initial commit of ebook 26397HEADmain

167 files changed, 8467 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/26397-8.txt b/26397-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3599210
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,2475 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Miracles and Supernatural Religion, by 
+James Morris Whiton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Miracles and Supernatural Religion
+
+Author: James Morris Whiton
+
+Release Date: August 23, 2008 [EBook #26397]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MIRACLES AND SUPERNATURAL RELIGION ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bryan Ness, Stephen Blundell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                  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 into
+particulars, its treatment is restricted to general outlines, with an
+aim simply to clarify current ideas of miracle and the supernatural, so
+as to find firm holding ground for tenable positions in the present
+"drift period" of theology. The chief exception made to this general
+treatment is the discussion given to a class of miracles regarded with
+as much incredulity as any, yet as capable as any of being accredited as
+probably historical events--the raisings of the "dead." The insistence
+of some writers on the virgin birth and corporeal resurrection of Jesus
+as essential to Christianity has required brief discussion of these
+also, mainly with reference to the reasonableness of that demand. As to
+the latter miracle, it must be observed that in the Biblical narratives
+taken as a whole, whichever of their discordant features one be disposed
+to emphasize, the psychical element clearly preponderates over the
+physical 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 are
+seen to have occurred during the nineteenth century than in any century
+preceding. In these changes no department of thought and activity has
+failed to share, and theological thought has been quite as much affected
+as scientific or ethical. Especially remarkable is the changed front of
+Christian theologians toward miracles, their distinctly lowered estimate
+of the significance of miracle, their antipodal reverse of the long
+established treatment of miracles. Referring to this a British
+evangelical writer[1] observes that "the intelligent believer of our
+own day, ... instead of accepting Christianity on the ground of the
+miracles, accepts it in spite of the miracles. Whether he admits these
+miracles, or rejects them, his attitude toward them is toward
+difficulties, not helps."
+
+By this diametrical change of Christian thought a great amount of
+scepticism has already been antiquated. A once famous anti-Christian
+book, _Supernatural Religion_, regarded as formidable thirty years ago,
+is now as much out of date for relevancy to present theological
+conditions as is the old smooth-bore cannon for naval warfare. That
+many, indeed, are still unaware of the change that has been experienced
+by the leaders of Christian thought, no one acquainted with current
+discussions will deny; the fact is indubitable. It is reviewed in the
+following pages with the constructive purpose of redeeming the idea of
+supernatural Religion from pernicious perversion, and of exhibiting it
+in its true spiritual significance. The once highly reputed calculations
+made to show how the earth's diurnal revolution could be imperceptibly
+stopped for Joshua's convenience, and the contention that the
+Mediterranean produced fish with gullets capable of giving passage to
+Jonah, are now as dead as the chemical controversy about phlogiston. Yet
+some sceptical controversialists are still so far from cultivating the
+acquaintance with recent thought which they recommend to Christian
+theologians, as to persist in affirmations of amazing ignorance, _e.g._
+"It is admitted that miracles alone can attest the reality of divine
+revelation."[2] Sponsors for this statement must now be sought among
+unlearned Christians, or among a few scholars who survive as
+cultivators of the old-fashioned argument from the "evidences." Even
+among these latter the tendency to minimize miracle is undeniably
+apparent in a reduction of the list classified as such, and still more
+in the brevity of the list insisted on for the attestation of
+Christianity.
+
+A transitional state of mind is clearly evidenced by the present
+division and perplexity of Christian thought concerning the Christian
+miracles. Many seem to regard further discussion as profitless, and are
+ready to shelve the subject. But this attitude of weariness is also
+transitional. There must be some thoroughfare to firm ground and clear
+vision. It must be found in agreement, first of all, on the real meaning
+of a term so variously and vaguely used as _miracle_. In the present
+imperfect state of knowledge it may be impossible to enucleate miracle,
+however defined, of all mystery. But even so will much be gained for
+clear thinking, if miracle can be reasonably related to the greater
+mystery which all accept, though none understand,--the mystery of
+_life_. This view of the dynamic relation of life to miracle[3] is here
+suggested for what it may prove to be worth.
