Whether man has been six thousand years, or sixty thousand, in learning the little that he now knows, no one can tell; but during these years of his primary tuition he could not through knowledge have the mastery of Nature, for knowledge was too meager. It was well, therefore, that he should, in the meanwhile, have a partial mastery through faith. Ignorant of natural forces, or without means of avoidance, is it any wonder that he should fly for refuge to the Supernatural? Accordingly, God was his “refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” Believing himself watched and defended by infinite power and love, he could “run through a troop or leap over a wall;” he could fancy himself “immortal till his work was done,” safe on the battle-field as in his chamber; he was not afraid of the “pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor of the destruction that wasteth at noonday;” of earthquake and storm and fire he was not afraid, for these were the ministers of Heaven’s will—if not to be avoided, then to be accepted with submission and trust.
Such faith in the presence and interposition of the Supernatural was instructive to the young world, and as necessary as its mother’s milk is to a babe. It gave comfort and repose and strength, for its subject felt that “underneath and round about him were the everlasting arms.” It made heroes of cowardly men on battle-fields; heroines of weak women in humble homes. It produced the sublimest characters of history; it vanquished death. Sustained by it, it is literally true that men “subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword; out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens.”
The sudden loss of this faith from earth would be a calamity. It would be as though the sun and moon had been darkened, and the stars had gone out in the sky. Till men know more of Nature, they must continue to lean on the Supernatural. They may never do this less than they do it now; but they will do it more intelligently.
As the child, with growing strength, is weaned from the breast, so increasing knowledge tends to the destruction of faith. It may be stated as a law that, other things being equal, faith in the manifestation of the Supernatural—in the miraculous—is most facile to him who knows the least. Accordingly, the men of highest attainments have commonly the least of this kind of faith. They still believe in something back of Nature; some cause of Nature—in the Supernatural—but they expect nothing from it outside the lines of natural law. They know nothing of miracle or special providence. They see everywhere cause and effect; the one not present without the other; the perpetual grinding of machinery and the wretch mangled who is caught between the wheels; the wisest and best of men, pillars of state or prophets of the Lord, crushed as surely as the vilest and the meanest. All the prayers of God’s people will not make rivers flow back to their fountains, nor turn the Sahara into a sea; nor thaw the ice at the poles, nor relieve the famine, nor stop the pestilence, nor level a single mole-hill, nor make one hair white or black. The whole universe is held in the chain of cause and effect, with link joined to link forever and ever. The Supernatural may be the electric energy that thrills along the endless chain, but it never quits the conductor to find out new paths. What it does to-day, it did a thousand years ago, and will do a thousand years hence. So speaks and so believes the student of Nature. We may be extremely reluctant to admit his teaching, and yet the facts seem to be altogether with him. The evidence is overwhelming that men everywhere, good and bad alike, are dealing directly, not with the Supernatural, but, with Nature—with law; nothing but natural law. If any hesitate to accept this saying, we do not press them, for the time has not yet come when they could accept it with safety. The babe will cling to the mother’s breast as long as he needs it, and sometimes longer; but by and by he will abandon it of himself.
A world of iron law is not our ideal world, though the evidence grows that it is the real one. We like law well enough when it defends us; we are not pleased with it when it chastises us. At such a moment we would flee to some friendlier power. We would go to God and tell Him that Nature is not treating us well, and that we desire His interposition. It is because we are afraid of Nature that we take so much interest in the Supernatural. But what reason have we to think that the Supernatural is better than Nature?
The Supernatural has had more prophets than Nature, and will doubtless continue to have them. Far be it from us to forbid them. Let them prophecy in the name of the Lord. Let them “strengthen the weak hands and confirm the feeble knees;” inspire courage in adversity, calmness in the face of death.
But we should like to remind them that if they have done much good, they have also done some evil.
They have greatly obstructed a lesson, the most important for men to know; a lesson which they must learn at last, whether they like to learn it or not; a lesson which they need to learn as soon as they can, because certain knowledge is better to shape the life than is uncertain faith; a lesson that will bring them face to face with the real conditions of their present and eternal well-being,—we mean this lesson, that the Supernatural, the Primal Fountain of Force, goes forth only in streams of natural law. So far as can be shown, it manifests itself in no other way. Contrary to this, the prophets of the Supernatural have often encouraged man to believe that he shall not reap as he has sown; that he may sow to the flesh, and yet reap to the spirit; that outside and alongside the machinery of law is another and more masterful machinery of Providence and Grace; that the latter is ordained a sure corrective and deliverer from the evils of the former; that so almighty is this invisible, ever-active and presiding energy, that it can, by a momentary display, transform the most inveterate sinner into a saint, and crown him with everlasting happiness, although, meanwhile, it supinely leaves the innocent child the victim of Adam’s fall, to sink into the flames of hell. Our sense of justice is shocked, virtue is dismayed, vice is emboldened, and the so-called scheme of grace, less pitiful and just than that of nature, is seen to differ from it chiefly in this, that it offers greater encouragement to sin.
Nature throughout all her regions proclaims the dominion of law. She has incessantly denounced woe to its violator. A million times has she shown us the delinquent writhing under the scourge. Never once has the transgressor escaped. His transgression,
“Like a staunch murderer steady to his purpose,
Follows him through every lane of life,
Nor misses once the track,”