Supernaturalism

“ But, do you really believe in supernatural manifestations?’
Here the voice of the little Professor, who had quietly entered the room, supplied an answer.
‘Certainly not, sir. The office of solar biology is not to vindicate, but to destroy, supernaturalism. You mean superhuman, which is quite another thing. ”

“ The creature, even the perfect creature, is only Natural—is possessed of only natural laws and ends; God alone is Supernatural. Hence the essence of Christian Supernaturalism consists in the elevation of the creature, above this creature's co-natural limitations, to God's own Supernature'. ”

“ The mode in which its miracles were performed is characterized by the utmost simplicity, destitute alike of anything scenic or fantastic, entirely in harmony with the great character who performed them. The supernaturalism of the ancient world is marked by the opposite characteristics. ”

“ By supernaturalism is meant the theory of a divine person in immediate communication with the human mind, dealing with it out of that order of nature which includes man’s body and his ordinary trains of thought, according to fixed laws, which the theologian sums up in the doctrines of ‘grace’ and ‘sin’. ”

“ Ancient supernaturalism assigned its occurrences to no cause adequate to produce them. Those who asserted its reality, referred it to the action of deities who possessed very limited power, or to occult powers in nature. Such occult powers we now know to have no existence, and the power attributed to the supposed deities was far too limited to be capable of producing the results in question. All reputed events, the alleged cause of which is unable to produce them, we are entitled to reject without further investigation. ”

“ True sages and true civilisations can accordingly flourish under a dispensation nominally supernatural; for that supernaturalism may have become a mere form in which imagination clothes a rational and humane wisdom. ”

“ Now this is naturalism or paganism as we often call it. Naturalism is a perversion of that high instinct in mankind which issues in the old concept of supernaturalism. The supernaturalist, of a former and discredited type, believed that God violates the order of nature for sublime ends ”

“ In the very nature of things, “supernaturalism,” which savors of the unnatural and abnormal, fails to commend itself to the highest reason. In some degree it is repellent. As human ignorance, superstition, and irrational [pg 324] assumption are left behind, the hearts of men go out after an orderly Deity. ”

“ Supernatural Science The application of modern science to supernaturalism, or of the supernatural to modern science, is one of the distinctive features of recent literature. Ghostly fiction took a new and definite turn with the rapid advance in scientific knowledge and investigation in the latter part of the nineteenth century, for the work of Darwin, Spencer, Huxley, and their co-laborers did as much to quicken thought in romance as in other lines. ”

“ I observe that the stories of current supernaturalism are not the only ones which we reject in a summary manner. We treat in the same way a great number of other stories which offend against the principles of common sense. ”

“ 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 [pg 046] 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. ”

“ The first of these causes is obviously the fact that, for some reason or other, multitudes who know nothing of one another are independently coming to the conclusion that supernaturalism, which was once accepted without question as the main content or substratum of human life, rests on postulates which to them are no longer credible. ”

“ He renews his youth every forty years, growing suddenly from a decrepit man to a handsome, gifted youth, which naturally suggests complications of human love-affairs. Other elements of supernaturalism are used, as angels, demons, and so forth while the Æons and the Intermedii (whoever they are!) ”

“ I was a little dazed by this coincidence, but did not become terrified. It is only the inferior thinker who hastens to explain the singular and the complex by the primitive shortcut of supernaturalism. ”

“ And to the affirmation that all the divine creations and phenomena are necessarily supernatural, it may be asked: How can there be a supernatural without a natural to exceed? and if supernatural, how can they be superseded unless by a greater than the supernatural? and would it not be useless to introduce the supernatural unless it could exceed a process of Nature or equal an act of creation? ”

“ But the further question arises, Is it necessary in order to constitute an event a miracle that it should be one which transcends the known or the unknown forces of material nature to have produced? It is clear that to constitute an event a miracle it must involve supernatural or superhuman agency of some kind; that is to say, it must be either supernatural in the mode of its production as an objective fact, or superhuman in its productive elements, by which I mean, that it must be preceded by an announcement that it is going to occur, which must be beyond the sphere of human knowledge. ”

“ History clearly demonstrates that, wherever ignorance and superstition have prevailed, every obscure occurrence has been attributed to supernatural agency, and it is freely acknowledged that, under their influence, inexplicable and miraculous are convertible terms. ”

“ Every part of it has its ground in the workings and powers of nature, and all our redemption is only nature set right, or made to be that which it ought to be. [354] There is nothing that is supernatural but God alone.... Right and wrong, good and evil, true and false, happiness and misery, are as unchangeable in nature as time and space. Nothing, therefore, can be done to any creature supernaturally, or in a way that is without or contrary to the powers of nature ”

“ Attempting to make the supernatural the object of thought, we find that we can only do so by ascribing to it the attributes of Nature. Thus, we form symbolical notions of it which vary with changing conditions of mental development. So arise anthropomorphic conceptions of supernatural beings, ideas of heaven and hell, the assumed connection of supernatural intelligences with natural phenomena, etc. This belief in supernatural interference induces fear, impels worship, and influences conduct. ”

“ How prone man becomes, by constantly contemplating the natural, [Pg 28] to thrust the Supernatural aside, is the experience of many. And this being so, how merciful is God to remind us of the next world, not only by the ordinary modes and channels appointed for so doing, by change, by revelation, by death; but occasionally by suddenly, strangely, and abruptly breaking in upon the usual order of events, and the ordinary course of nature, to let us see with our natural eyes, and hear with our ears, that He is. ”

