MIRACLES AND SUPERNATURAL RELIGION BY JAMES MORRIS WHITON, PH. D. (YALE) _Portentum non fit contra naturam, sed contra quam est nota natura_ --AUGUSTINE New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO. , LTD. 1903 _All rights reserved_ COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up, electrotyped, and published May, 1903. Norwood Press J. S. Cushing & Co. --Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass. , U. S. A. Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Variant spellings have been retained. {=e} represents e with upper macron. To M. B. W. PREFATORY NOTE While the present subject of discussion tempts to many an excursion intoparticulars, its treatment is restricted to general outlines, with anaim simply to clarify current ideas of miracle and the supernatural, soas to find firm holding ground for tenable positions in the present"drift period" of theology. The chief exception made to this generaltreatment is the discussion given to a class of miracles regarded withas much incredulity as any, yet as capable as any of being accredited asprobably historical events--the raisings of the "dead. " The insistenceof some writers on the virgin birth and corporeal resurrection of Jesusas essential to Christianity has required brief discussion of thesealso, mainly with reference to the reasonableness of that demand. As tothe latter miracle, it must be observed that in the Biblical narrativestaken as a whole, whichever of their discordant features one be disposedto emphasize, the psychical element clearly preponderates over thephysical and material. J. M. W. NEW YORK, April 11, 1903. CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTORY 13 THE ARGUMENT I The gradual narrowing of the miraculous element in the Bible by recent discovery and discussion. --The alarm thereby excited in the Church. --The fallacy which generates the fear. --The atheistic conception of nature which generates the fallacy. --The present outgrowing of this conception. 25 II The present net results of the discussion of the miraculous element in the Bible. --Evaporation of the former evidential value of miracles. --Further insistence on this value a logical blunder. --The transfer of miracles from the artillery to the baggage of the Church. --Probability of a further reduction of the list of miracles. --Also of a further transfer of events reputed miraculous to the domain of history. 37 III Arbitrary criticism of the Biblical narratives of the raising of the "dead. "--Facts which it ignores. --The subject related to the phenomena of trance, and records of premature burial. --The resuscitation in Elisha's tomb probably historical. --Jesus' raising of the ruler's daughter plainly such a case. --His raising of the widow's son probably such. --The hypothesis that his raising of Lazarus may also have been such critically examined. --The record allows this supposition. --Further considerations favoring it: 1. The supposition threatens no real interest of Christianity. --2. Enhances the character of the act as a work of mercy. --3. Is independent of the belief of the witnesses of the act. --4. Is coherent with the general conception of the healing works of Jesus as wrought by a peculiar psychical power. --Other cases. --The resurrection of Jesus an event in a wholly different order of things. --The practical result of regarding these resuscitations as in the order of nature. 47 IV A clearer conception of miracle approached. --Works of Jesus once reputed miraculous not so reputed now, since not now transcending as once the existing range of knowledge and power. --This transfer of the miraculous to the natural likely to continue. --No hard and fast line between the miraculous and the non-miraculous. --Miracle a provisional word, its application narrowing in the enlarging mastery of the secrets of Nature and of life. 75 V Biblical miracles the effluence of extraordinary lives. --Life the world's magician and miracle-worker; its miracles now termed _prodigies_. --Miracle the natural product of an extraordinary endowment of life. --Life the ultimate reality. --What any man can achieve is conditioned by the psychical quality of his life. --Nothing more natural, more supernatural, than life. --The derived life of the world filial to the self-existent life of God; "begotten, not made. "--Miracle as the product of life, the work of God. 85 VI The question, old and new, now confronting theologians. --Their recent retreat upon the minimum of miracle. --The present conflict of opinion in the Church. --Its turning-point reached in the antipodal turn-about in the treatment of miracles from the old to the new apologetics. --Revision of the traditional idea of the supernatural required for theological readjustment. 95 VII Account to be made of the law of atrophy through disuse. --The virgin birth and the corporeal resurrection of Jesus, the two miracles still insisted on as the irreducible minimum, affected by this law. --The vital truths of the incarnation and immortality independent of these miracles. --These truths now placed on higher ground in a truer conception of the supernatural. --The true supernatural is the spiritual, not the miraculous. --Scepticism bred from the contrary view. --The miracle-narratives, while less evidential for religion, not unimportant for history. --Psychical research a needed auxiliary for the scientific critic of these. 107 VIII The cardinal point in the present discussion the reality not of miracles, but of the supernatural. --Fallacy of pointing to physical events as essential characteristics of supernatural Revelation. --The character of a revelation determined not by its circumstances, but by its contents. --Moral nature supernatural to physical. --Nature a hierarchy of natures. --Supernatural Religion historically attested by the moral development it generates. --Transfer of its distinctive note from moral ideals to physical marvels a costly error. --Jesus' miracles _a_ revelation, of a type common with others before and after. --The unique Revelation of Jesus was in the higher realm of divine ideas and ideals. --These, while unrealized in human life, still exhibit the fact of a supernatural Revelation. --The distinction of natural and supernatural belongs to the period of moral progress up to the spiritual maturity of man in the image of God. --The divine possibilities of humanity, imaged in Jesus, revealed as our inheritance and our prize. 131 INTRODUCTORY In a historical retrospect greater and more revolutionary changes areseen to have occurred during the nineteenth century than in any centurypreceding. In these changes no department of thought and activity hasfailed to share, and theological thought has been quite as much affectedas scientific or ethical. Especially remarkable is the changed front ofChristian theologians toward miracles, their distinctly lowered estimateof the significance of miracle, their antipodal reverse of the longestablished treatment of miracles. Referring to this a Britishevangelical writer[1] observes that "the intelligent believer of ourown day, ... Instead of accepting Christianity on the ground of themiracles, accepts it in spite of the miracles. Whether he admits thesemiracles, or rejects them, his attitude toward them is towarddifficulties, not helps. " By this diametrical change of Christian thought a great amount ofscepticism has already been antiquated. A once famous anti-Christianbook, _Supernatural Religion_, regarded as formidable thirty years ago, is now as much out of date for relevancy to present theologicalconditions as is the old smooth-bore cannon for naval warfare. Thatmany, indeed, are still unaware of the change that has been experiencedby the leaders of Christian thought, no one acquainted with currentdiscussions will deny; the fact is indubitable. It is reviewed in thefollowing pages with the constructive purpose of redeeming the idea ofsupernatural Religion from pernicious perversion, and of exhibiting itin its true spiritual significance. The once highly reputed calculationsmade to show how the earth's diurnal revolution could be imperceptiblystopped for Joshua's convenience, and the contention that theMediterranean produced fish with gullets capable of giving passage toJonah, are now as dead as the chemical controversy about phlogiston. Yetsome sceptical controversialists are still so far from cultivating theacquaintance with recent thought which they recommend to Christiantheologians, as to persist in affirmations of amazing ignorance, _e. G. _"It is admitted that miracles alone can attest the reality of divinerevelation. "[2] Sponsors for this statement must now be sought amongunlearned Christians, or among a few scholars who survive ascultivators of the old-fashioned argument from the "evidences. " Evenamong these latter the tendency to minimize miracle is undeniablyapparent in a reduction of the list classified as such, and still morein the brevity of the list insisted on for the attestation ofChristianity. A transitional state of mind is clearly evidenced by the presentdivision and perplexity of Christian thought concerning the Christianmiracles. Many seem to regard further discussion as profitless, and areready to shelve the subject. But this attitude of weariness is alsotransitional. There must be some thoroughfare to firm ground and clearvision. It must be found in agreement, first of all, on the real meaningof a term so variously and vaguely used as _miracle_. In the presentimperfect state of knowledge it may be impossible to enucleate miracle, however defined, of all mystery. But even so will much be gained forclear thinking, if miracle can be reasonably related to the greatermystery which all accept, though none understand, --the mystery of_life_. This view of the dynamic relation of life to miracle[3] is heresuggested for what it may prove to be worth. The great and general change that transfigured theology during thenineteenth century was characteristically ethical. This, indeed, is thedistinctive feature of the so-called new theology, in contrast with thatwhich the Protestant Reformers inherited from St. Augustine. God andMan, Faith, Salvation and Inspiration, Redemption and Atonement, Judgment and Retribution, --all these themes are now presented inorthodox pulpits far more conformably to ethical principles, though indegrees varying with educated intelligence, than was customary in thesermons of half a century ago. "One great source and spring oftheological progress, " says Professor Bowne, in his recent work on_Theism_, "has been the need of finding a conception of God which themoral nature could accept. The necessity of moralizing theology hasproduced vast changes in that field; and the end is not yet. " The ethical character of the theological change will perhaps be mostobvious in the field of Biblical study, to which the present subjectbelongs. The traditional solution of such moral difficulties in the OldTestament as commands, ostensibly divine, to massacre idolaters hasbeen quite discarded. It is no longer the mode to say that deedsseemingly atrocious were not atrocious, because God commanded them. Writers of orthodox repute now say that the _Thus saith the Lord_, withwhich Samuel prefaced his order to exterminate the Amalekites, must beunderstood subjectively, as an expression of the prophet's belief, notobjectively, as a divine command communicated to him. This great changeis a quite recent change. If a personal reference may be indulged, it isnot twenty years since the present writer's published protest against"The Anti-Christian Use of the Bible in the Sunday School, "[4] theexhibition to children of some vestiges of heathen superstition embeddedin the Old Testament narratives as true illustrations of God's waystoward men, drew forth from a religious journal a bitter editorial on"The Old Testament and its New Enemies. " But a great light has sincedawned in that quarter. It is no longer deemed subversive of faith in adivine Revelation to hold that the prophet Gad was not infallible inregarding the plague which scourged Jerusalem as sent to punish David'spride in his census of the nation. A significant fact is presented in the comparison of these two aspectsof the theological change that has come to pass, --the growing importanceof the ethical, and the dwindling importance of the miraculous in thereligious thought of to-day. This may reassure those who fear wheretosuch change may grow. The inner significance of such a change is mostauspicious. It portends the displacement of a false by the trueconception of supernatural Religion, and the removal thereby of aserious antagonism between Science and Christian Theology, as well as ofa serious hindrance of many thoughtful minds from an intelligent embraceof Christianity. FOOTNOTES: [1] Professor W. T. Adeney in the _Hibbert Journal_, January, 1903, p. 302. [2] See the recent new edition of _Supernatural Religion_, "carefullyrevised. " [3] For an earlier statement of this by the present writer, see adiscourse on "Miracle and Life, " in _New Points to Old Texts_. London:James Clarke & Co. , 1889. New York: Thomas Whittaker. [4] _The New Englander_, September, 1884. MIRACLES AND SUPERNATURAL RELIGION I I SYNOPSIS. --The gradual narrowing