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The Fundamentals process. There is also the theory that on the whole there is progress, but allowance must be made for retrogression and degeneration. This admits of the direct action of God in arresting the downward process and reversing the current; that is, there is an evolution through revelation, etc., rather than a revelation by evolution. On examining the evolution of the leaders of the Critical School, I found that it was of a n;i.turalistic or practkally deistic kind. All natural and mental phenomena are in a closed system of cause and effect, and the h yp othesis applies universally, to religion and revelation, as well as to mechanisms. This type of evolution may not be accepted by all adher ents of the Critical School, but it is substantially the view of the leaders, Reuss, Graf, Vatke, Kuenen and Wellhausen. To them all nature and history are a product of forces within and in process of development. There has not been and could not be any direct action of God upon man, there could be no break in the chain of cause and effect, of antecedent and consequent. Hence there can be no miracle or anything of what is known as the supernatural. There could be no "interference" in any way with the natural course of events, there could be no "injection" of any power into the cosmic process from without, God is shut up to the one method of bringing things to pass. He is thus little more than a prisoner in His own cosmos. Thus I discovered that the Critical Movement was essentially and fundamentally anti-supernatural and anti-miraculous. According to it all religious movements are human developments along natural and materialistic lines. The religion of Israel and the Bible is no exception, as there can be no exception to this principle. The revelation con tained in the Bible is, strictly speaking, no revelation; it is a natural development with God in the cosmic process behind it, but yet a steady, straight-lined, mechanical development such as can be traced step by step as a flight of stairs may be measured by a foot-rule. There could have been no epoch-
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