“ As new scientific knowledge has increased, belief in witchcraft, sorcery, demonology, exorcism, evil influences and omens, unseen spirits, a God of evil, supernatural and occult powers, supernatural sources of strange diseases, evil presages from comets and eclipses, fetishism, worship of images and of the Sun, a belief that the Earth is the chief body in the Universe, that man is the "Lord of Creation," &c, &c. have largely passed away, and beliefs more consistent with facts and with true inferences drawn from them, have taken their place. ”

“ Yet this absurd sense of the term "supernatural" is constantly forced upon us by so-called advanced thinkers, and employed as an argument against theism. The only true sense in which any being or any thing can be said to be supernatural is that in which we use it with reference to the original creation of matter and force and the institution of natural law. The power which can do these things is above nature, but not outside of it; for matter, energy, and law must be included in, and in harmony with, the Creative Will. ”

“ The phenomena which have accounted for the vigour of life and the prostration of disease account for the motion of things in heaven above and the earth beneath, and the barbaric mind thus enlarges its belief in a twofold existence in man to a far-reaching doctrine of spirits everywhere. Step by step, from ghost-soul flitting round the wigwam to the great spirits indwelling in the powers of nature, the belief in supernatural beings with physical [Pg 225] qualities arises, until the moral element comes in, and they appear as good and evil gods contending for the mastery of the universe. ”

“ Now the Almighty, in calling man into being here, and making him “lord of the whole earth,” giving him, in fact, dominion over the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, and the fishes of the sea, has established in connection with him a two-fold order, the natural, which relates to the visible world, and the Supernatural or miraculous, which concerns the spiritual and invisible. The natural order comprises the law of nature, by which the World created by God is governed, and concerns man in his dealings with nature. ”

“ To them one of the best evidences of the spiritual nature of things is the inability of the biologist to tell us under what conditions life could be produced from dead matter. The mysterious nature of nervous action, the influence of the mind upon the body, and, above all, the occurrence of certain strange emotional experiences in us, such as the visions of mystics, these are to them the main proof that the world is divine and is full of spiritual life. We do not sympathize with this method of idealism. ”

“ On the other hand, in proportion as knowledge of natural laws has increased, the theory of supernatural interference with the order of nature has been dispelled, and miracles have ceased. The effect of science, however, is not limited to the present and future, but its action is equally retrospective, and phenomena which were once ignorantly isolated from the sequence of natural cause and effect, are now restored to their place in the unbroken order. Ignorance and superstition created miracles; knowledge has for ever annihilated them. ”

“ There are three theories by which men account for all phenomena—for everything that happens: First, the supernatural. In the olden time, everything that happened some deity produced, some spirit, some devil, some hobgoblin, some dryad, some fairy, some spook, something except nature. First, then, the supernatural; and a barbarian, looking at the wide, mysterious sea, wandering through the depths of the forest, encountering the wild beasts, troubled by strange dreams, accounted for everything by the action of spirits, good and bad. ”

“ What, because in a corner of the world in one day among ages brilliant progress may have been made in natural and historical science—because in the name of the sciences, and in brilliant books, the Supernatural has been combated, they proclaim the Supernatural vanquished, abolished; and we hear the judgment pronounced, not merely in the name of the learned, but of the people! Have you then completely forgotten, or have you never thoroughly comprehended, humanity and the history of humanity? ”

“ I had witnessed many very extraordinary phenomena in various parts of the world—phenomena that would be either totally disbelieved if I stated them, or ascribed to supernatural agencies. Now, my theory is that the Supernatural is the Impossible, and that what is called supernatural is only a something in the laws of nature of which we have been hitherto ignorant. ”

“ Supernatural revelation is as applicable to beasts, birds and fishes, as it is to us; for neither we nor they are capable of being acted upon supernaturally, as all the possible exertions and operations of nature, which respect the natural or moral world, are truly natural. Nor does God deviate from his rectitude of nature in matters of inspiration, revelation or instruction to the moral world, any more than in that of his government of the natural. ”

“ the supernatural is the natural not yet understood. ”

“ As I have observed, the principle is found energizing wherever man exists. Although in one age it may be more active than in another, it is alike the inheritance of the civilized man and the savage. It has displayed itself in the creations of the poet and the writer of fiction; in the various forms of religious thought; in the production of ghost-stories and pictures of the under-world; in the creation of the various forms of demonology, witchcraft and magic; in the milder form of fairy-tales; in charms and incantations, and in efforts to pry into the future. ”

“ I was born and bred and taught in a complete universe. The supernatural was not natural, but it was perfectly reasonable. Nay, the supernatural to me is more reasonable than the natural; for the supernatural is a direct message from God, who is reason. ”

“ Accustomed to attribute almost every phenomenon of nature to the intervention of supernatural powers, to people every rock and tree with its familiar spirit, "to hear the menace of a god in the thunder, and see the beneficence of a deity in the rain," they have had little reason to question the truth of stories in which the occult and supernatural plays little greater part than it daily appears to in the course of their own lives. ”

“ Being supernatural, the real agency is not seen in either case, although the human mind is more satisfied by the presentation of an apparent cause in the one case, which seems to be absent in the other. In preferring the former type, we are not only influenced by a more dramatic narrative, but we select for belief the miracle from which we can unconsciously eliminate more of the miraculous elements, by tracing it to a visible natural cause which cannot be seen in the latter. ”