of the miraculous element in the Bible by recent discovery and discussion. --The alarm thereby excited in the Church. --The fallacy which generates the fear. --The atheistic conception of nature which generates the fallacy. --The present outgrowing of this conception. It is barely forty years since that beloved and fearless Christianscholar, Dean Stanley, spoke thus of the miracles recorded of theprophet Elisha: "His works stand alone in the Bible in their likeness tothe acts of mediæval saints. There alone in the Sacred History the gulfbetween Biblical and Ecclesiastical miracles almost disappears. "[5] Itrequired some courage to say as much as this then, while the storm ofpersecution was raging against Bishop Colenso for his critical work onthe Pentateuch. The evangelical clergymen in England and the UnitedStates then prepared to confess as much as this, with all that itobviously implies, could have been seated in a small room. But time hasmoved on, and the Church, at least the scholars of the Church, havemoved with it. No scholar of more than narrowly local repute nowhesitates to acknowledge the presence of a legendary element both in theOld Testament and in the New. While the extent of it is stillundetermined, many specimens of it are recognized. It is agreed that theearly narratives in Genesis are of this character, and that it is markedin such stories as those of Samson, Elijah, and Elisha. Even theconservative revisers of the Authorized Version have eliminated from theFourth Gospel the story of the angel at the pool of Bethesda, and intheir marginal notes on the Third Gospel have admitted a doubtconcerning the historicity of the angel and the bloody sweat inGethsemane. Furthermore, some events, recognized as historical, have been divestedof the miraculous character once attributed to them, --the crossing ofthe Red Sea, for instance, by the Hebrew host. A landslip in thethirteenth century A. D. Has been noted as giving historical character tothe story of the Hebrew host under Joshua's command crossing the Jordan"on dry ground, " but in a perfectly natural way. Other classes ofphenomena once regarded as miraculous have been transferred to thedomain of natural processes by the investigations and discoveries thathave been made in the field of psychical research. The forewarning whichGod is said to have given the prophet Ahijah of the visit that thequeen was about to pay him in disguise[6] is now recognized as one ofmany cases of the mysterious natural function that we label as"telepathy. " The transformations of unruly, vicious, and mentallydisordered characters by hypnotic influence that have been effected atthe Salpêtrière in Paris, and elsewhere, by physicians expert inpsychical therapeutics are closely analogous to the cures wrought byJesus on some victims of "demoniac possession. "[7] The cases ofapparition, [8] also, which have been investigated and verified by theSociety for Psychical Research have laid a solid basis of fact for theBiblical stories of angels, as at least, a class of phenomena to beregarded as by no means altogether legendary, but having their placeamong natural though mysterious occurrences. But this progressive paring down of the miraculous element in the Biblehas caused outcries of unfeigned alarm. Christian scholars who havetaken part in it are reproached as deserters to the camp of unbelief. They are accused of banishing God from his world, and of reducing thecourse of events to an order of agencies quite undivine. "Miracle, "writes one of these brethren, [9] "is the personal intervention of Godinto the chain of cause and effect. " But what does this mean, exceptthat, when no miracles occur, God is not personally, _i. E. _ actively, inthe chain of natural causes and effects? As Professor Drummond says, "IfGod appears periodically, he disappears periodically. " It is preciselythis view of the subject that really banishes God from his world. Thosewho thus define miracle regard miracles as having ceased at the end ofthe Apostolic age in the first century. Except, therefore, for thenarrow range of human history that the Bible covers in time and place, God has not been personally in the chain of natural causes and effects. Thus close to an atheistic conception of nature does zeal fortraditional orthodoxy unwittingly but really come. The first pages of the Bible correct this error. "While the earthremaineth, " so God is represented as assuring Noah, "seedtime andharvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease. " The presence of God in his world was thus to beevinced by his regular sustentation of its natural order, rather than byirregular occurrences, such as the deluge, in seeming contravention ofit. To seek the evidence of divine activity in human affairs and toground one's faith in a controlling Providence in sporadic and cometaryphenomena, rather than in the constant and cumulative signs of it to beseen in the majestic order of the starry skies, in the reign ofintelligence throughout the cosmos, in the moral evolution of ancientsavagery into modern philanthropy, in the historic manifestationthroughout the centuries of a Power not our own that works for theincrease of righteousness, is a mode of thought which in our time isbeing steadily and surely outgrown. It is one of those "idols of thetribe" whose power alike over civilized and uncivilized men is brokenless by argument than by the ascent of man to wider horizons ofknowledge. It is for the gain of religion that it should be broken, --of thespiritual religion whose God is not a tradition, a reminiscence, but aliving presence, inhabiting alike the clod and the star, the flower inthe crannied wall and the life of man. So thinking of God the religiousman may rightly say, [10] "If it is more difficult to believe inmiracles, it is less important. If the extraordinary manifestations ofGod recounted in ancient history appear less credible, the ordinarymanifestations of God in current life appear more real. He is seen inAmerican history not less than in Hebrew history; in the life of to-daynot less than in the life of long ago. " FOOTNOTES: [5] _Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church_, Vol. II, p. 362, American edition. [6] 1 Kings xiv. 1-7. [7] It is not intended to intimate that there is no such darker realityas a "possession" that is "demoniac" indeed. It cannot be reasonablypronounced superstitious to judge that there is some probability forthat view. At any rate, it is certain that the problem is not to besettled by dogmatic pronouncement. It is certain, also, that the burdenof proof rests on those who contend that there can be no such thing. Onthe other hand, it may be conceded that the cases recorded in the NewTestament do not seem to be of an essentially devilish kind. On thegeneral subject of "possession" see F. W. H. Myers's work on _HumanPersonality and Survival after Death_, Vol. I. (Longmans, Green & Co. , New York and London. ) Professor William James half humorously remarks:"The time-honored phenomenon of diabolical possession is on the point ofbeing admitted by the scientist as a fact, now that he has the name ofhysterodemonopathy by which to apperceive it. " _Varieties of ReligiousExperience_, p. 501, note. [8] See _Dictionary of Psychology_, art. "Psychical Research. " [9] Dr. Peloubet, _Teachers' Commentary on the Acts_, 1902. [10] Dr. Lyman Abbott in _The Outlook_, February 14, 1903. II II SYNOPSIS. --The present net results of the discussion of the miraculous element in the Bible. --Evaporation of the former evidential value of miracles. --Further insistence on this value a logical blunder. --The transfer of miracles from the artillery to the baggage of the Church. --Probability of a further reduction of the list of miracles. --Also of a further transfer of events reputed miraculous to the domain of history. The cultivation of scientific and historical studies during the lastcentury, especially in its latter half, has deepened the conviction that "Through the ages one increasing purpose runs;" has disposed a growing number of thoughtful minds to regard occasionalsigns and wonders, reported from ancient times, as far less evidentialfor the reasonableness of religious faith than the steady sustentationof the Providential order and the moral progress of the world. Fullyconvinced of this, we should now estimate, before proceeding further, the present net results of the discussion, so far as it has gone, ofwhat is called the miraculous element in the Bible. First, its former evidential value in proof of divine Revelation is gonefor the men of to-day. The believer in a divine Revelation does not now, if he is wise, rest his case at all on the miracles connected with itsoriginal promulgation, as was the fashion not very long since. This fortwo reasons; chiefly this: that _the decisive criterion of any truth, ethical or physical, must be truth of the same kind_. Ethical truth mustbe ethically attested. The moral and religious character of theRevelation presents its credentials of worth in its history of themoral and religious renovations it has wrought both in individuals andin society. This is its proper and incontrovertible attestation, in needof no corroboration from whatever wonderful physical occurrences mayhave accompanied its first utterance. Words of God are attested as suchby the work of God which they effect. It may well be believed that thosewonderful occurrences--the Biblical name for which is "signs, " or"powers, " terms not carrying, like "miracles, " the idea of somethingcontra-natural[11]--had an evidential value for those to whom theRevelation originally came. In fact, they were appealed to by thebearers of the Revelation as evidencing its divine origin by the mightyworks of divine mercy which they wrought for sufferers from the evils ofthe world. But whatever their evidential value to the eye-witnesses atthat remote day, it was of the inevitably volatile kind that exhalesaway like a perfume with lapse of time. Historic doubts attack remoteevents, especially when of the extraordinary character which tempts thenarrator to that magnifying of the marvellous which experience has foundto be a constantly recurring human trait. It is simply impossible thatthe original evidential value of the "signs" accompanying the Revelationshould continue permanently unimpaired. To employ them now as"evidences of Christianity, " when the Revelation has won on ethicalgrounds recognition of its divine character and can summon history tobear witness of its divine effects in the moral uplift of the world, isto imperil the Christian argument by the preposterous logical blunder ofattempting to prove the more certain by the less certain. A second net result consequent on the preceding may be described as thetransference of miracles from the ordnance department to thequartermaster's department of the Church. Until recently they wereactively used as part of its armament, none of which could be dispensedwith. Now they are carried as part of its baggage, _impedimenta_, fromwhich everything superfluous must be removed. It is clearly seen that toretain all is to imperil the whole. That there are miracles andmiracles is patent to minds that have learned to scan history morecritically than when a scholar like John Milton began his _History ofEngland_ with the legend of the voyage of "Brute the Trojan. " One mayreasonably believe that Jesus healed a case of violent insanity atGadara, and reasonably disbelieve that the fire of heaven was twiceobedient to Elijah's call to consume the military companies sent toarrest him. Cultivated discernment does not now put all Biblicalmiracles on a common level of credibility, any more than the historicalwork of Herodotus and that of the late Dr. Gardiner. To defend them allis not to vindicate, but to discredit all alike. The elimination of theindefensible, the setting aside of the legendary, the transference ofthe supposedly miraculous to the order of natural powers and processesso far as vindicable ground for such critical treatment is discovered, is the only way to answer the first of all questions concerning theBible: How much of this is credible history? Thus it is not onlythoroughly reasonable, but is in the interest of a reasonable beliefthat divine agency is revealed rather by the upholding of theestablished order of Nature than by any alleged interference therewith. With what God has established God never interferes. To allege hisinterference with his established order is virtually to deny hisconstant immanence therein, a failure to recognize the fundamental factthat "Nature is Spirit, " as Principal Fairbairn has said, and all itsprocesses and powers the various modes of the energizing of the divineWill. A third net result now highly probable is a still further reduction ofthe list of reputed miracles. The critical process of discriminatingthe historical from the legendary, and the natural from the non-natural, is still so comparatively recent that it can hardly be supposed to havereached its limit. Nor can it be stayed by any impeachment of it ashostile to Christianity, whose grand argument appeals to its presentethical effects, not to ancient thaumaturgical accompaniments. There is, however, a considerable class of cases