A FORTNIGHT ON AN ICELANDIC FARM.............. Professor W. E. MEAD, Ph.D., Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn. The Descendants of Hawaiian Missionaries, 649; Self-support in Foreign Missions, 650; The Finland and St. Petersburg Mission, 651; Industrial Missions, 652. Mudge's Growth in Holiness toward Perfection, 663; Body's The Permanent Value of the Book of Genesis as an Integral Part of the Christian Revelation, 665; Lor- imer's The Argument for Christianity, 666; Wilson's The Witnesses to Christ, the Saviour of the World, 667; Tyrrell's Latin Poetry, 668; Letters of Emily Dickinson, 670; Gladden's The Church and the Kingdom, 671; Curtis's From the Easy Chair, Third Series, 672; Pickard's Life and Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier, 673; Sheldon's History of the Christian Church, 676; Young's What a Boy Saw in the Army, 678; Thompson's The Footprints of the Jesuits, 679; MISCELLANEOUS, 680. THE SPECULATIVE SIGNIFICANCE OF FREEDOM Professor B. P. BOWNE, LL.D., Boston University, Boston, Mass. HANS SACHS, THE POET OF THE REFORMATION............. President N. W. CLARK, B.D., Italy Theological School, Rome, Italy. Balfour's The Foundations of Belief, 831; Rishell's The Higher Criticism, 833; Merrill's Mary of Nazareth and her Family, 834; Sheldon's History of Chris- tlan Doctrine, 835; Thomson's The Greek Tenses in the New Testament, 836; Dyer's The Evolution of Industry, 836; Selected Essays of James Darmesteter, 838; Borgeaud's Adoption and Amendment of Constitutions in Europe and Amer- ica, 839; Stanton's Songs of the Soil, 840; Bryce's The American Commonwealth, REACTIONARY PHASES IN THE PONTIFICATE OF LEO XIII......... 877 Professor H. C. SHELDON, S.T.D., Boston University, Boston, Mass. Green's Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch, 983; Thoburn's The Christless Na- tions, 985; Hall's Atonement, 986; Howells's My Literary Passions, 988; Hyslop's Elements of Ethics, 991; Complete Poetic and Dramatic Works of Robert Brown- ing, 993; Rhodes's History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850, 994; Menzies's History of Religion, 997: Banks's Christ and His Friends, 999; Selby's Imperfect Angel, 999; Selby's Lesson of a Dilemma, 999; Torrey's Baptism with the Holy Spirit, 1000; Neely's Parliamentarian, 1000; History of the Second Inter- METHODIST REVIEW. JANUARY, 1895. ART. I.-NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL. THAT the natural is or is not all-embracing is one of the perennial contentions. It is also one in which partisan spirit has to an unusual degree taken the place of thought and logical obligation. It is plain that this question cannot be profitably discussed without some definite conception of what we mean by nature and the natural; but in place of definition we have all too often only mutual belaboring on the part of the respective champions. In popular thought the notion of nature is supposed to be perfectly clear; whereas, in fact, it is in the highest degree obscure and uncertain. It is this fictitious clearness and real obscurity which explain the desultory and sterile character of the debate concerning the range and realm of the natural. And yet this antithesis of natural and supernatural is one of the most important in our thought. It contains the reason of the opposition of science and religion, so far as that opposition has an intellectual root. Whoever will reflect Whoever will reflect upon the arguments on this subject will see that they all depend upon a certain conception of the natural. Evolution would never conflict with religion but for a peculiar conception of the natural. No one would ever have dreamed of a conflict between science and religion but for a particular conception of the natural. In history, also, all alleged supernatural occurrences are to be looked upon either as fictions or as misunderstood natural events. A natural interpretation is demanded, and this is held to exclude the supernatural. Thus the natural and the super 1-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. XI. natural are set up as mutually exclusive, and in the name of this opposition a deal of unprofitable, and some mischievous, talking is done. It is worth while, therefore, to attempt to clear up the problem, not so much with the aim of solving as of understanding it. In any case, we cannot hope to solve it unless we first understand it. Nature and natural have, of course, a great variety of meanings; but in this discussion they will be limited by their antithesis, the supernatural. When we are seeking to define the natural a first thought is to limit it to the world of matter, leaving spirit and the spiritual as something apart. But the natural, as the antithesis of the supernatural, is by no means confined to the physical realm. The reign of law is soon discovered in the inner world, and thus, gradually, the spiritual also is drawn into the sphere of the natural. Mental movements, as well as physical changes, arise naturally. Certain fixed ways of grouping and happening are found in the inner world as well as in the outer. Life, mind, society, all human activity and progress, are said to be subject to laws as fixed as those of the planets. They may be more complex and less easily discerned, but they are as absolute and unyielding as the law of gravitation. When this announcement is made with due emphasis and proper rhetorical embellishment it never fails to produce a sensation. If the untrained bystander chance to be antireligious in his disposition he hastens to conclude that certainly religion, and probably God, must go. If he be religious in his tendencies he begins to look about somewhat anxiously for breaks in the "iron chain" and queries whether science be not the true antichrist. If he be one of the clergy the performance varies according to the ecclesiastical type; but, in any case, "science falsely so called " comes in for sundry disparaging remarks. The grounds of this flurry are not far to seek. First, an order of law is discovered, and this is forthwith transformed into necessity. This is next connected with the crude metaphysics of uncritical thought, and nature is at once erected into a mechanical and self-sufficing system, and its laws are made selfexecuting necessities. The movement is completed when finally nature is hypostasized as a cause and, under the form of "Nature," appears as a very able cosmic manager. By this time the speculator is prepared to maintain natural causation against |