Faith, then, is an instinct of relationship based on an inner actual fact. And its entire office and use lies in realising the secret fact. For the bond is spiritual; and it can only realise itself in a spirit that has become aware of its own laws. No blind animal acceptance of the divine assistance can draw out the powers of this sonship. The reception of the assistance must itself be conscious, loving, intelligent, willing. The natural world can receive its full capacities from God without recognition of the source whence they flow in: but this absence of living recognition forbids it ever to surpass those fixed limits of development which we name 'natural.' But a creature of God that could not only receive but recognise that it received, would, by that very recognition, lay itself open to an entirely novel development; it would be susceptible of infinitely higher influences shed down upon it from God; it would admit far finer and richer inpourings of divine succours; it would be fed, not only from underground channels as it were, but by fresh inlets which its consciousness of its adherence in God would uncover and set in motion. The action of God upon His creatures would be raised to a new level of possibility: for a living and intelligent will has capacities of receptivity, which were altogether excluded so long as God merely gave, and the creature blindly and dumbly took. Faith, then, opens an entirely new career for creaturely existence; and the novelty of this career is expressed in the word 'supernatural.' The 'supernatural' world opens upon us as soon as faith is in being[55].