in which the advancing criticalprocess is likely even to gain credibility for the Biblical narrative ina point where it is now widely doubted--the resuscitations of theapparently dead. Among all the Biblical miracles none have more probablya secure historical basis. FOOTNOTES: [11] The Anglicized Latin word, "miracle, " indiscriminately used in theAuthorized Version, denotes the superficial character of the act orevent it is applied to, as producing wonder or amazement in thebeholders. The terms commonly employed in the New Testament(_s{=e}meion_, a sign; _dunamis_, power; less frequently _teras_, aportent) are of deeper significance, and connote the inner nature of theoccurrence, either as requiring to be pondered for its meaning, or asthe product of a new and peculiar energy. III III SYNOPSIS. --Arbitrary criticism of the Biblical narratives of the raising of the "dead. "--Facts which it ignores. --The subject related to the phenomena of trance, and records of premature burial. --The resuscitation in Elisha's tomb probably historical. --Jesus' raising of the ruler's daughter plainly a case of this kind. --His raising of the widow's son probably such. --The hypothesis that his raising of Lazarus may also have been such critically examined. --The record allows this supposition. --Further considerations favoring it: 1. The real interests of Christianity secure. --2. The miracle as a work of mercy. --3. Incompetency of the bystanders' opinion. --4. Congruity with the general conception of the healing works of Jesus, as wrought by a peculiar psychical power. --Other cases. --The resurrection of Jesus an event in a wholly different order of things. --The practical result of regarding these resuscitations as in the order of nature. Of resuscitation from apparent death seven cases in all arerecorded, --three in the Old Testament and four in the New. Some criticsarbitrarily reject all but one of these as legendary. Thus OscarHolzmann, in his recent _Leben Jesu_, treats the raising of the widow'sson, and of Lazarus. But he accepts the case of the ruler's daughter onthe ground that Jesus is reported as saying that it was not a case ofreal but only of apparent death, --"the child is not dead, but sleepeth. "But for the preservation of this saving declaration in the record, thiscase also would have been classed with the others as unhistorical. Andyet the admission of one clear case of simulated death, so like realdeath as to deceive all the onlookers but Jesus, might reasonably checkthe critic with the suggestion that it may not have been a solitarycase. [12] The headlong assumption involved in the discrimination madebetween these two classes, viz. That in a case of apparent but unrealdeath the primitive tradition can be depended on to put the fact uponrecord, is in the highest degree arbitrary and unwarrantable. The scepticism which lightly contradicts the Biblical narratives of theraising of the "dead" to life is seemingly ignorant of facts that go farto place these upon firm ground as historical occurrences. Catalepsy, or the simulation of death by a trance, in which the body is sometimescold and rigid, sensation gone, the heart still, is well known tomedical men. [13] In early times such a condition would inevitably havebeen regarded and treated as actual death, without the least suspicionthat it was not so. Even now, the dreadful mistake of so regarding itsometimes occurs. So cautious a journal as the London _Spectator_ a fewyears ago expressed the belief that "a distinct percentage" of prematureburials "occurs every year" in England. The proper line of critical approach to the study of the Biblicalnarratives of the raising of the "dead" is through the well-known factsof the deathlike trance and premature burial. Where burial occurred, as in the East, immediately after the apparentdeath, [14] resuscitation must have been rare. Yet cases of it were notunknown. Pliny has a chapter "on those who have revived on being carriedforth for burial. " Lord Bacon states that of this there have been "verymany cases. " A French writer of the eighteenth century, Bruhier, in his"_Dissertations sur l'Incertitude de la Mort et l'Abus desEnterrements_, " records seventy-two cases of mistaken pronouncement ofdeath, fifty-three of revival in the coffin before burial, andfifty-four of burial alive. A locally famous and thoroughly attestedcase in this country is that of the Rev. William Tennent, pastor inFreehold, New Jersey, in the eighteenth century, who lay apparently deadfor three days, reviving from trance just as his delayed funeral wasabout to proceed. One who keeps a scrap-book could easily collect quitean assortment of such cases, and of such others as have a tragic ending, both from domestic and foreign journals. A work published some years agoby Dr. F. Hartmann[15] exhibits one hundred and eight cases as typicalamong over seven hundred that have been authenticated. [16] Facts like these have been strangely overlooked in the hasty judgmentprompted by prejudice against whatever has obtained credence asmiraculous. Some significant considerations must be seriouslyentertained. It cannot be that no such facts occurred in the long periods covered bythe Biblical writers. Occurring, it is extremely improbable that theyshould have altogether escaped embodiment in popular tradition and itsrecord. Furthermore, while on one hand the custom of speedy burialrendered them much rarer than they are now under other conditions, andso much the more extraordinary, the universal ignorance of the causesinvolved would have accepted resuscitation as veritable restoration fromactual death. As such it would have passed into tradition. In caseswhere it had come to pass in connection with the efforts of a recognizedprophet, or through any contact with him, it would certainly have beenregarded as a genuine miracle. Among the raisings of the "dead" recorded in the Scriptures probablynone has been so widely doubted by critical readers as the story in thethirteenth chapter of the second book of Kings, in which a corpse isrestored to life by contact with the bones of Elisha. Dean Stanley'sremark upon the suspicious similarity between the miracles related ofElisha and those found in Roman Catholic legends of great saints hereseems quite pertinent. Let the record speak for itself. "And Elisha died and they buried him. Now the bands of the Moabites invaded the land at the coming in of the year. And it came to pass, as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a band; and they cast the man into the sepulchre of Elisha; and as soon as the man touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his feet. " The bizarre character of such a story excusably predisposes many acritic to stamp it as fabricated to enhance the glory of the greatprophet who had been a pillar of the throne. Yet nothing is more likelythan that tradition has here preserved a bit of history, extraordinary, but real. There is not the least improbability in regarding the case asone of the many revivals from the deathlike trance that have been notedby writers ancient and modern. It is entirely reasonable to suppose thatthe trance in which the seemingly dead man lay was broken either by theshock of his fall into the prophet's tomb, or coincidently therewith;and stranger coincidences have happened. Such a happening would beprecisely the sort of thing to live in popular tradition, and to beincorporated into the annals of the time. Here it may be rejoined that this is only a hypothesis. Only that, to besure. But so is the allegation that the story is a mere fantasticfabrication only a hypothesis. Demonstration of the actual fact past allcontroversy being out of the question, all that can be offered for theattempt to rate the narrative at its proper value, either as history oras fiction, is hypothesis. The choice lies for us between twohypotheses. Surely, that hypothesis is the more credible which is basedon a solid body of objective facts, and meets all the conditions of thecase. Will it be replied to this that the critics can show for theirhypothesis the admitted fact of the human proclivity to invent legendsof miracle? The decisive answer is that the burden of proof rests on himwho contests any statement ostensibly historical. If such a statement befound to square with admitted objective facts, it must be acceptednotwithstanding considerations drawn from the subjective tendency toinvent extraordinary tales. Were raisings of the "dead" recorded in the Old Testament alone, objection would less often be offered to this transference of them, along with other occurrences once deemed miraculous, to a place in thenatural order of things. The statistics of premature burial and of theresuscitation of the apparently dead before burial are sufficientlystrong to throw grave doubt on any contention that the resuscitationsnarrated of Elijah[17] and Elisha[18] do not belong in that historicalseries. It has been frequently observed, however, that there is muchreluctance to apply to the New Testament the methods and canons ofcriticism that are applied to the Old. It will be so in the presentcase, through apprehension of somehow detracting from the distinctiveglory of Christ. That fear will not disturb one who sees that glory notin his "mighty works, " the like of which were wrought by the prophets, but in the spiritual majesty of his personality, the divineness of hismessage to the world, and of the life and death that illustrated it. One case, at least, among Jesus' raisings of the "dead, " that of theyoung daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, [19] is admitted even bysceptical critics to have been a resuscitation from the trance thatmerely simulates death. But the fact that there is a record of hissaying in this case, "the child is not dead, but sleepeth, " and norecord of his saying the same at the bier of the widow's son, [20] isslight ground, yet all the ground there is, against the greatprobabilities to the contrary, for regarding the latter case as sotranscendently different from the former as the actual reëmbodiment of adeparted spirit recalled from another world. Were these the only twocases of restoration to life in the ministry of Jesus, it is mostprobable that they would be regarded as of the same kind. The raising of Lazarus[21] presents peculiar features, in view of whichit is generally regarded as of another kind, and the greatest ofmiracles, so stupendous that the Rev. W. J. Dawson, in his recent _Lifeof Christ_, written from an evangelical standpoint, says of it: "Eventhe most devout mind may be forgiven occasional pangs of incredulity. "But the considerations already presented are certainly sufficient tojustify a reëxamination of the case. And it is to be borne in mind thatthe question at issue is, not what the eye-witnesses at that timebelieved, not what the Church from that time to this has believed, notwhat we are willing to believe, or would like to believe, but what allthe facts with any bearing on the case, taken together, fully justify usin believing as to the real nature of it. What Jesus is recorded as saying of it is, of course, of primeimportance. "Our friend Lazarus is fallen asleep, but I go that I mayawake him out of sleep. " Were this all, the case might easily have beenclassed as one of trance. The disciples, however, understood Jesus tospeak of natural sleep. "Then Jesus therefore said unto them plainly, _Lazarus is dead_. " Tradition puts the maximum meaning into this word"dead. " But if this word here qualifies the preceding word, "fallenasleep, " so also is it qualified by that; the two are mutuallyexplanatory, not contradictory. These alternatives are before us: Is themaximum or the minimum meaning to be assigned to the crucial word"dead"? For the minimum, one can say that a deathly trance, already madevirtual death by immediate interment, would amply justify Jesus in usingthe word "dead" in order to impress the disciples with the gravity ofthe case, as not a natural but a deathly, and, in the existingsituation, a fatal sleep. For the maximum, no more can be advanced thanthe hazardous assertion that Jesus _must_ have used the word withtechnical precision in its customary sense; an assertion of courseprotected from disproof by our ignorance of the actual fact. [22] Butwhatever support this view of the case derives from such ignorance isoverbalanced by the support supplied to the other view by the longhistory of revivals from the deathly trance, and by the probabilitieswhich that history creates. Many, to whom the view here proposed seems not only new, but unwelcome, and even revolutionary, may reasonably prefer to suspend judgment forreflection; but meanwhile some further considerations may beentertained. 