Although the vastness of the material universe and the energy of its forces can excite the feeling of wonder, yet that of reverence refuses to find in the mere extension of space, or the might of material forces, any object adequate to its demands. The vastness of the material universe may fill the mind with wonder and admiration; but even wonder refuses to rest satisfied with a vastness of which the limits are known. It demands something which is conceivable, which yet runs up into the regions of the inconceivable. But even here the feeling of reverence can find nothing on which to energize. It directly points to a moral being in whom it can find a centre, and it will find its gratification in nothing short of one. To talk, as many Pantheists do, of feeling reverence for an impersonal Universe, is a misuse of language. What! to reverence a Being, if the impersonal Universe can be called a Being, which is everlastingly casting up the bubbles of existence in the form of moral agents, and is everlastingly devouring them, devoid alike of consciousness, volition, and a moral nature! It follows, therefore, if these principles form a constituent portion of our nature, that like all our other faculties, they must admit of a right and a perverted use. It is therefore absurd to lay down as a general principle, because they admit of an illegitimate use, that the whole class of phenomena connected with them are worthy of nothing but summary rejection, without exercising our reason on the evidence on which they stand. All that their existence can prove in reference to this subject is something which is very like a truism; that mankind, being liable to all kinds of mistakes and errors, and having frequently fallen into them, no class of phenomena ought to be accepted as facts, until evidence of their occurrence has been adduced which is capable of satisfying our reason. But this is a very harmless proposition. There can be no doubt that to a perverted use of these faculties is due the belief in a kind of current supernaturalism, which in various forms runs through the entire history of man. This has owed its origin to the efforts of the imagination to supply objects for its gratification when the reason is feeble and the moral faculties have become perverted. Hence the readiness of large masses of mankind to accept narratives of marvels without regard to the evidence on which they rest. They are accepted simply as gratifying the principle of wonder. This is the cause of what I have designated by the term “Current Supernaturalism.”