In this sense, all but atheists must admit the supernatural. If, for example, you admit the _creation of the world_ by God, that was a supernatural act; _that_ did not come from the existing laws of the world, because it created those laws. All the order and beauty of the world, its variety and harmony, its infinite adaptation of part to part, and each to all,—these existed in God’s mind before they existed in nature. They were supernatural, as ideas, before they appeared in nature as facts. And if, as most geologists suppose, the crust of the earth denotes a long series of creations, successive epochs, at the close of each of which new forms of vegetable and animal life appeared, then each of these was a new creation; that is, a new supernatural act of the Almighty. The physical world, therefore, shows a power above itself. The natural testifies to the supernatural, the all to the over-all. The existing web of laws gives evidence of MIND, outside of itself, above itself, arranging and governing it. § 3. The Question stated. This being granted, the question between naturalism and supernaturalism is, whether this superintending mind, which came from above the world into it by acts of creation, when the world was made, has or has not come into it subsequently. We have a series of creations down to the time that man arrived on the earth. When _he_ came, he was a supernatural being, and his coming a supernatural event. Unless we assume that he was developed, by existing laws, out of some ape, gorilla, or chimpanzee, his coming was supernatural. Now, did supernatural events cease then, and since that time has the world gone on of itself? or have there been subsequent incursions from a higher sphere—a new influx from above, from time to time, adding something new to nature? Naturalism says no; supernaturalism says yes. § 4. Argument of the Supernaturalist from successive Geologic Creations. The supernaturalist says, God comes to us in both ways—through nature; that is, through the order of things already established; and also by new creative impulses, coming in, from time to time, from above. He contends that such a new creative impulse came into the world through Jesus Christ, adding a new substance and new forms to those already existing—a new life not before in the world, proceeding according to new laws. This new creation, as the Scriptures themselves term it, is Christianity. This is also said to be in analogy with the course of events. For, if there has been a series of creations before, bringing animals into the world, and higher forms of physical life,—if these have been created by new supernatural impulses coming in at intervals of hundreds of thousands of years,—why deny that another impulse may have come in four thousand years, or forty thousand years, after man was created, to add a new form of spiritual life to society?