1. Aside from the unwillingness to abandon a long-cherished belief onany subject whatever, which is both a natural, and, when not pushed toan unreasonable length, a desirable brake on all inconsiderate change, no practical interest is threatened by the adoption of the view heresuggested. Religious interest, so far as it is also intelligent, iscertainly not threatened. The evidences of Jesus' divine character andmission resting, as for modern men it rests, not on remote wonders, buton now acknowledged facts of an ethical and spiritual kind, isaltogether independent of our conclusion whether it was from actual oronly apparent death that Lazarus was raised. Since all the mighty workswrought by Jesus, and this among them, were identical in type with thosewrought by the ancient prophets, with whom his countrymen classed him inhis lifetime, their evidential significance could be, even for theeye-witnesses at that tomb, no greater for him than for anElisha, --signs of a divine mission attesting itself by works of mercy. 2. As works of mercy these raisings from the "dead, " including that ofLazarus, rank far higher in the view of them here proposed than in thetraditional view. This regards them as the recall of departed spiritsfrom what is hoped to be "a better world. " Yet this, while it turnssorrow for a time into joy, involves not only the recurrence of thatsorrow in all its keenness, but also a second tasting of the painspreliminary to the death-gate, when the time comes to pass that gateagain. But in the other view, a raising from the death that is onlysimulated is a merciful deliverance from a calamity greater than simpledeath, if that be any calamity at all, --the fate of burial alive. In theformer view, therefore, the quality of mercy, distinctive of the mightyworks of Jesus, is imperfectly demonstrable. In the present view, as therescue of the living from death in one of its most horrible forms, it isabundantly conspicuous. 3. The onlookers by the tomb of Lazarus doubtless regarded his awakeningas revival from actual death. Their opinion, however, does not bind ourjudgment any more than it is bound by the opinion of other onlookers, that Jesus' healing of the insane and epileptic was through theexpulsion of demons that possessed them. In each instance it wasunderstood as a sign of control over beings belonging to another world. But such an attestation of Jesus' divine mission, having been supersededfor us by proofs of higher character, is now no more needful for us inthe case of the "dead" than in the case of the "demons. " 4. The power of breaking the deathly trance, of quickening the dormantlife, reënergizing the collapsed nervous organism, and ending itsparalysis of sensation and motion, may be reasonably regarded as powerof the same psychical kind that Jesus regularly exerted in healing thesufferers from nervous disorders who were reputed victims of demoniacpossession. [23] In this view these resuscitations from apparent deathappear in natural coherence with the many other works of mercy thatJesus wrought as the Great Physician of his people, and may be regardedas the crown and consummation of all his restorative ministries. Jesus'thanksgiving after the tomb had been opened--"Father, I thank thee thatthou hast heard me"--shows that he had girded himself for a supremeeffort by concentrating the utmost energy of his spirit in prayer. Physically parallel with this was the intensity of voice put into hiscall to the occupant of the tomb. This is better represented in theoriginal than in our translation: "He shouted with a great voice, 'Lazarus, come forth. '" The whole record indicates the utmost tension ofall his energies, and closely comports with the view that this stood tothe sequel in the relation of cause to effect. [24] Another circumstancenot without bearing on the case is the energizing power of the intensesympathy with the bereaved family that stirred the soul of Jesus to weepand groan with them. And it is not without significance that this strongfactor appears active in the larger number of the Biblical cases, --threeof them only children, two of these the children of the pitiable classof widows. Peculiar, then, as was the case of Lazarus, our examination of itreveals no substantial ground for insisting that it was essentiallyunlike the previous case of the ruler's daughter, that it was thebringing back into a decaying body of a spirit that had entered into theworld of departed souls. The actual fact, of course, is indemonstrable. Our conclusion has to be formed wholly upon the probabilities of thecase, and must be formed in a reasonable choice between the greaterprobability and the less. The restoration of Dorcas to life by Peter, recorded in the book ofActs, [25] needs no special discussion beyond the various considerationsalready adduced in this chapter. The case of Eutychus, recorded in thesame book, [26] requires mention only lest it should seem to have beenforgotten, as it is not in point at all. The record makes it highlyprobable that the supposed death was nothing more than the loss ofconsciousness for a few hours in consequence of a fall from the window. * * * * * If one should here suggest that no mention has yet been made of theresurrection of Jesus himself, it must be pointed out that this is afact of a totally different kind from any of the foregoing cases. Tospeak, as many do, of the "resurrection of Lazarus" is a misuse ofwords. Resuscitation to life in this world, and resurrection, the risingup of the released spirit into the life of the world to come, are asdistinct as are the worlds to which they severally belong. We hereconsider only the _raisings_ which restored to the virtually dead theirinterrupted mortal life. The _rising_ from the mortal into the immortalstate belongs to an entirely different field of study. * * * * * Apart, then, from traditional prepossessions, examination of theBiblical narratives discloses nothing to invalidate the hypothesis whichone who is acquainted with the copious record of apparent but unrealdeath must seriously and impartially consider. The reputedly miraculousraisings of the "dead" related in both the Old and the New Testamentmay, with entire reason, and without detriment to religion, be classedwith such as are related outside of the Scriptures, in ancient times aswell as modern, and as phenomena wholly within the natural order, however extraordinary. The practical result of such a conclusion islikely to be a gain for the historicity of the Scripture narratives inthe estimate of a large class of thoughtful minds. FOOTNOTES: [12] An objection to the historicity of the raising of Lazarus which ismade on the ground that so great a work, if historical, would have beenrelated by more than one of the Evangelists, yields on reflection thepossibility that Jesus may have effected more than the three raisingsrecorded of him. John is the sole narrator of the raising of Lazarus. But he omits notice of the two raisings recorded by the otherEvangelists, while Matthew and Mark do not record the raising of thewidow's son recorded by Luke. All this suggests that the record may havepreserved for us specimens rather than a complete list of this class ofmiracles. (Compare John xxi. 25. ) [13] "We have frequent cases of trance, ... Where the parties seem todie, but after a time the spirit returns, and life goes on as before. Inall this there is no miracle. Why may not the resuscitations in Christ'stime possibly have been similar cases? Is not this less improbable thanthat the natural order of the universe should have been setaside?"--_The Problem of Final Destiny_, by William B. Brown, D. D. , 1899. [14] On account of the ceremonial "uncleanness" caused by the dead body. See Numbers v. 2, and many similar passages. [15] _Buried Alive_ (Universal Truth Publishing Co. , Chicago). See also_Premature Burial_, by D. Walsh (William Wood & Co. , New York), and_Premature Burial_, by W. Tebb and E. P. Vollum (New Amsterdam Book Co. , New York). [16] Other writers might be mentioned, as Mme. Necker (1790), Dr. Vigné(1841). Yet on the other hand it is alleged, that "none of the numerousstories of this dreadful accident which have obtained credence from timeto time seem to be authentic" (_American Cyclopedia_, art. "Burial"). Allowing a wide margin for exaggeration and credulity, there iscertainly a residuum of fact. A correspondent of the (London)_Spectator_ a few years since testified to a distressing case in his ownfamily. [17] Kings xvii. 17-23. [18] Kings iv. 32-36. [19] Mark v. 35-43. [20] Luke vii. 12-16. [21] John xi. 11-44. [22] Was Jesus aware that Lazarus was really not dead? It is impossibleto reach a positive conclusion. In some directions his knowledge wascertainly limited. That he was not aware of the reality might beinferred from his seeming to have allowed his act to pass for what, inthe view of it here suggested, it was not, --the recall to life of oneactually dead. This, however, assumes the completeness of a record whosesilence on this point cannot be pressed as conclusive. It is, indeed, unlikely that Jesus knew all that medical men now know. But awareness ofany fact may be in varying degrees from serious suspicion up to positivecertitude. While far from positiveness, awareness may exist in a degreethat gives courage for resolute effort resulting in clear and fullverification. Jesus may have been ignorant of the objective reality ofLazarus's condition, and yet have been very hopeful of being empoweredby the divine aid he prayed for (John xi. 41) to cope with itsuccessfully. [23] See pages 28, 29, Note. [24] Jesus' works of healing are explicitly attributed by theEvangelists to a peculiar power that issued from him. In Mark v. 30, Luke vi. 19, and viii. 46, the original word _dunamis_, which theAuthorized Version translates "virtue, " is more correctly rendered"power" in the Revised Version. Especially noticeable is the peculiarphraseology of Mark v. 30: "Jesus perceiving in himself that the powerproceeding from him had gone forth (R. V. ). " The peculiar circumstancesof the case suggest that the going forth of this power might be motivedsub-consciously, as well as by conscious volition. [25] Acts ix. 36-42. [26] Acts xx. 9-13. IV IV SYNOPSIS. --A clearer conception of miracle approached. --Works of Jesus once reputed miraculous not so reputed now, since not now transcending, as once, the existing range of knowledge and power. --This transfer of the miraculous to the natural likely to continue. --No hard and fast line between the miraculous and the non-miraculous. --Miracle a provisional word, its application narrowing in the enlarging mastery of the secrets of nature and life. At this point it seems possible to approach a clearer understanding ofthe proper meaning to attach to the generally ill-defined and hazy term_miracle_. [27] Matthew Arnold's fantastic illustration of the idea ofmiracle by supposing a pen changed to a pen-wiper may fit some miracles, especially those of the Catholic hagiology, but, if applied to those ofJesus, would be a caricature. In the New Testament a reputed miracle isnot any sort of wonderful work upon any sort of occasion, but an act ofbenevolent will exerted for an immediate benefit, [28] and transcendingthe then existing range of human intelligence to explain and power toachieve. The historic reality of at least some such acts performed byJesus is acknowledged by critics as free from the faintest trace oforthodox bias as Keim: "The picture of Jesus, the worker of miracles, belongs to the first believers in Christ, and is no invention. " It has already been noted that a considerable number of the then reputedmiracles of Jesus, particularly his works of healing, do not now, asthen, transcend the existing range of knowledge and power, andaccordingly are no longer reputed miraculous. And one cannot reasonablybelieve that a limit to the understanding and control of forces inNature and mind that now are more or less occult has been alreadyreached. It is, therefore, not incredible that some of the mighty worksof Jesus, which still transcend the existing limits of knowledge andpower, and so are still reputed miraculous, and are suspected by many asunhistorical, may in some yet remote and riper stage of humanity betransferred, as some have already been, to the class of thenon-miraculous and natural. Dr. Robbins, Dean of the General Theological Seminary, New York, afterremarking that "the word _miracle_ has done more to introduce confusioninto Christian Evidences than any other, " goes on to say: "To animalscertain events to them inexplicable are signs of the presence of humanintelligence and power. To men these miracles of Christ are signs ofdivine intelligence and power. But how is miracle to be differentiatedfrom other providential dealings of God? Not by removing him furtherfrom common events. Abstruse speculations concerning the relation ofmiracles to other physical phenomena may be safely left to theadjustment of an age which shall have advanced to a more perfectsynthesis of knowledge than the present can boast. "[29] The truth to which such considerations conduct is, that no hard and fastline can be drawn between the miraculous and the non-miraculous. To theuntutored mind, like that of the savage who thought it miraculous that achip with a message written on it had talked to the recipient, thesimplest thing that he cannot explain is miraculous: "_omne ignotum promirifico_, " said Tacitus. As the range of knowledge and power widens, the range of the miraculous narrows correspondingly. Some twenty yearssince, the International Sunday-school Lessons employed as a proof ofthe divinity of Christ the reputedly miraculous knowledge which heevinced in his first interview with Nathanael of a solitary hour