Page 128 Note 1 Darwinism, pp. 474--476.
<<Back

Page 128 Note 2 Mr. Gore has said: "The term supernatural is purely relative to what at any particular stage of thought we mean by nature. Nature is a progressive development of life, and each new stage of life appears supernatural from the point of view of what lies below it."--The Incarnation (Bampton Lectures), p. 85. Lange has expanded the same thought. "Each stage of nature," he says, "prepares for a higher; which in turn maybe regarded as above nature, as contrary to nature, and yet as only higher nature, since it introduces a new and higher principle of life into the existent and natural order of things. . . . Thus the chemical principle appeared as a miracle in the elementary world, as introducing a new and higher life; similarly the principle of crystallisation is a miracle with reference to the lower principle of chemical affinity; the plant, a miracle above the crystal; the animal, a miracle in reference to the plant; and man, over all the animal world. Lastly, Christ, as the Second Man, the God-Man, is a miracle above all the world of the first man, who is of the earth earthy."--Com. on Matt. p. 152 (Eng. trans.).
<<Back

Page 129 Note 1 Cf. Professor Flint, in Anti-Theistic Theories, pp. 438, 439. He remarks: "Although Omnipotence cannot express itself fully in the finite world to which we belong, the Divine nature may be in itself an infinite universe, where this and all other attributes can find complete expression. . . . The Divine nature must have in itself a plenitude of power and glory, to which the production of numberless worlds can add nothing."
<<Back

Page 129 Note 2 This objection was early urged against the doctrine of creation. Cf. Origen, De Principiis, Book iii. 5; Augustine, De Civitate Dei, Book xi. 5.
<<Back

Page 130 Note 1 See Note D.--"Eternal Creation."
<<Back

Page 130 Note 2 Spinoza's Ethics, Part II. Prop. 44, Cor. ii.--"It is the nature of reason to perceive things sub quadam aeternitatis specie."
<<Back

Page 130 Note 3 A good illustration is afforded by Mr. Green in a fragment on Immortality. "As a determination of thought," he says, "everything is eternal. What are we to say, then, to the extinct races of animals, the past formations of the earth? How can that which is extinct and past be eternal? . . . The process is eternal, and they as stages in it are so too. That which has passed away is only their false appearance of being independent entities, related only to themselves, as opposed to being stages, essentially related to a before and after. In other words, relatively to our temporal consciousness, which can only present one thing to itself at a time, and therefore supposes that when A follows B, B ceases to exist, they have perished; relatively to the thought which, as eternal, holds past, present, and future together, they are permanent; their very transitoriness is eternal."--Works, iii. p. 159.
<<Back

Page 130 Note 4 Hegel, indeed, says: "Within the range of the finite we can never see that the end or aim has really been secured. The consummation of the infinite aim, therefore, consists merely in removing the illusion which makes it seem yet unaccomplished. . . . It is this illusion under which we live. . . . In the course of its process the Idea makes itself that illusion, by setting an antithesis to confront it; and its action consists in getting rid of the illusion which it has created."--Wallace's Logic of Hegel, p. 304.
<<Back