MB,. SNOW'S RENUNCIATION OF HIS ORDERS.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SFEOTATOR."]
Sist,—Your statement of the grounds of my dissent from the Church teaching is, for the most part, fair, and deserves my thanks ; but I cannot accept your criticism of my views in all points as a just one, though I know it is full of kind and liberal intentions. I have never said a word to countenance my being supposed to hold that "all which is natural is divine ;" on the contrary, I say much that is natural is hateful and intolerable, but then I go on to say that it is Nature itself, the Nature Naturans, that is, changing the face of the earth, which, speaking in us, pro- nounces the present state of things to have much in it that is hateful and intolerable ; and again, that it is Nature itself that, fashioning us and fashioning our speech, has been for thousands of years teaching us to call it by a more personal name, which name no single age or race can find a substitute for, because it expresses the thought of humanity, which is wider and deeper than the theories of any race or age,—I mean the name of God. We find in Nature two things ; we find a Natura 1Vaturata,—a constitution of things made out of a material as yet not perfectly tractable; and we find a Natura Naturans, changing, and reforming, and transforming this material. In fact, in the present constitu- tion of things we see a plan, but at the same time, a plan so in- complete and marred as to suggest to our orthodox theologians the idea of an originally perfect plan gone out of gear.
Don't think that I set up this distinction of matter and form as a physical theory, far from it. I only refer to the fact that we are obliged to make this mental distinction in order to deal with the world around us, so as to be able to keep ourselves alive in it. We are obliged to use it as a store-house of materials which must be made to minister to our wants. We use it as the means for providing for our wants, and we find the same providence actuating all living matter, whether of the sort labelled " conscious " or of the sort labelled "unconscious." This creative process, which we find actuating us and all other matter which we label "living," Nero to all appearance to have made and fashioned both us and
our speech, and inclined us as a race to call it our parent and our God. It does not seem to me, judging from the literature of the day, that this instinctive child's cry to the great Parent is fainter, but rather stronger, as we advance in consciousness.
It might be said that the process which makes us, also destroys us, and that its work—at least in the majority of cases—shows no moral aim or beneficent intention. People say this, and think they have answered me. They might say they had answered me, if they could only see this process on the outsider in forms of life remote from their own ; but if deliverance from the flesh, that is, from the tyranny of brutal propensities in thee works of Jesus, and if by a natural process we have so far been delivered from the dominion of these propensities as to have been made men out of brutes, then this natural process has been doing in us the work of Jesus.
Now how can I pretend to be able so to gauge Nature, and so to, oversee the process that has made us, as to presume to say that our purest affections or our highest aspirations are beyond its power tee create ? I have no right to say nature is not competent, and the very condition of life and knowledge insists on our ever seeking a natural solution of things, and believing that things which< seem supernatural are but strange manifestations of a natural process. Where, then, is the dignus vindice nodus which autho- rises me to insist on the supernatural initiative as needed to-- transform the sons of men into the sons of God ?
I deny the necessity of this supernatural initiative which my Church insists on, and I am moved to deny it because I see the- deleterious influence it exercises, especially on Protestants. The very attempt to teach the young how to deal with the varied cases of duty which may present themselves, and tell them what to do.. under certain circumstances, is dismissed with scorn ; and the idea of transforming the children of men into the children of God by discipline is dismissed as if it was usurping God's work, instead of doing God's work.—I am, Sir, &c., G. D. Sow. [We do not regard it as a true description of the moral experi- ence of man to say that the Natura Naturans in him,—the natural - tendency which tries to transform him,—is always on the side of good. On the contrary, it is very often indeed on the aide of evil, though he has the power of perceiving that evil, and of - resisting it.—ED. Spectator.]
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