THE SUPERNATURAL IN NATURE.

STATE OF THE CASE.

"Je voudrais faire quelque progrès nouveau dans la connaissance des choses divines."-EMILE SAISSET.

THE age in which we live reasonably boasts of great growth in knowledge and useful application of that knowledge. This breadth and accuracy, unless we exercise due care, will enrich the race at the expense of the individual. It is no longer possible for a single mind to occupy the whole domain of investigation. The student must limit his labours to one field of science; to one tree, branch, or even leaf of knowledge; if he will add any new thing to the intellectual store of mankind.

That is a noble devotion which abandons vast mines of research, and concentrates every energy to carry one single line of inquiry to the furthest limit. Such devotion, for the sake of accuracy and of discovery, involves great sacrifices: not the least of these, though often overlooked, is a narrowing of the student's own intellectual and emotional nature. The eye, turned continually upon objects near and small, loses the faculty of far-seeking and wide discernment. The mind. wholly given to one study and its special methods loses power and discrimination as to outlying provinces of thought.

Nowhere is the evil effect so plainly seen as in those students of physical science the minuteness and mechanical nature of whose investigations render them like the carpenter who will have everything made of wood, or as the blacksmith

who recommends iron. Their leaders must be pained to find that having scorned the statements of Scripture as too human-rendering the work of creation too man-like-they are reduced to the absurdity of endeavouring to find a mechanical equivalent for the world, in which the ultimate atoms turn the key of every mystery, and possess, in some incomprehensible manner, the promise and potency of all terrestrial life.

Some of our religious teachers err by another kind of onesidedness. Knowing but little of physics, they use exploded arguments, and seek to maintain untenable positions. No wonder that the Sacred Cause, which they endeavour to champion, is imperilled rather than vindicated.

Such an unnatural separation, on the one hand, of Science from Religion and holy sentiment, is a surrender, by the implicated physicists, of an honourable position; and reduces Science to an occupation of sheer curiosity and selfish utilitarianism. A separation, on the other hand, of Religion from Science, gives to our clergy the impossible task of explaining the universe without the aid of positive knowledge; and leads to a hard dogmatism, oppressive to the spirit of a true student in natural science. As a result, even the verities of Divine Revelation, true independently of belief or unbelief, are not handled with sufficient force to obtain the conviction of scientific intellect, nor so pleasingly set forth as to>win the affections of a devout will. Partly owing to this, truths, which the greatest of mankind have thoroughly investigated and undoubtedly accepted, are now refused by the unspiritual; who, not being able to detect the soul by physical analysis, nor to find God by means of microscope and telescope, nor by any unbelieving efforts to obtain a view of the Eternal Spirit, assert "The existence of the Soul, the Being of God, the Divine Revelation, have no other foundation than the devout aspirations of believers."

It is true that there are, specially in the medical profession, men with keen unconquerable love for scientific study; who, not possessing special religious convictions, not having any particular expectation of pecuniary advantage, devote themselves, "heart and soul," with intense unselfish devotion, to