inNathanael's experience. [30] Since then it has been demonstrated[31] bypsychical research that the natural order of the world includestelepathy, and the range of the miraculous has been correspondinglyreduced without detriment to the argument for the divinity of Christ, now rested on less precarious ground. Under such conditions as we have reviewed a miracle cannot always be oneand the same thing. Miracle must therefore be defined as being what ourwhole course of thought has suggested that it is: in general, an elasticword; in particular, a provisional word, --a word whose applicationnarrows with the enlarging range of human knowledge[32] and power whichfor the time it transcends; a word whose history, in its record ofranges already transcended, prompts expectation that ranges still beyondmay be transcended in the illimitable progress of mankind. Professor LeConte says that miracle is "an occurrence or a phenomenon according to alaw higher than any yet known. " Thus it is a case of human ignorance, not of divine interference. On the other hand, we must believe that the goal of progress is a flyinggoal; that human attainment can never reach finality unless men cease tobe. And so all widening of human knowledge and power must ever disclosefurther limitations to be transcended. There will always be a _Beyond_, in which dwells the secret of laws still undiscovered, that underliemysteries unrevealed and marvels unexplained. This will have to beadmitted, especially, by those to whom the marvellous is synonymouswith the incredible. We have not been able to eviscerate even theseprosaic and matter-of-fact modern times of marvels whose secret lies inthe yet uncatalogued or indefinable powers of the mysterious agent thatwe name _life_: witness many well verified facts recorded by the Societyfor Psychical Research. [33] How, then, is it consistent to affirm thatno such marvels in ancient records are historical realities? Nay, may itnot be true that the ancient days of seers and prophets, the days ofJesus, days of the sublime strivings of great and lonely souls forcloser converse with the Infinite Spirit behind his mask of Nature, offered better conditions for marvellous experiences and deeds thanthese days of scientific laboratories and factories, and world-marketsand world-politics? FOOTNOTES: [27] "Early and mediæval theologians agree in conceiving the miraculousas being above, not contrary to, nature. The question entered on a newphase when Hume defined a miracle as a violation of nature, and assertedthe impossibility of substantiating its actual occurrence. The moderndiscussion has proceeded largely in view of Hume's destructivecriticism. Assuming the possibility of a miracle, the questions of factand of definition remain. "--_Dictionary of Psychology. _ "When we find the definition for which we are searching, the miraculouswill no longer be a problem. "--PROFESSOR W. SANDAY, at the AnglicanChurch Congress, 1902. [28] For exceptions see Matthew xxi. 19; Acts xiii. 10, 11. [29] _A Christian Apologetic_, p. 97. [30] John i. 47-50. [31] In the opinion of such psychologists as Professor William James, ofHarvard, the late Professor Henry Sidgwick, of Cambridge, England, andothers of like eminence. [32] A hint of this was given by Augustine: "Portentum non fit contranaturam, sed contra quam est nota natura. "--_De Civitate Dei. _ [33] Consult the late F. W. H. Myers's remarkable volumes on _HumanPersonality and Survival after Death_ (Longmans, Green & Co. ). V V SYNOPSIS. --Biblical miracles the effluence of extraordinary lives. --Life the world's magician and miracle worker; its miracles now termed _prodigies_. --Miracle the natural product of an extraordinary endowment of life. --Life the ultimate reality. --What any man can achieve is conditioned by the psychical quality of his life. --Nothing more natural, more supernatural, than life. --The derived life of the world filial to the self-existent life of God, "begotten, not made. "--Miracle, as the product of life, the work of God. Be it noted, now, that the marvellous phenomena of the Biblical record, whatever else be thought of them, are, even to a superficial view, theextraordinary effluence of extraordinary lives. Here at length we gain aclearer conception of miracle. _Life_ is the world's greatmagician, --life, so familiar, yet so mysterious; so commonplace, yet sotranscendent. No miracle is more marvellous than its doings witnessed inthe biological laboratory, or more inexplicable than its transformationof dead matter into living flesh, its development of a Shakespeare froma microscopic bit of protoplasm. But its mysterious processes are toocommon for general marvel; we marvel only at the uncommon. The boy ZerahColburn in half a minute solved the problem, "How many seconds since thebeginning of the Christian era?" We prefer to call this a prodigy ratherthan a miracle, --a distinction more verbal than real; and we fancy wehave explained it when we say that such arithmetical power was apeculiar endowment of his mental life. Now all of the inexplicable, inimitable reality that at any time has to be left by the baffledintellect as an unsolved wonder under the name of miracle is justthat, --_the natural product of an extraordinary endowment of life_. Moreof its marvellous capability is latent in common men, in thesubconscious depths of being, than has ever yet flashed forth in thecareer of uncommon men. Some scientists say that it depends on chemicaland physical forces. It indeed uses these to build the various bodies itinhabits, but again it leaves these to destroy those bodies when itquits them. The most constant and ubiquitous phenomenon in the world, the ultimate reality in the universe, is _life_, revealing its presencein innumerable modes of activity, from the dance of atoms in the rock tothe philosophizing of the sage and the aspirations of the saint, --thecreator of Nature, the administrator of the regular processes we callthe laws of Nature, the author of the wonders men call miraculousbecause they are uncommon and ill understood. The works of which any man is naturally capable are conditioned by thepsychical quality of his life, and its power to use the forces ofNature. Through differences of vital endowment some can use color, aswonderful painters, and others employ sound, as wonderful musicians, inways impossible to those otherwise endowed. So "a poet is born, notmade. " So persons of feeble frame, stimulated by disease or frenzied bypassion, have put forth preternatural and prodigious muscular strength. By what we call "clairvoyant" power life calls up in intelligentperception things going on far beyond ocular vision. By what we call"telepathic" power life communicates intelligence with life separated bymiles of space. Such are some of the powers that have been discovered, and fully attested, but not explained, as belonging to the world'smaster magician, _Life_. And when the poet asks, -- "Ah, what will our children be, The men of a hundred thousand, a million summers away?" we can only answer with the Apostle: "It doth not yet appear what weshall be. " But we cannot deem it likely that the powers of life, "Deep seated in our mystic frame, " and giving forth such flashes of their inherent virtue, have alreadyreached their ultimate development. We look with wonder and awe into the secret shrine of life, where twoscarcely visible cells unite to form the human being whose thought shallarrange the starry heavens in majestic order, and harness the titanicenergies of Nature for the world's work. There we behold the realsupernatural. Nothing is more natural than life, and nothing also moresupernatural. Biology studies all the various forms that the world showsof it, and affirms that life, though multiform, is one. This embryologyattests, showing that the whole ascent of life through diverse formsfrom the lowest to the highest, during the millions of years since lifefirst manifested its presence on this globe, is recapitulated in thestages of growth through which the human being passes in the few monthsbefore its birth. And philosophy, which does not seek the living amongthe dead, affirms, _omne vivum ex vivo_. The varied but unitary life ofthe world is the stream of an exhaustless spring. It is filial to thelife of God, the Father Almighty. What the ancient creed affirmed of theChrist as the Son of God--whom his beloved disciple recognized as "theeternal life which was with the Father and was manifested untous[34]"--may be truly affirmed of the mysterious reality that is knownas life: "Begotten not made; being of one substance with the Father;through whom [or which] all things were made. " Looking from the derivedand finite life of the world, visible only in the signs of its presence, but in its reality no more visible than him "whom no man hath seen, norcan see, " up to the life underived, aboriginal, infinite, we recognize_God_ and _Life_ as terms of identical significance. How superficial thenotion of miracles as "the personal intervention of God into the chainof cause and effect, " in which he is the constant vital element. If anevent deemed miraculous is ever ascribed, as of old, to "the finger ofGod, " the reality behind the phenomenon is simply a higher or a strongerpower of life than is recognized in an event of a common type--life thatis one with the infinite and universal Life, "Life that in me has rest, As I, undying Life, have power in Thee. " FOOTNOTES: [34] 1 John i. 2. VI VI SYNOPSIS. --The question, both old and new, now confronting theologians. --Their recent retreat upon the minimum of miracle. --The present conflict of opinion in the Church. --Its turning-point reached in the antipodal turn-about in the treatment of miracles from the old to the new apologetics. --Revision of the traditional idea of the supernatural required for theological readjustment. The present line of thought has now reached the point where an importantquestion confronts us, --a question not wholly new. Within the memory ofliving men theologians have been compelled to ask themselves: What ifthe geologists should establish facts that contradict our Biblicallyderived doctrine that the universe was made in a week? Again have theybeen constrained to put to themselves the question: What if theevolutionists should supersede our doctrine that the creation is theimmediate product of successive fiats of the Creator by showing that itcame gradually into existence through the progressive operation offorces immanent in the cosmos? Still again have they had to face thequestion: What if modern criticism by the discovery of demonstrableerrors in the Sacred Writings should fault our doctrine that, as theWord of God, the Bible is free from all and every error? In everyinstance the dreaded concession, when found at length to be enforced bymodern learning, has been found to bring, not the loss that had beenapprehended, but clear gain to the intellectual interests of religion. Now it is this same sort of question which returns with theuncertainties and difficulties widely felt in the Church to be gatheringover its hitherto unvexed belief in miracles as signs of a divineactivity more immediate than it has recognized in the regular processesof Nature. The majority of uneducated Christians still hold, as formerly in each ofthe points just mentioned, to the traditional view. Miracle as a divineintervention in the natural order, a more close and direct divinecontact with the course of things than is the case in ordinaryexperience, they regard as the inseparable and necessary concomitant andproof of a divine Revelation. To deny miracles, thus understood, iscensured as equivalent to denial of the reality of the Revelation. Butit is rather surprising, because it is rare, to find a man of such notein literature as Dr. W. Robertson Nicoll affirming[35] that one cannotbe a Christian without believing at least two miracles, the virginbirth and the physical resurrection of the Christ. Without comment onthe significance of this retreat upon the minimum of miracle, it musthere be noted that a minority of the Church, not inferior to theirbrethren in learning and piety, believe that there are no tides in God'spresence in Nature, that his contact with it is always of the closest:-- "Closer is he than breathing, and nearer than hands or feet. " All natural operations are to them divine operations. "Nature, " said Dr. Martineau, "is God's mask, not his competitor. " While his agency inNature may be _recognized_ at one time more than at another, it _exists_at any time fully as much as at any other. In the interest of thisfundamental truth of religion they affirm that miracles in thetraditional sense of the word, and in their traditional limitation tothe small measure of time and space covered by Biblical narratives, never occurred. Events reputed miraculous have indeed occurred, butsimply as unusual, inexplicable phenomena in the natural order ofthings, the natural products of exceptionally endowed life, and, whetherin ancient time or modern, the same sort of thing the world over. To theargument that this involves denial of a supernatural Revelation theyreply that it is mere reasoning in a circle. For if one begs thequestion at the outset by defining supernatural Revelation