hough this has been much exaggerated--in its more or less
general adherence to the extreme view that religion had nothing to do
with the natural life; the weakness of the latter lay in yielding to the
more fatal extreme that it had nothing to do with anything else. That
man, being a worshiping animal by nature, ought to maintain certain
relations to the Supreme Being, was indeed to some extent conceded by
the naturalistic school, but religion itself we looked upon as a thing
to be spontaneously generated by the evolution of character in the
laboratory of common life.

The difference between the two positions is radical. Translating from
the language of Science into that of Religion, the theory of
Spontaneous Generation is simply that a man may become gradually better
and better until in course of the process he reaches that quantity of
religious nature known as Spiritual Life. This Life is not something
added _ab extra_ to the natural man; it is the normal and appropriate
development of the natural man. Biogenesis opposes to this the whole
doctrine of Regeneration. The Spiritual Life is the gift of the Living
Spirit. The spiritual man is no mere development of the natural man. He
is a New Creation born from Above. As well expect a hay infusion to
become gradually more and more living until in course of the process it
reached Vitality, as expect a man by becoming better and better to
attain the Eternal Life.

The advocates of Biogenesis in Religion have founded their argument
hitherto all but exclusively on Scripture. The relation of the doctrine
to the constitution and course of Nature was not disclosed. Its
importance, therefore, was solely as a dogma; and being directly
concerned with the Supernatural, it was valid for those alone who chose
to accept the Supernatural.

Yet it has been keenly felt by those who attempt to defend this doctrine
of the origin of the Spiritual Life, that they have nothing more to
oppose to the rationalistic view than the _ipse dixit_ of Revelation.
The argument from experience, in the nature of the case, is seldom easy
to apply, and Christianity has always found at this point a genuine
difficulty in meeting the challenge of Natural Religions. The direct
authority of Nature, using Nature in its limited sense, was not here to
be sought for. On such a question its voice was necessarily silent; and
all that the apologist could look for lower down was a distant echo or
analogy. All that is re