he unhappy reputation of its class, the thoughtful mind
will perceive that the fact of its subject-matter being Law--a property
peculiar neither to Science nor to Religion--at once places it on a
somewhat different footing.

The real problem I have set myself may be stated in a sentence. Is there
not reason to believe that many of the Laws of the Spiritual World,
hitherto regarded as occupying an entirely separate province, are simply
the Laws of the Natural World? Can we identify the Natural Laws, or any
one of them, in the Spiritual sphere? That vague lines everywhere run
through the Spiritual World is already beginning to be recognized. Is it
possible to link them with those great lines running through the visible
universe which we call the Natural Laws, or are they fundamentally
distinct? In a word, Is the Supernatural natural or unnatural?

I may, perhaps, be allowed to answer these questions in the form in
which they have answered themselves to myself. And I must apologize at
the outset for personal references which, but for the clearness they may
lend to the statement, I would surely avoid.

It has been my privilege for some years to address regularly two very
different audiences on two very different themes. On week days I have
lectured to a class of students on the Natural Sciences, and on Sundays
to an audience consisting for the most part of working men on subjects
of a moral and religious character. I cannot say that this collocation
ever appeared as a difficulty to myself, but to certain of my friends it
was more than a problem. It was solved to me, however, at first, by what
then seemed the necessities of the case--I must keep the two departments
entirely by themselves. They lay at opposite poles of thought; and for a
time I succeeded in keeping the Science and the Religion shut off from
one another in two separate compartments of my mind. But gradually the
wall of partition showed symptoms of giving way. The two fountains of
knowledge also slowly began to overflow, and finally their waters met
and mingled. The great change was in the compartment which held the
Religion. It was not that the well there was dried; still less that the
fermenting waters were washed away by the flood of Science. The actual
contents remained the same. But the crystals of former doctrine were
dissolved; and as they precipitated themselves once more in definite
forms, I observed that the Crystalline System was changed. New channe