But all that was so re-created has, for its preliminary ground, the original constitution of man's sinless nature; and, in all our treatment of redemption, we must begin by recalling what it was which Christ entered to restore. That original condition was the pledge of the recovery which God would bring to pass; and, throughout the interval between fall and rescue, it could anticipate the coming Christ by the faith which rejoiced to see His Day, and saw His Glory, and spake of Him. Therefore the faith which Christ raises to its new and higher power by concentrating it upon His own Personality, is still, at core, the old faith which was the prophetic witness given, under the conditions of the earlier covenant, by that great army of the Faithful which is marshalled before us by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, who most certainly considers it possible and justifiable to emphasise the continuity that holds between the faith of Abraham and the faith of the redeemed. [53] Cf. on all this, an excellent statement in Mark Pattison's _Sermons_, Serm. 7. [54] It is not intended to deny that the mind can ever know itself, but only that such knowledge can ever be won by methods of empirical observation. [55] The word 'super-natural' is obviously misleading, since it seems to imply that the higher spiritual levels of life are _not_ 'natural.' Of course, the higher the life, the more intensely 'natural' it is; and the nature of God must be the supreme expression of the natural. But the word 'super-natural' is, in reality, only concerned with the partial and conventional use of 'nature,' as a term under which we sum up all that constitutes this present and visible system of things. [56] It is this point of arrest which is reached and revealed by the process of Evolution, under the pressure of Natural Selection. [57] Faith is spoken of, here and elsewhere, in its perfect and true form, as if unthwarted by the misdirection, and hurt of sin. [58] Cf. pp. 105-107. II. _THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF GOD._ AUBREY MOORE.