Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 59:234 (Apr 1902)
Article: The Supernatural
Author: John Bascom

BSac 59:234 (April 1902) p. 238

The Supernatural

Ex-Pres. John Bascom

WE have more occasion to fear peace in the spiritual world than to fear contention. Our thoughts and our affections are so dependent on growth that a perpetual disturbance of the equilibrium of faith becomes a condition of progress. The abundant skepticism to which, in our day, we owe an ever more intelligent belief, has found in the supernatural a chief ground of attack. We should strive, therefore, to see with clearness both the reasons and the limits of this criticism. On the one hand, a vast amount of superstition has been driven back and partially dispelled by it; and, on the other hand, a dreary dogmatism of science, a sense of the inflexible connections of nature, have been left behind by the flood as a barren deposit, and we are compelled again to seek and restore the seeds of life, that we may once more live in a truly spiritual world.

There are certain preliminary convictions in connection with which alone the supernatural can receive rational expression. The first of these is the immanence of God. The activities of nature are the immediate product of the Divine Mind. The world is a perpetual creation, momentarily suffused with divine thought and feeling. It is constantly renewed from within; nothing is governed from without. Matter ceases to be an alien something, between us and God, commanding our constant attention. The omnipresence of God becomes to us a realized fact.

BSac 59:234 (April 1902) p. 239

A second initiative conception is the transcendence of God. The thought and feeling of the world are true spiritual products. They imply a divine consciousness, in which they have been begotten, and with which they abide. The world is not simply coming into the light; it is also coming out of the light. Its revelation is real; its rational movement is substantial.

A third conception in connection with which the supernatural takes its proper place is that of physical or natural dependencies as contrasted with intellectual or supernatural dependencies. The fixed region of causes lies over against the variable region of reasons. Causes are the correlatives of reasons: the one the connection of things, — physical phenomena; the other of thoughts,—spiritual phenomena. The natural is the determinate field in which mind, as a creative agent, works out its purposes. The spiritual world is, figuratively, supernatural. It, from above, expresses its purposes in things; and things, as beneath, receive and retain its labors. That which is done is natural, that which remains to be done is supernatural. Here is the central fact, yet central mystery, of life. Man is immersed to his lips in the flow of events, yet his head ever rises above them. We are familiar with the natural and s...