who made it, every step in advance has been a step towards both the natural and the supernatural. The better interpretation of each phenomena has been, on the one hand, the rejection of a cause that was relatively conceivable in its nature, but unknown in the order of its actions, and, on the other hand, the adoption of a cause that was known in the order of its action, but relatively inconceivable in its nature. The first advance out of universal fetichism, manifestly involved the conception of agencies less assimilable to the familiar agencies of men and animals, and therefore less understood; while at the same time, such newly conceived agencies, in so far as they were distinguished by their uniform effects, were better understood than those they replaced. All subsequent advances display the same double result. Every deeper and more general power arrived at as a cause of phenomena, has been at once less comprehensible than the special ones it superseded, in the sense being less definitely representable in thought; while it has been more comprehensible in the sense that its actions have been more completely predicable. The progress has thus been as much towards the establishment of a positively unknown as towards the establishment of a positive known. Though as knowledge approaches its culmination, every unaccountable and seemingly supernatural fact is brought into the category of facts that are accountable and natural; yet, at the same time, all accountable or natural facts are proved to be, in their ultimate genesis, unaccountable and supernatural." Whether this directly results from creation, evolu Supernatural Nature. 17 tion or emanation, nature is not supernature, the fact is not the Factor, the subject is not the Object, evolution is not the evolver. The Supernatural Factor, is that incomprehensible Power in every fact which the fact itself is not, and by which the fact is a fact. We are told that nature includes all things; but if "all things are manifestations of a Power that transcends our knowledge; then Power was before that manifestation of Power we call nature; and what the power is, the manifestation is not; yet if the Power is Supernatural, the manifestation must be Supernatural. Power did or did not exhaust itself in nature. If Power did exhaust itself in nature, then nature as a whole, includes all Power; but how can Power manifest anything further when it is itself included in all things? The effect cannot manifest its own cause. Can the circumference manifest itself as the centre and cease to be the circumference? What becomes of the centre when the circumference is gone, and what becomes of the circumference when the centre is gone? If Supernature could have form, it would be as unlike nature as the form of the concave mould is from its reversed form in the convex bullet, and the form of the die in the form of the coin; and in the unity of both one is the complement of the other. There can be no concavity without a convexity, nor any convexity without a concavity. Even so does God the infinite Spirit, " without body, parts, or passion, reverse Himself in the form of finite matter, in the visible part of the invisible whole, and in animal passions. As it is a contradiction to say that anything is, and at the same time is not, so the impersonal forms which we do know, cannot be the personal Power which we do not know but which can be proved. The infinite may create the finite, but the infinite cannot be the finite. These skeptics tell us that the Power that produces all things is unknowable; and yet they claim to know it so far as to say, that it is not our God. If it is unknowable to them, how can they say what it is-whether it is or is not our God. Look through your window in the Spring time, and see nature develop a plan of Power. Each leaf, and bud seems to know when to come, what form to take, and when its form and function are complete does not fail or forget to repeat itself. What does all this? All admit Power. Who can doubt this superhuman intelligence when it sublimely surpasses all that human intelligence has ever done? It works to a plan incomprehensible to highest created thought. Evolution proper, like the Kaleidoscope, progressively changes but never repeats. If heredity in organic nature is a fact in evolution, it is a repeating fact, unlike all other evolution. In materialism, or the Matter-System, eternal matter is all; in idealism, or the Mind-System, eternal mind is all; in evolution, or the Power-System, eternal power is all. In evolution so-called, there is both a Power, a Process and a Method. Supernature is this Power and Nature is the Method. The Supernatural Power, both abstract as Power and concrete as a Factor, is that by which everything is anything, and Nature the method, called Evolution, is the way of this Supernatural Power, by which everything is anything. For the present, we do not characterize this Power as Power in Creation. 19 Power as either personal or impersonal. All of Evolution that is not correlation, if such there can be, is simply a natural process or method of Supernatural Power. If nature is a manifestation of supernatural power, how far is nature supernatural? From a supernatural fountain must flow a supernatural stream. As water will rise to the level of its fountain, it would seem that all manifestations called nature would be as supernatural as the manifesting Power. 5. Supernatural Power is a manifesting Power. Mr. Spencer says, "all things are manifestations of a Power that transcends our knowledge." Manifestations prove manifesting Power. These manifestations are either creations, causations, or derivations. Creative manifestations are manifestations of new things. by Power as Power; causative manifestations are different uses by Power as Force, of things already created; derivative manifestations are hereditary manifestations by Power as genetic Function. In inorganic manifestations, or of things without life, Power manifests each individual as an individual, but not one from another; in organic manifestations, or of things with life, Power manifests one thing from another, in hereditary succession. In causative manifestations, unlike is from unlike; in derivative manifestations like is from like; in both, the less is from the greater, not the greater from the less-that is, the Power is greater than its manifestation-the effect is less than the cause, the derived is less than the underived. What does causative manifestations in nature prove as to the manifesting Power above nature? They prove that all phenomena without life, are caused by extrinsic, not derived by intrinsic power; and that all phenomena with life are derived by inintrinsic, not caused by extrinsic power. Any way, the Power is greater than its manifestation; or, which is the same thing, the manifestation is less than its manifesting Power. (a) In causative manifestations, the manifested atoms are unlike the manifesting Power; the effect is unlike the cause-the thunder is unlike the lightning -the bugle is unlike the blast-the oxygen that consumes the carbon is unlike fire. What is cause? Cause is Power at work. That is the true cause or Power of the universe, which most intelligently accounts for the universe: a conscious cause, or Power, most intelligently accounts for the universe: therefore, a conscious cause, or Power, is the true cause, or Power, of the universe. Some agnostics prefer the terms power and manifestation, to the old terms. of cause and effect; but the meaning of both pairs of correlatives is the same. The bridge between unlimited consciousness of the Power, or cause, and the manifestation of the limited consciousness of persons and the absence of consciousness in limited things, is in the unity of all things. Somehow, all is one and one is all. The logic of personal pantheism is the logic of St. Paul's argument. An omnipresent God is an omnipresent life, mind, will, consciousness, power, and person. Like knots in a skein of thread, or ganglions in a system of nerves, there is a uniting movement in the several constituents of cause, when they come to us as one cause. This is so |