ither that it is unnatural to the plant; although it might be said that
from the point of view of the Vegetable Kingdom it was _supernatural_.
Things are natural or supernatural simply according to where one stands.
Man is supernatural to the mineral; God is supernatural to the man. When
a mineral is seized upon by the living plant and elevated to the organic
kingdom, no trespass against Nature is committed. It merely enters a
larger Environment, which before was supernatural to it, but which now
is entirely natural. When the heart of a man, again, is seized upon by
the quickening Spirit of God, no further violence is done to natural
law. It is another case of the inorganic, so to speak, passing into the
organic.

But in the second place, it is complained as if it were an enormity in
itself that the spiritual correspondence should be furnished from the
spiritual world. And to this the answer lies in the same direction.
Correspondence in any case is the gift of Environment. The natural
Environment gives men their natural faculties; the spiritual affords
them their spiritual faculties. It is natural for the spiritual
Environment to supply the spiritual faculties; it would be quite
unnatural for the natural Environment to do it. The natural law of
Biogenesis forbids it; the moral fact that the finite cannot comprehend
the Infinite is against it; the spiritual principle that flesh and
blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God renders it absurd. Not, however,
that the spiritual faculties are, as it were, manufactured in the
spiritual world and supplied ready-made to the spiritual
organism--forced upon it as an external equipment. This certainly is not
involved in saying that the spiritual faculties are furnished by the
spiritual world. Organisms are not added to by accretion, as in the case
of minerals, but by growth. And the spiritual faculties are organized in
the spiritual protoplasm of the soul, just as other faculties are
organized in the protoplasm of the body. The plant is made of materials
which have once been inorganic. An organizing principle not belonging to
their kingdom lays hold of them and elaborates them until they have
correspondences with the kingdom to which the organizing principle
belonged. Their original organizing principle, if it can be called by
this name, was Crystallization; so that we have now a distinctly foreign
power organizing in totally new and higher directions. In the spiritual
world, similar