carcely necessary to emphasize under a second head the gain in
clearness. The Spiritual World as it stands is full of perplexity. One
can escape doubt only by escaping thought. With regard to many important
articles of religion perhaps the best and the worst course at present
open to a doubter is simple credulity. Who is to answer for this state
of things? It comes as a necessary tax for improvement on the age in
which we live. The old ground of faith, Authority, is given up; the new,
Science, has not yet taken its place. Men did not require to _see_ truth
before; they only needed to believe it. Truth, therefore, had not been
put by Theology in a seeing form--which, however, was its original form.
But now they ask to see it. And when it is shown them they start back in
despair. We shall not say what they see. But we shall say what they
might see. If the Natural Laws were run through the Spiritual World,
they might see the great lines of religious truth as clearly and simply
as the broad lines of science. As they gazed into that Natural-Spiritual
World they would say to themselves, "We have seen something like this
before. This order is known to us. It is not arbitrary. This Law here is
that old Law there, and this Phenomenon here, what can it be but that
which stood in precisely the same relation to that Law yonder?" And so
gradually from the new form everything assumes new meaning. So the
Spiritual World becomes slowly Natural; and, what is of all but equal
moment, the Natural World becomes slowly Spiritual. Nature is not a mere
image or emblem of the Spiritual. It is a working model of the
Spiritual. In the Spiritual World the same wheels revolve--but without
the iron. The same figures flit across the stage, the same processes of
growth go on, the same functions are discharged, the same biological
laws prevail--only with a different quality of {bios}. Plato's prisoner,
if not out of the Cave, has at least his face to the light.

"The earth is cram'd with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God."

How much of the Spiritual World is covered by Natural law we do not
propose at present to inquire. It is certain, at least, that the whole
is not covered. And nothing more lends confidence to the method than
this. For one thing, room is still left for mystery. Had no place
remained for mystery it had proved itself both unscientific and
irreligious. A Science without mystery is unknown; a Religion without
mystery