as revelationnecessarily evidenced by miraculous divine intervention, then, ofcourse, denial of this is denial of that, and how is the argumentadvanced? But, besides this, the question-begging definition is afallacious confusing of the contents of the Revelation with itsconcomitants, and of its essentially spiritual character with phenomenain the sphere of the senses. The turning-point in this argument between the two parties in the Churchhas been reached in the antipodal change, already referred to, from theold to the new apologetics, --a change whose inevitable consequences donot yet seem to be clearly discerned by either party in the discussion. The contention that denial of miracles as traditionally understoodcarries denial of supernatural Revelation has been virtually set aside, with its question-begging definition and circular reasoning, by theapologetics now current among believers in at least a minimum of miraclein the traditional sense of the word, --especially in the two chiefmiracles of the virgin birth and the physical resurrection of Jesus. Asan eminent representative of these the late Dr. A. B. Bruce may becited. These adduce "the moral miracle, " the sinlessness of Jesus, asevidential for the reality of the physical miracles as its "congruousaccompaniments. " "If, " says Dr. Bruce, "we receive Him as the greatmoral miracle, we shall receive much more for His sake. "[36] But what aturn-about of the traditional argument on the evidences! The olderapologetes argued: This crown of miraculous power bespeaks the royaldignity of the wearer. The modern apologete reasons: This royalcharacter must have a crown of miraculous power corresponding with hismoral worth. In this antipodal reverse of Christian thought it is quiteplain that for evidential purposes the miracle is stripped of itsancient value. And it has already been observed that modern knowledgehas now transferred many of the Biblical miracles to the new roomsdiscovered for them in the natural order of things. It is not premature, therefore, for leaders of Christian thought to put once more tothemselves the question, constantly recurring as learning advances:What theological readjustment should we have to make, if obliged toconcede that the ancient belief in miracle is not inseparable frombelief in a supernatural Revelation, not indispensable to belieftherein? What modified conception must we form, if constrained to admitthat the living God, ever immanent in Nature, intervenes in Nature nomore at one time than another? What, indeed, but a revised and true inplace of a mistaken conception of the term _Supernatural_? FOOTNOTES: [35] "The Church asks, and it is entitled to ask the critic: Do youbelieve in the Incarnation and Resurrection of Jesus Christ?... If hereplies in the negative, he has missed the way, and has put himselfoutside of the Church of Christ. "--_The Church's One Foundation_, p. 4. [Note that "Incarnation" and "Resurrection" are terms which Dr. Nicollconstrues as denoting physical miracles. ] What Dr. Nicoll here means by "outside of the Church" he indicates bysaying elsewhere, that philosophers who reckon goodness as everything, and miracles as impossible, "are not Christians" (_op. Cit. _, p. 10). This conditioning of Christian character upon an intellectual judgmentconcerning the reality of remote occurrences is both unbiblical andunethical, as well as absurd when practically applied. Some years since, Dr. E. A. Abbott, who admits no miracle in the life of Christ, publisheda book, _The Spirit on the Waters_, in which he inculcated the worshipof Christ. Yet, according to Dr. Nicoll, such a man is no Christian! [36] _The Miraculous Element in the Gospels_, p. 353. VII VII SYNOPSIS. --Account to be made of the law of atrophy through disuse. --The virgin birth and the corporeal resurrection of Jesus, the two miracles now insisted on as the irreducible minimum, affected by this law. --The vital truths of the incarnation and immortality independent of these miracles. --These truths now placed on higher ground in a truer conception of the supernatural. --The true supernatural is the spiritual, not the miraculous. --Scepticism bred from the contrary view. --The miracle narratives, while less evidential for religion, not unimportant for history. --Psychical research a needful auxiliary for the scientific critic of these. To the true conception of the supernatural we shall presently come. Butwe cannot proceed without briefly reminding ourselves of the certainconsequences of this now far advanced dropping of miracles by modernapologetics from their ancient use as evidences of a supernaturalRevelation. We are not ignorant of the law, which holds throughout thematerial, the mental, and the moral realms, that disuse tends to atrophyand extinction. Disused organs cease to exist, as in the eyelesscave-fish. For centuries the story of the miraculous birth of Jesus wasserviceable for confirmation of his claim to be the Son of God. In theaddress of the angel of the annunciation to Mary that claim is expresslyrested on the miraculous conception of "the holy thing. "[37] But asethical enlightenment grows, the conviction grows that, whether thephysiological ground of that claim be tenable or not, the ethical groundof it is essentially higher. _Father_ and _son_ even in humanrelationships are terms of more than physiological import. It is matterof frequent experience that, where the ethical character of suchrelationship is lacking, the physiological counts for nothing. Moreover, the divine sonship of Jesus in a purely ethical view rests onground not only higher but incontestable. And so in our time theologiansprefer to rest it on foundations that cannot be shaken, on his moraloneness with God, the divineness of his spirit, the ideal perfectness ofhis life. The strength of this position being realized, the world beginsto hear from Christian thinkers the innovating affirmation that beliefof the miraculous birth can no longer be deemed essential toChristianity; else it would not have been left unmentioned in two of thefour Gospels, and in every extant Apostolic letter. And now we heartheologians saying: "I accept it, but I place it no more among theevidences of Christianity. I defend it, but cannot employ it in thedefence of supernatural Revelation. " Such a stage of thought is onlytransitional. An antiquated argument does not long survive in the worldof thought. [38] Military weapons that have become unserviceable soonfind their way either to the museum or the foundry. It is shortsightednot to foresee the inevitable effect on our theological material of thelaw of atrophy through disuse. The case of the miracle is the case of apillar originally put in for the support of an ancient roof. When theroof has a modern truss put beneath it springing from wall to wall, thepillar becomes an obstacle, and is removed. But as in such a case the roof, otherwise supported, does not fall inwhen the pillar is removed, so neither is the central Christian truth ofthe incarnation imperilled by any weakening or vanishing of belief inthe doctrine of the virgin birth. In a discussion of the subject inConvocation at York, England, while these pages were being written, theDean of Ripon (Dr. Boyd Carpenter) urged that it must be borne in mindthat the incarnation and the virgin birth were two different things, andthat some who found difficulty in the latter fully accepted the former. In a recent sermon Dr. Briggs insists likewise upon this: "The virginbirth is only one of many statements of the mode of incarnation.... Thedoctrine of the incarnation does not depend upon the virgin birth.... Itis only a minor matter connected with the incarnation, and should have asubordinate place in the doctrine.... At the same time the virgin birthis a New Testament doctrine, and we must give it its proper place andimportance.... The favorite idea of the incarnation among the people hasever been the simpler one of the virgin birth, as in the Ave Maria. Thetheologians have ever preferred the more profound doctrine of the Hymnof the Logos [John i. 1-18]. "[39] Nay, it may even be found that theweakening of belief in the incarnation as an isolated and miraculousevent may tend to promote a profounder conception of it, that brings thedivine and the human into touch and union at all points instead of inone point. [40] A similar change of thought, less remarked than its significancedeserves, is concerned with that other great miracle, the corporealresurrection of Jesus, which such writers as Dr. Nicoll couple with thatof his virgin birth as the irreducible minimum of miracle, belief inwhich is essential to Christian discipleship. [41] For many centuries theresurrection story in the Gospels has served as the conclusive proofboth of the divine sonship of Jesus, [42] and of our own resurrection toimmortality. [43] In the churches it is still popularly regarded as thesupreme, sufficient, and indispensable fact required for the basis offaith. But in many a Christian mind the thought has dawned, that asingle fact cannot give adequate ground for the general inference of auniversal principle; that a remote historical fact, however stronglyattested, can evince only what _has_ taken place in a given case, notwhat _will_ or _must_ occur in other cases; while it is also inevitablymore or less pursued by critical doubt of the attestations supportingit. This rising tide of reflection has compelled resort to higher ground, tothe inward evidences in the nature of mind that are more secure from thedoubt to which all that is merely external and historical is exposed. Aclear distinction has been discerned between the _real_ resurrection ofJesus--his rising from the mortal state into the immortal, and his_phenomenal_ resurrection--the manifestations of his change that arerelated as having been objectively witnessed. What took place in theinvisible world--his real resurrection--is now more emphasized byChristian thinkers than the phenomenal resurrection in the visibleworld. So conservatively orthodox a writer as Dr. G. D. Boardman goes sofar as to say: "After all, the real question in the matter of hisresurrection is not, 'Did Christ's body rise?' That is but asubordinate, incidental issue. " The real question, as Dr. Boardmanadmits, is, "Whether Jesus Christ himself is risen, and is aliveto-day. "[44] The main stress of Christian thought to-day is not laid, asformerly, on the phenomena recorded in the story of the resurrection, but on the psychological, moral, and rational evidences of aresurrection to immortality that until recent times were comparativelydisregarded. [45] Meanwhile the vindication of the reality of thephenomena related of the risen Jesus, including his bodily ascension, though not a matter of indifference to many of those who have found thehigher grounds of faith, has become to them of subordinate importance. It is well for Christian faith that its supersensuous and impregnablegrounds have been occupied. It is certain that ancient records ofexternal phenomena cannot in future constitute, as heretofore, thestronghold of faith. But it is by no means yet certain that they havelost serviceableness as, at least, outworks of the stronghold. While thedoctrine of the virgin birth seems to be threatened by atrophy, thedoctrine of the bodily resurrection, though retired from primary tosecondary rank, seems to be waiting rather for clarification by furtherknowledge. Something of an objective nature certainly lies at its basis;_something_ of an external sort, not the product of mere imagination, took place. To the fact thus indefinitely stated, that hallowing ofSunday as a day of sacred and joyful observance which is coeval with theearliest traditions, and antedates all records, is an attestation assignificant as any monumental marble. No hallucination theory, nogradual rise and growth of hope in the minds of a reflective few, canaccount for that solid primeval monument. But _what_ occurred, thereality in distinctness from any legendary accretions, we shall bebetter able to conclude, when the truth shall have been threshed outconcerning the reality, at present strongly attested, and as stronglycontroverted, of certain extraordinary but occult psychical powers. [46] A point of high significance for those who would cultivate a religiousfaith not liable to be affected by changes of intellectual outlook orinsight is, that this lower valuation of miracle observable amongChristian thinkers has not been reached through breaches made bysceptical doubts of the reality of a supernatural Revelation. Theyhave, of course, felt the reasonableness of the difficulties with whichtraditional opinions have been encumbered by the advance of knowledge. But so far from giving way thereupon to doubts of the reality of divineRevelation, they have sought and found less assailable defences fortheir faith in it than those that sufficed their fathers. And theirsatisfaction therewith stands in no sympathy with those who hold it amark of enlightenment to assume with Matthew Arnold, that "miracles donot happen. " It has resulted rather from reaching the higher grounds ofreligious thought, on which supernatural Revelation is recognized in itsessential character as distinctively moral and spiritual. The true