Old  theology  teaches  that  religion  lies  outside  the  natural  order ;
that  for  the  work  of  salvation  God  has  a  different  method, —  the
miracle  method, —  which  is  contra-natural,  and  which  perpetually
subverts  the  laws  of  the  universe ;  that  in  his  work  of  revelation,  in
providing  facts  for  the  Bible  stories,  in  establishing  Christianity,  he
made  use  of  this  self-contradictory  method.  The  plan  of  salvation,
therefore,  according  to  the  old  theology,  is  unlike  everything  else, —
requires  that  God,  in  its  establishment  and  furtherance,  should  be
totally  unlike  himself.  All  otherwhere  is  a  divine  procedure  by
cause  and  effect,  with  results  in  kind ;  for  the  saving  of  souls  is  a
providence  by  magic,  in  which  results  are  produced  without  causes
of  their  own  order.  God  has  made  all  things  else  of  one  breath :
religion  stands  apart  in  a  completely  different  and  exclusive  province.
I  grant  you  the  dramatic  force  of  this  conception.  There  is  fasci-
nating and  compelling  enthusiasm  in  the  dream  that  God  has  gone
outside  the  common  order,  and  brought  to  play  a  different  nature
from  his  own  infinite  depths,  in  the  saving  of  immortal  spirits ;  and
if  to  save  souls  were  a  dream  and  a  drama,  and  not  real  life,  the
conception  would  make  overmastering  appeal  to  me.  I  can  per-
fectly understand  how  the  very  supernaturalism  of  it,  the  surge
and  brilliancy  of  the  miracle  thought,  has  been  its  fount  of  en-
thusiasm all  down  through  the  ages,  and  is  so  still.  And,  if  we
do  not  find  and  drink  deeply  at  some  fount  of  enthusiasm  which
begets  a  like  zeal  in  our  liberal  churches,  it  will  remain  in  posses-
sion of  the  world.
