finite lines_, so analogously
colloidal matter has _its definite lines and directions_ of development. It
is not collected in haphazard, accidental aggregations, but evolves
according to its proper laws and special properties.

The perfect orthodoxy of these views is unquestionable. Nothing is plainer
from the venerable writers quoted, as well as from a mass of other {267}
authorities, than that "the supernatural" is not to be looked for or
expected in the sphere of mere nature. For this statement there is a
general _consensus_ of theological authority.

The teaching which the Author has received is, that God is indeed
inscrutable and incomprehensible to us from the infinity of His attributes,
so that our minds can, as it were, only take in, in a most fragmentary and
indistinct manner (as through a glass darkly), dim conceptions of
infinitesimal portions of His inconceivable perfection. In this way the
partial glimpses obtained by us in different modes differ from each other;
not that God is anything but the most perfect unity, but that apparently
conflicting views arise from our inability to apprehend Him, except in this
imperfect manner, _i.e._ by successive slight approximations along
different lines of approach. Sir William Hamilton has said,[280] "Nature
conceals God, and man reveals Him." It is not, according to the teaching
spoken of, exactly thus; but rather that physical nature reveals to us one
side, one aspect of the Deity, while the moral and religious worlds bring
us in contact with another, and at first, to our apprehension, a very
different one. The difference and discrepancy, however, which is at first
felt, is soon seen to proceed not from the reason but from a want of
flexibility in the imagination. This want is far from surprising. Not only
may a man naturally be expected to be an adept in his own art, but at the
same time to show an incapacity for a very different mode of activity.[281]
We rarely find an artist who takes much interest in jurisprudence, or {268}
a prizefighter who is an acute metaphysician. Nay, more than this, a
positive distaste may grow up, which, in the intellectual order, may amount
to a spontaneous and unreasoning disbelief in that which appears to be in
opposition to the more familiar concept, and this at all times. It is often
and truly said, "that past ages were pre-eminently credulous as compared
with our own, yet the difference is not so much in the amount of the
creduli