added to the natural life by a not less real process, or birth, than that which separates the plant from a stone, and natural men from beasts. On this account natural men, compared with spiritual men, are accounted dead. The parting, regenerative influence, is not what is called "vitality," or "morality,” or “morality touched with emotion," but something beyond the coming of Christ into man—for the man to be one with Christ;1 the spiritual life is a real force, and the process working it is an actual process. Whatever difficulties are found by an unbeliever are simply the difficulties of nature. 1 1 John xiv. 10, 21-23; xv. 4; 1 Cor. vi. 15; 2 Cor. xii. 5 ; Gal. ii. 20. "We are led to believe a lie When we see with not through the eye." William Blake, Auguries of Innocence. Does spiritual birth, or life, come suddenly-as in a moment? The answer is to be sought in natural life. Birth is more or less protracted; and, before any outward manifestation, is an operation by inward principle. The real moment, and the conscious moment, are two very distinct things; for both there is, we may be sure, due preparation. The passing from death to life may be in the beginning, even as at the resurrection, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye; but the wonderful preparation, for each and both, is world-wide; and, as to time, immeasurable. It is a feeble comparison to liken the grand act, which makes us divine and infinite, to "the sudden snapping of a chain, the waking from a. dream." The naturalness of the supernatural may be further seen. The two are subject to the same laws. If a man neglects himself, he becomes a worse man, a lower man. There are states in which a man degenerates, into imbecility and madness, not less quickly than solitary confinement unmakes men, and renders them idiots. Some circumstances, acting on certain natures, produce a demon-form of man: there is intellectual fire, a devilishness surprising; a lawlessness running into vice, and only restrained by selfish considerations. These men are the example and shadow of the very opposite to heavenly things. They are utterly ignorant that their soul is as a chamber with elastic walls which, when God is therein, expands infinitely; but, without God, the space shrinks and shrivels. The soul loses its |