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contradictions of the lessons of experience which emerge from the other
method of thought. It asks us to believe no miracles. It involves no
supernaturalism. Whatever is, is natural, and is at the same time
divine. Stated, indeed, as a bare logical formula, the doctrine seems to
elude our grasp. It is intelligible to say that Christ was divine and
Mahomet human, for the statement implies a comparison between two
different terms; but if you say that Christ and Mahomet are both of the
same class, what does it matter whether you call them both divine or
both human? Every logical statement implies an exclusion as well as
inclusion. To say that A is B is meaningless if you add that every other
conceivable letter is also B. You attempt to make everybody rich by
reckoning their property in pence instead of pounds, and the process,
though at first sight attractive, is unsatisfactory. In fact, this phase
of opinion generally slips back into the preceding. We find that
exceptions are insensibly made, and that after pronouncing nature to be
divine, it is tacitly assumed there is an indefinite region which is
somehow outside nature. Few people have the reasoning tendency
sufficiently developed to follow out this view to its logical result in
Pantheism. Yet short of that, there is no really stable resting-place.

Let us glance, however, for a moment at the ordinary application of the
doctrine. The theologian agrees with the man of science in admitting
that we are governed by unalterable laws, or, as the man of science
prefers to say, that the world shows nothing but a series of invariable
sequences and co-existences. The difference is, in other words, that the
theologian puts a legislator behind the laws, whilst the man of science
sees nothing behind them but impenetrable mystery. The difference, so
far as any practical conclusions are concerned, is obviously nothing.
The laws of Nature, you tell us, are the work of infinite goodness and
wisdom. But we are utterly unable to say what infinite goodness and
wisdom would do, except by showing what it has done. Therefore, the
ultimate appeal of the theologian, is as unequivocally to the laws as
the primary appeal of the man of science. He has made a show of going to
a higher court only to be referred back again to the original tribunal.
History, for example, shows that mankind blunders by degrees into an
improved condition and calls the process progress. Theology can give no
addition