m the problem; but if the conditions
of the problem truly represent the acts of certain forces and their
compensations, can we possibly deny that there is an intellect
infinitely above ours who calculated beforehand their compensations and
adjustments. All the laws of the universe must be assumed to be, even if
they are not believed to be, the work of a personal intellect absolutely
infinite, whose operations cannot be confined to this world, for it
gives laws to all bodies, no matter how distant. The same reasoning,
then, which shows that there is an intelligent will, because it can
solve a problem, necessitates an infinitely higher Intelligence which
can order the motions of distant worlds by laws of which our highest
calculative processes are perhaps very clumsy representations.

Those who, like the author of "Supernatural Religion," are good enough
to admit (with limitations) the existence of a Supreme Being, and yet
deny the existence of a spiritual world above ours, seem to me to act
still more absurdly. For the whole analogy of the world of nature would
lead as to infer that, as there is a descending scale of animated beings
below man reaching down to the lowest forms of life, so there is an
ascending scale above him, between him and God. The deniers of the
existence of such beings as angels undertake to assert that there are no
beings between ourselves and the Supreme Being, because nature (meaning
by nature certain lower brute forces, such as gravitation and
electricity), "knows nothing" of them.

The Scriptures, on the contrary, would lead us to believe that just as
in the natural world there are gradations of beings between ourselves
and the lowest forms of life, so in the spiritual world (and we belong
to both worlds) there are gradations of beings between ourselves and God
Who created all things.

The Scriptures would lead us to believe that these beings are
intelligent free agents, and, as such, have had their time of
probation--that some fell under their trial, and are now the enemies of
God as wicked men are, and that others stood in the time of trial and
continue the willing servants of God.

The Scriptures reveal that good angels act as good men do; they
endeavour, as far as lies in their power, to confirm others in goodness
and in the service of God; and that evil angels act as evil men act,
they endeavour to seduce others and to involve them in their own
condemnation.

The Scriptures say nothin