supernatural is the _spiritual_, not the miraculous, a higherorder of Nature, not a contradiction of Nature. The Revelation of Jesuswas altogether spiritual. It consisted in the ideas of God which hecommunicated by his ministry and teaching, by his character and life. But this, the real supernatural, was not obvious as such to hiscontemporaries. They looked for it in the lower region of physicaleffects. And here the Church also in its embryonic spiritual life, inits proneness to externalize religion in forms of rite, and creed, andorganization, has thought to find it. Jesus' reproof, "Except ye seesigns and wonders ye will not believe, " is still pertinent to those whowill not have it that the supernatural Revelation--spiritual though itbe--can be recognized or believed in apart from an acknowledgment ofattendant miracles, wrought in physical nature by an intervention ofGod. Such a contention, however, is as futile and desperate as was JohnWesley's declaration, "The giving up of witchcraft is in effect thegiving up of the Bible. " Such mischievous fallacies succeed only inblinding many a mind to the real issue which the moral and spiritualRevelation of Jesus makes with men of the twentieth century. It is thesefallacies, and not their critics, that create the most ofscepticism. [47] But while the question whether miracles are credible has ceased to be ofvital importance, it has by no means lost all importance. On thecontrary, so long as the path of progress is guided by the lamp ofexperience, so long will it be of consequence that the historical recordof experience be found trustworthy. It may suit the overweening pridewhich defies both the past and the present to say with Bonaparte, thathistory is only a fable that men have agreed to believe. But it is ahuman interest, and a satisfaction of normal minds to establish, so faras reason permits, the credibility of every record ostensibly historic. To discover that ancient experiences, once supposed to be miraculousraisings from real death, may reasonably be classed with well attestedexperiences of to-day, better understood as resuscitations from adeathlike trance, should be welcomed by unprejudiced historical critics, as redeeming portions of the ancient record from mistaken disparagementas legendary. That further study may accredit as facts, or at least asfounded on facts, some other marvels in that record cannot, except byarrant dogmatism, be pronounced improbable. Nevertheless, it cannot beexpected that the legendary element, which both the Old and the NewTestament in greater and less degree exhibit, can ever be eliminated. Such stories as that of the origin of languages at Babel, and that ofthe resurrection of ancient saints at Jesus' resurrection areindubitable cases of it. But the legendary element, though permanent, isat present undefined. To define it is the problem of the criticalstudent, a problem most difficult to him whose judgment is leastsubjective; and he will welcome every contribution that advancingknowledge can supply. Regarding miracle as the natural product of exceptionally endowed life, there is no source from which more light can be shed on its Biblicalrecord than in those studies of the exceptional phenomena and occultpowers of life which are prosecuted by the Society for PsychicalResearch, whose results are recorded in its published _Proceedings_. Forthose familiar with this record the legendary element in the Bible tendsto shrink into smaller compass than many critics assign it. In theinterest both of the Bible and of science it is regrettable that theresults of these researches, though conducted by men of high eminencein the scientific world, still encounter the same hostile scepticismeven from some Christian believers that Hume directed against theBiblical miracles. Mr. Gladstone has put himself on record against thisphilistinism, saying that "psychical research is by far the mostimportant work that is being done in the world. " Were one disposed toprophesy, very reasonable grounds could be produced for the predictionthat, great as was the advance of the nineteenth century in physicalknowledge, the twentieth century will witness an advance in psychicalknowledge equally great. In this advance one may not unreasonablyanticipate that some, at least, of the Biblical miracles may be relievedfrom the scepticism that now widely discredits them. FOOTNOTES: [37] Luke i. 35. [38] To what extent the law of atrophy has begun to work upon thedoctrine of the virgin birth appears in the recent utterance of soeminent an evangelical scholar as Dr. R. F. Horton, of London. Thefollowing report of his remarks in a Christmas sermon in 1901 is takenfrom the _Christian World_, London. "We could not imagine Paul, Peter, and John all ignoring something essential to the Gospel they preached. Strictly speaking, this narrative in Matthew and Luke was one of thelatest touches in the Gospel, belonging to a period forty or fifty yearsafter the Lord had passed away, when men had begun to realize what hewas--the Son of God--and tried to express their conviction in this formor that. " The implication here is unmistakable, that, in Dr. Horton'sview, subjective considerations in the minds of pious believers, ratherthan objective fact, form the basis of the story. [39] See the Sermon on "Born of a Virgin, " in the volume on _TheIncarnation of Our Lord_. [40] "Christian thought has not erred by asserting too much concerningthe incarnation of God, but, on the contrary, too little.... If everoverblown by blasts of denial, it is for wanting breadth of base.... Menhave disbelieved the incarnation, because told that all there was of itwas in Christ; and they reject what is presented as exceptional to thegeneral way of God. They must be told to believe more; that the age-longway of God is in a perpetually increasing incarnation of life, whoseclimax and crown is the divine fulness of life in Christ. "--From adiscourse by the present writer on "Life and its Incarnations, " in thevolume, _New Points to Old Texts_. (James Clarke & Co. , London. ThomasWhittaker, New York, 1889. ) [41] See page 97 and Note. [42] Romans i. 4. [43] 1 Corinthians xv. 16-23. [44] _Our Risen King's Forty Days_, 1902. [45] In strong contrast with this are the reactionary protests of Dr. W. R. Nicoll: "To talk of the resurrection of the spirit is preposterous. The spirit does not die, and therefore cannot rise.... The oneresurrection of which the New Testament knows, the one resurrectionwhich allows to language any meaning, is the resurrection of the body, the resurrection which leaves the grave empty" (_op. Cit. _ p. 134). It should be noted here that Jesus' argument with the Sadducees on theresurrection (Luke xx. 37, 38) logically proceeds on the assumption thatliving after death and rising after death are convertible terms. Also, that the contrast involved in the idea of the resurrection (the_anastasis_, or rising up) is a contrast not between the grave and thesky, but between the lower life of mortals and the higher life immortal. For an extended exhibition of this line of evidence see "The Assuranceof Immortality, " and "The Present Pledge of Life to Come" (in twovolumes of discourses by the present writer), London, James Clarke & Co. New York, Thomas Whittaker, 1888 and 1889. [46] Could it have been only an apparition? The "census ofhallucinations" conducted some ten years since by the Society forPsychical Research evinced the reality of veridical apparitions ofdeceased persons at or near the time of their death, showing the numberof verified cases to be so large as to exclude the supposition of chancehallucination (see _Proceedings_, August, 1894). Or could it have been amaterial body suddenly becoming visible in a closed room, as narrated byLuke and John? First-class evidence, if there can be any such for suchoccurrences, has been exhibited for such phenomena as the passage ofsolid substances through intervening doors and walls--easy enough, saymathematicians, for a being familiar with the "fourth dimension"--and ofthe levitation of heavy bodies without physical support. (See_Proceedings_, January, 1894, and March, 1895. ) As to such thingsscepticism is doubtless in order, but dogmatic contradiction is not. _Sub judice lis est. _ [47] Professor Borden P. Bowne has thus exhibited this great mistake andits grievous consequence:-- "In popular thought, religious and irreligious alike, the natural issupposed to be something that runs itself without any internal guidanceor external interference. The supernatural, on the other hand, if therebe any such thing, is not supposed to manifest itself through thenatural, but by means of portents, prodigies, interpositions, departuresfrom, or infractions of, natural law in general. The realm of lawbelongs to the natural, and the natural runs itself. Hence, if we are tofind anything supernatural, we must look for it in the abnormal, thechaotic, the lawless, or that which defies all reduction to order thatmay be depended on. This notion underlies the traditional debate betweennaturalism and supernaturalism.... This unhappy misconception of therelation of the natural to the supernatural has practically led thegreat body of uncritical thinkers into the grotesque inversion of allreason--the more law and order, the less God. "--_Zion's Herald_, August22, 1900. VIII VIII SYNOPSIS. --The cardinal point in the present discussion, the reality not of miracles but of the supernatural. --Fallacy of pointing to physical events as essential characteristics of supernatural Revelation. --The character of a revelation determined not by its circumstances, but by its contents. --Moral nature supernatural to physical. --Nature a hierarchy of natures. --Supernatural Religion historically attested by the moral development it generates. --Transfer of its distinctive note from moral ideals to physical marvels a costly error. --Jesus' miracles _a_ revelation, of a type common with others before and since. --The unique Revelation of Jesus was in the higher realm of divine ideas and ideals. --These, while unrealized in human life, still exhibit the fact of a supernatural Revelation. --The distinction of natural and supernatural belongs to the period of moral progress up to the spiritual maturity of man in the image of God. The divine possibilities of humanity, imaged in Jesus, revealed as our inheritance and our prize. It remains finally to emphasize the point of cardinal importance in theconsiderations that have been presented. This is not the reality ofmiracles, but the reality of the supernatural, what it really is, asdistinct from what it has been thought to be. The advance of science andphilosophy has brought to the front this question: "Have those whoreject the claims of supernatural Religion been misinformed as to whatit is?" Is it, as they have been told, dependent for its attestation onsigns and wonders occurring in the sphere of the senses? Does it requireacceptance of these, as well as of its teachings? Or is itscharacteristic appeal wholly to the higher nature of man, relying forits attestation on the witness borne to it by this, rather than byextraordinary phenomena presented to the senses? There is at present nointellectual interest of Christianity more urgent than this: to presentto minds imbued with modern learning the true conception of thesupernatural and of supernatural Religion. Miracles, legitimately viewed as the natural product of extraordinarypsychical power, or, to phrase it otherwise, of an exceptional vitalendowment, belong not to the Hebrew race alone, nor did they cease whenthe last survivor of the Jewish apostles of Christianity passed away atthe end of the first century. This traditional opinion ought by thistime to have been entombed together with its long defunct relative, which represented this globe as the fixed centre of the revolvingheavens. Miracles have the same universality as human life. Nor willtheir record be closed till the evolution of life is complete. Animallife, advancing through geologic æons to the advent of man, in himreached its climax. Spiritual life, appearing in him as a new bud on anold stock, is evidently far from its climax still. To believe inmiracles, as rightly understood, is to believe in spirit and life, andin further unfoldings of their still latent powers. This, however, is just now of subordinate importance. The presentinterest of chief moment is a riddance of the hoary fallacy thatvitiates the current idea of a supernatural Revelation by looking forits specific characteristics to the physical world. By this deplorablefallacy Christian theology has blinded the minds of many scientific mento the essential claims of Christianity, with immense damage in thearrested development of their religious nature through the scepticisminevitably but needlessly provoked by this great mistake. When Elijahproclaims to idolaters that their deity is no God, and, as we read, corroborates his words by calling down fire from heaven to consume hissacrifice, it is reckoned as supernatural Revelation. But it is not soreckoned when the sage in the book of Proverbs proclaims to a nation ofreligious formalists the moral character of God: "To do righteousnessand justice is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice. " This