foldings of their still latent powers.

This, however, is just now of subordinate importance. The present
interest of chief moment is a riddance of the hoary fallacy that
vitiates the current idea of a supernatural Revelation by looking for
its specific characteristics to the physical world. By this deplorable
fallacy Christian theology has blinded the minds of many scientific men
to the essential claims of Christianity, with immense damage in the
arrested development of their religious nature through the scepticism
inevitably but needlessly provoked by this great mistake. When Elijah
proclaims to idolaters that their deity is no God, and, as we read,
corroborates his words by calling down fire from heaven to consume his
sacrifice, it is reckoned as supernatural Revelation. But it is not so
reckoned when the sage in the book of Proverbs proclaims to a nation of
religious formalists the moral character of God: "To do righteousness
and justice is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice." This is
accounted as ethical teaching, somewhat in advance of the times. A pagan
rather than a Christian way of thinking is discoverable here. In each of
the cases cited the specific character of supernatural Revelation is
equally evident,--the disclosure of spiritual truth above the natural
thought of the natural men to whom it came. The character of any
revelation is determined by the character of the truth made known, not
by the drapery of circumstances connected with the making known. Clothes
do not make the man, though coarse or careless people may think so. What
belongs to the moral and spiritual order is supernatural to what
belongs to the material and physical order.

This way of thinking will be forced on common minds by thoughtful
observation of common things. Animate nature of the lowest rank, as in
the grass, is of a higher natural order than inanimate nature in the
soil the grass springs from. Sentient nature, as in the ox, is of a
higher order than the non-sentient in the grass. Self-conscious and
reflective nature in the man is of a higher order than the selfless and
non-reflective nature in his beast of burden. In the composite being of
man all these orders of nature coexist, and each higher is supernatural
to the nature below it. Nature, the comprehensive term for _all that
comes into being_, is a hierarchy of natures, rising rank above rank
from the lowest to the highest. The highest nature known to us,
supernatural