Orthodoxy: Its Truths And ErrorsClarke, James Freeman
Religion
Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors
Clarke, James Freeman
Unitarianism
“Not so, outside, doth the Creator linger,
Nor let the all of things run round his finger,
But moves its centre, not its outer rim;
Comes down to nature, draws it up to him;
Moving within, inspiring from above,
With currents ever new of light and love.”
§ 7. Life and History contain Supernatural Events.
And besides all this, says the supernaturalist, we have continued and
constant evidences, in all history and in all human experience, of the
existence of this supernatural element. Only a small minority of mankind
have ever doubted it; and those are men so immersed in physical science,
or so hampered by some logical manacles, or so steeped in purely worldly
affairs, as to be incapable of seeing the supernatural facts which are
recurrent evermore. Christianity itself has been an uninterrupted series
of supernatural events. The physical miracles of Christ are nothing to the
spiritual miracles which Christianity is always working. Bad men are made
good, weak men strong, cowardly men brave, ignorant and foolish men wise,
by a supernatural influence given in answer to prayer, poured down into
hearts and minds which open themselves to receive it. The conversion of a
bad man by the power of Christianity is a miracle. The power of faith,
hope, love, which every Christian has experienced, coming into him, not
through any operation of his nature, but simply poured into his soul from
some higher sphere,—this makes all argument unnecessary to one who has had
ever so little Christian experience.
This is the substance of Orthodox supernaturalism; and this seems to me to
be its truth, separated from its errors.
The naturalism of the present time we conceive to be partly directed
against a false supernaturalism, and partly to be a mistake arising from a
too exclusive attention to the _order_ of the universe, as expressed in
_law_.
§ 8. The Error of Orthodox Supernaturalism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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