verse." That this unseen world is spiritual--that is, not subject
to the same material laws with the visible universe--is also a fair
deduction from physical science, as well as a doctrine of Scripture. I
prefer the term spiritual to supernatural, because the first is the
term used in the Bible, and because the latter has had associated with
it ideas of the miraculous and abnormal, not implied at all in the
idea of the spiritual, which in some important senses may be more
natural than the material.

(2) The idea of a personal God implies not merely the existence of an
unknown absolute power, as Herbert Spencer seems to hold, or of "an
Eternal, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness," as Matthew
Arnold puts it, but of a Being of whom we can affirm will,
intelligence, feeling, self-consciousness, not certainly precisely as
they occur in us, but in a higher and more perfect form, of which our
own consciousness furnishes the type, or "image and shadow," as Moses
long ago phrased it. On the one hand, it is true that we can not fully
comprehend such a personal God, because not limited by the conditions
which limit us. On the other hand, it is clear that our intellect, as
constituted, can furnish us with no ultimate explanation of the
universe except in the action of such a primary personal will. In the
Bible the absolute personality of God is expressed by the title "I
am." His intimate relation to us is indicated by the expression, "In
him we live, and move, and have our being." His all-pervading essence
is stated as "the fullness of him that filleth all in all." His
relative personality is shadowed forth by the attribution to him of
love, anger, and other human feelings and sentiments, and by
presenting him in the endearing relation of the universal Father.

(3) With reference to the possibility of communication between God and
man, it may truly be said that such communication is not only
possible, but infinitely probable. God is not only near to us, but we
are in him, and, independently of the testimony of revelation, it has
been felt by all classes of men, from the rudest and most primitive
savages up to our great English philosopher, John Stuart Mill, that if
there is a God, he can not be excluded from communion with his
intelligent creatures, either directly or through the medium of
ministering spirits.[2] Farther, placed as man is in the midst of
complex and to him inexplicable phenomena, involved in a conflict of