isaccounted as ethical teaching, somewhat in advance of the times. A paganrather than a Christian way of thinking is discoverable here. In each ofthe cases cited the specific character of supernatural Revelation isequally evident, --the disclosure of spiritual truth above the naturalthought of the natural men to whom it came. The character of anyrevelation is determined by the character of the truth made known, notby the drapery of circumstances connected with the making known. Clothesdo not make the man, though coarse or careless people may think so. Whatbelongs to the moral and spiritual order is supernatural to whatbelongs to the material and physical order. This way of thinking will be forced on common minds by thoughtfulobservation of common things. Animate nature of the lowest rank, as inthe grass, is of a higher natural order than inanimate nature in thesoil the grass springs from. Sentient nature, as in the ox, is of ahigher order than the non-sentient in the grass. Self-conscious andreflective nature in the man is of a higher order than the selfless andnon-reflective nature in his beast of burden. In the composite being ofman all these orders of nature coexist, and each higher is supernaturalto the nature below it. Nature, the comprehensive term for _all thatcomes into being_, is a hierarchy of natures, rising rank above rankfrom the lowest to the highest. The highest nature known to us, supernatural to all below it, can only be the moral nature, whose fullsatisfaction is necessary to the highest satisfaction of a man, and inwhose complete development only can be realized in permanency hisperfected welfare as a social being. Now it is precisely in the progress of moral development thatsupernatural Religion manifests itself as a reality. Religion, indeed, is as natural to man as Art. But there is religion and Religion, asthere is art and Art--the sexual religion of the primitive Semites, theanimistic religion of China, the spiritual Religion that flowered on theMount of the Beatitudes, embryonic religion and Religion adult; all, indeed, natural, yet of lower and of higher grade. Doubtless, Religionof whatever grade outranks all other human activities by its distinctiveaspiration to transcend the bounds of space and time and sense, and tolink the individual to the universal; and so all Religion sounds, feeblyor distinctly, the note of the supernatural. But this is the resonantnote of the spiritual Religion which unfolds in the moral progress ofthe world. As moral nature is supernatural to the psychical and thephysical, so is its consummate bloom of spiritual Religion to be rankedas such, relatively to the religions which more or less dimly andblindly are yearning and groping toward the light that never was on seaor land. Thus defining the word according to the nature of the thing, supernatural Religion, with its corollary of supernatural Revelation notas an apparition from without, but as an unfolding from within, is botha fact and a factor in the development of spiritual man. The term _supernatural Religion_ has been rightly applied to that systemof religious conceptions, ideals, and motives, whose effective cultureof the moral nature is attested historically by a moral developmentsuperior to the product of any other known religion. Whether thegreatest saints of Christianity are all of them whiter souls than anythat can be found among the disciples of any other religion, may bematter for argument. There can be no gainsaying the fact that, of greatand lowly together, no other religion shows so many saints, or has soadvanced the general moral development in lands where it is widelyfollowed. But its essential character has been obscured, its appeal toman's highest nature foiled, and its power lamed by the wretched fallacythat has transferred its distinctive note of the supernatural from itsdivine ideals to the physical marvels embedded in the record of itsoriginal promulgation, even conditioning its validity and authority upontheir reality. Such is the false issue which, to the discredit ofChristianity, theology has presented to science. Such is the confusionof ideas that in the light of modern knowledge inevitably blocks the wayto a reasonable religious faith in multitudes of minds thereby offended. From this costly error Christian theology at length shows signs that itis about to extricate itself. [48] As to the Christian miracles, there can be no reasonable doubt that"mighty works, " deemed by many of his contemporaries superhuman, werewrought by Jesus. These, whatever they were, must be regarded as thenatural effluence of a transcendently endowed life. Taking place in thesphere of the senses, they were _a_ revelation of the type seen beforeand since in the lives of wonder-workers ancient and modern, in whom thepower of mind over matter, however astonishing and mysterious, isrecognized as belonging to the natural order of things no less than theunexplored Antarctic belongs to the globe. But _the_ Revelation which hegave to human thought as a new thing, a heavenly vision unprecedented, was in the higher realm of the moral and spiritual life. This was thetrue supernatural, whose reality and power are separable from all itsenvironment of circumstances, and wholly independent thereof. Thecharacteristic ideals of Jesus, his profound consciousness of God, hisfilial thought of God, his saturation with the conviction of his moraloneness with God, [49] his realization of brotherhood with the meanesthuman being, still transcend the common level of natural humanity evenamong his disciples. As thus transcendent they are supernatural still. Till reached and realized, they manifest the fact of a supernaturalRevelation in that peerless life as plainly as the sun is manifest inthe splendor of a cloudless day. In the coming but distant age, when man's spiritual nature, now soembryonic, shall have become adult, it will doubtless so pervade andrule the physical and psychical natures which it inhabits that thedistinction between natural and supernatural, so important in theperiod of its development, will become foreign alike to thought andspeech. But until the making of man in the image of God is complete, when the spiritual element in our composite being, now struggling fordevelopment, shall be manifest in its ultimate maturity and ascendencyas the distinctive and proper nature of humanity, it is of supremeimportance for the Christian teacher, who would point and urge to theheights of being, to free men's minds of error as to what the realsupernatural is. Not the fancied disturber of the world's orderedharmonies, but that highest Nature which is the moulder, the glory, andthe crown of all the lower. Imaged to us in the human perfectness of Jesus, the ideal Son of man, itis revealed as the distinctive inheritance and prize of the humanitythat essays to think the thoughts and walk the ways of God. To each ofus is it given in germ by our human birth, to be fostered and nourishedin converse with the Infinite Presence that inhabits all things, tillits divine possibilities appear in the ultimate "revealing of the sonsof God, "[50] full grown "according to the measure of the stature of thefulness of Christ. "[51] FOOTNOTES: [48] "Upon the conception of the supernatural as the personal, "says Professor Nash, "apologetics must found the claims ofChristianity. "--_Ethics and Revelation. _ [49] The words in which Jesus expresses this are much more extraordinaryand profoundly significant than any of those mighty works of his, thelike of which are recorded of the ancient prophets. Jesus was consciousof God as living in him, and of himself as living in God, in the unityof the one eternal life. Not merely as a man _of_ God, but as a man _in_God, as no other man has consciously been, does Jesus utter such sayingsas, "I am the light of the world, " "I and my Father are one. " (See"Jesus the Ideal Man, " by the present writer. _The New World_, June, 1897. ) [50] Romans viii. 19. [51] Ephesians iv. 13. New Testament Handbooks EDITED BY SHAILER MATHEWS _Professor of New Testament History and Interpretation, University of Chicago_ Arrangements are made for the following volumes, and the publishers will, on request, send notice of the issue of each volume as it appears and each descriptive circular sent out later; such requests for information should state whether address is permanent or not:-- THE HISTORY OF THE TEXTUAL CRITICISM OF THE NEW TESTAMENT Prof. MARVIN R. VINCENT, Professor of New Testament Exegesis, Union Theological Seminary. [_Now ready. _ Professor Vincent's contributions to the study of the New Testament rank him among the first American exegetes. His most recent publication is "A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistles to the Philippians and to Philemon" (_International Critical Commentary_), which was preceded by a "Students' New Testament Handbook, " "Word Studies in the New Testament, " and others. THE HISTORY OF THE HIGHER CRITICISM OF THE NEW TESTAMENT Prof. HENRY S. NASH, Professor of New Testament Interpretation, Cambridge Divinity School. [_Now ready. _ Of Professor Nash's "Genesis of the Social Conscience, " _The Outlook_ said: "The results of Professor Nash's ripe thought are presented in a luminous, compact, and often epigrammatic style. The treatment is at once masterful and helpful, and the book ought to be a quickening influence of the highest kind; it surely will establish the fame of its author as a profound thinker, one from whom we have a right to expect future inspiration of a kindred sort. " INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT Prof. B. WISNER BACON, Professor of New Testament Interpretation, Yale University. [_Now ready. _ Professor Bacon's works in the field of Old Testament criticism include "The Triple Tradition of Exodus, " and "The Genesis of Genesis, " a study of the documentary sources of the books of Moses. In the field of New Testament study he has published a number of brilliant papers, the most recent of which is "The Autobiography of Jesus, " in the _American Journal of Theology_. THE HISTORY OF NEW TESTAMENT TIMES IN PALESTINE Prof. SHAILER MATHEWS, Professor of New Testament History and Interpretation, The University of Chicago. [_Now ready. _ _The Congregationalist_ says of Prof. Shailer Mathews's recent work, "The Social Teaching of Jesus": "Re-reading deepens the impression that the author is scholarly, devout, awake to all modern thought, and yet conservative and pre-eminently sane. If, after reading the chapters dealing with Jesus' attitude toward man, society, the family, the state, and wealth, the reader will not agree with us in this opinion, we greatly err as prophets. " THE LIFE OF PAUL Prof. RUSH RHEES, President of the University of Rochester. Professor Rhees is well known from his series of "Inductive Lessons" contributed to the _Sunday School Times_. His "Outline of the Life of Paul, " privately printed, has had a flattering reception from New Testament scholars. THE HISTORY OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE Dr. C. W. VOTAW, Instructor in New Testament Literature, The University of Chicago. Of Dr. Votaw's "Inductive Study of the Founding of the Christian Church, " _Modern Church_, Edinburgh, says: "No fuller analysis of the later books of the New Testament could be desired, and no better programme could be offered for their study, than that afforded in the scheme of fifty lessons on the _Founding of the Christian Church_, by Clyde W. Votaw. It is well adapted alike for practical and more scholarly students of the Bible. " THE TEACHING OF JESUS Prof. GEORGE B. STEVENS, Professor of Systematic Theology, Yale University. [_Now ready. _ Professor Stevens's volumes upon "The Johannine Theology, " "The Pauline Theology, " as well as his recent volume on "The Theology of the New Testament, " have made him probably the most prominent writer on biblical theology in America. His new volume will be among the most important of his works. THE BIBLICAL THEOLOGY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT Prof. E. P. GOULD, Professor of New Testament Interpretation, Protestant Episcopal Divinity School, Philadelphia. [_Now ready. _ Professor Gould's Commentaries on the Gospel of Mark (in the _International Critical Commentary_) and the Epistles to the Corinthians (in the _American Commentary_) are critical and exegetical attempts to supply those elements which are lacking in existing works of the same general aim and scope. THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN LITERATURE UNTIL EUSEBIUS Prof. J. W. PLATNER, Professor of Early Church History, Harvard University. Professor Platner's work will not only treat the writings of the early Christian writers, but will also treat of the history of the New Testament Canon. OTHERS TO FOLLOW "An excellent series of scholarly, yet concise and inexpensive New Testament handbooks. "--_Christian Advocate_, New York. "These books are remarkably well suited in language, style, and price, to all students of the New Testament. "--_The Congregationalist_, Boston. * * * * * THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK Transcriber's Note (Significant Amendments): p. 28, 'Saltpêtrière' amended to _Salpêtrière_.