ls
also for outward expression opened, and some of the old closed up; and I
found the truth running out to my audience on the Sundays by the
week-day outlets. In other words, the subject-matter Religion had taken
on the method of expression of Science, and I discovered myself
enunciating Spiritual Law in the exact terms of Biology and Physics.

Now this was not simply a scientific coloring given to Religion, the
mere freshening of the theological air with natural facts and
illustrations. It was an entire re-casting of truth. And when I came
seriously to consider what it involved, I saw, or seemed to see, that it
meant essentially the introduction of Natural Law into the Spiritual
World. It was not, I repeat, that new and detailed analogies of
_Phenomena_ rose into view--although material for Parable lies unnoticed
and unused on the field of recent Science in inexhaustible profusion.
But Law has a still grander function to discharge toward Religion than
Parable. There is a deeper unity between the two Kingdoms than the
analogy of their Phenomena--a unity which the poet's vision, more quick
than the theologian's, has already dimly seen:--

"And verily many thinkers of this age,
Aye, many Christian teachers, half in heaven,
Are wrong in just my sense, who understood
Our natural world too insularly, as if
No spiritual counterpart completed it,
Consummating its meaning, rounding all
To justice and perfection, _line by line,
Form by form, nothing single nor alone_,
The great below clenched by the great above."[1]

The function of Parable in religion is to exhibit "form by form." Law
undertakes the profounder task of comparing "line by line." Thus Natural
Phenomena serve mainly an illustrative function in Religion. Natural
Law, on the other hand, could it be traced in the Spiritual World, would
have an important scientific value--it would offer Religion a new
credential. The effect of the introduction of Law among the scattered
Phenomena of Nature has simply been to make Science, to transform
knowledge into eternal truth. The same crystallizing touch is needed in
Religion. Can it be said that the Phenomena of the Spiritual World are
other than scattered? Can we shut our eyes to the fact that the
religious opinions of mankind are in a state of flux? And when we regard
the uncertainty of current beliefs, the war of creeds, the havoc of
inevitable as well as of idle doubt, the reluctant ab