evidence and not by "antecedent probabilities," especially when these "probabilities" are derived from nothing but metaphysical considerations.
But you tell me that you see "no logical connection between moral excellence and creative power;" and another passage in your letter says that "we have no reason for thinking that the best men shew any tendency to approximate, in creative power, to the co-eternal Word." What do you thence infer? Apparently this, that, as Christ revealed God's righteousness and love by His own righteousness and love, so He must have revealed God's creative power by His own creative acts. I, too, believe that. But by what creative acts? By changing water into wine, or seven loaves into seven thousand loaves, or three fishes into three thousand fishes? Think of it seriously. Do these two or three abrupt and dislocated achievements appear to you adequately to represent the quiet, gradual, orderly, creative power of the true Word of God, by whom the heavens were made? For my part I see a noble meaning in your words, but the meaning I see in them is not what you mean. It was necessary—so far I agree with you—that the Incarnate Word should manifest God's creative Power as well as His Love and Righteousness. But how? Can you not answer for yourself without my prompting? Does not your own conscience suggest to you what is the highest effort of creative power? Are we not taught—and do not our hearts respond to the teaching—that God is a Spirit? And, if God is a Spirit, must not the highest kind of creation be, not material, but spiritual?
Now I maintain that it is a greater, more sublime, and more God-like act to create righteousness in accordance with God's spiritual laws than to create loaves and fishes and wine against God's material laws. And I maintain also—in opposition to your opinion—that "the