+
+The great and general change that transfigured theology during the
+nineteenth century was characteristically ethical. This, indeed, is the
+distinctive feature of the so-called new theology, in contrast with that
+which the Protestant Reformers inherited from St. Augustine. God and
+Man, Faith, Salvation and Inspiration, Redemption and Atonement,
+Judgment and Retribution,--all these themes are now presented in
+orthodox pulpits far more conformably to ethical principles, though in
+degrees varying with educated intelligence, than was customary in the
+sermons of half a century ago. "One great source and spring of
+theological progress," says Professor Bowne, in his recent work on
+_Theism_, "has been the need of finding a conception of God which the
+moral nature could accept. The necessity of moralizing theology has
+produced vast changes in that field; and the end is not yet."
+
+The ethical character of the theological change will perhaps be most
+obvious in the field of Biblical study, to which the present subject
+belongs. The traditional solution of such moral difficulties in the Old
+Testament as commands, ostensibly divine, to massacre idolaters has
+been quite discarded. It is no longer the mode to say that deeds
+seemingly atrocious were not atrocious, because God commanded them.
+Writers of orthodox repute now say that the _Thus saith the Lord_, with
+which Samuel prefaced his order to exterminate the Amalekites, must be
+understood subjectively, as an expression of the prophet's belief, not
+objectively, as a divine command communicated to him. This great change
+is a quite recent change. If a personal reference may be indulged, it is
+not twenty years since the present writer's published protest against
+"The Anti-Christian Use of the Bible in the Sunday School,"[4] the
+exhibition to children of some vestiges of heathen superstition embedded
+in the Old Testament narratives as true illustrations of God's ways
+toward men, drew forth from a religious journal a bitter editorial on
+"The Old Testament and its New Enemies." But a great light has since
+dawned in that quarter. It is no longer deemed subversive of faith in a
+divine Revelation to hold that the prophet Gad was not infallible in
+regarding the plague which scourged Jerusalem as sent to punish David's
+pride in his census of the nation.
+
+A significant fact is presented in the comparison of these two aspects
+of the theological change that has come to pass,--the growing importance
+of the ethical, and the dwindling importance of the miraculous in the
+religious thought of to-day. This may reassure those who fear whereto
+such change may grow. The inner significance of such a change is most
+auspicious. It portends the displacement of a false by the true
+conception of supernatural Religion, and the removal thereby of a
+serious antagonism between Science and Christian Theology, as well as of
+a serious hindrance of many thoughtful minds from an intelligent embrace
+of Christianity.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Professor W. T. Adeney in the _Hibbert Journal_, January, 1903, p.
+302.
+
+[2] See the recent new edition of _Supernatural Religion_, "carefully
+revised."
+
+[3] For an earlier statement of this by the present writer, see a
+discourse 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 Christian
+scholar, Dean Stanley, spoke thus of the miracles recorded of the
+prophet Elisha: "His works stand alone in the Bible in their likeness to
+the acts of mediæval saints. There alone in the Sacred History the gulf
+between Biblical and Ecclesiastical miracles almost disappears."[5] It
+required some courage to say as much as this then, while the storm of
+persecution was raging against Bishop Colenso for his critical work on
+the Pentateuch. The evangelical clergymen in England and the United
+States then prepared to confess as much as this, with all that it
+obviously implies, could have been seated in a small room. But time has
+moved on, and the Church, at least the scholars of the Church, have
+moved with it. No scholar of more than narrowly local repute now
+hesitates to acknowledge the presence of a legendary element both in the
+Old Testament and in the New. While the extent of it is still
+undetermined, many specimens of it are recognized. It is agreed that the
+early narratives in Genesis are of this character, and that it is marked
+in such stories as those of Samson, Elijah, and Elisha. Even the
+conservative revisers of the Authorized Version have eliminated from the
+Fourth Gospel the story of the angel at the pool of Bethesda, and in
+their marginal notes on the Third Gospel have admitted a doubt
+concerning the historicity of the angel and the bloody sweat in
+Gethsemane.
+
+Furthermore, some events, recognized as historical, have been divested
+of the miraculous character once attributed to them,--the crossing of
+the Red Sea, for instance, by the Hebrew host. A landslip in the
+thirteenth century A.D. has been noted as giving historical character to
+the story of the Hebrew host under Joshua's command crossing the Jordan
+"on dry ground," but in a perfectly natural way. Other classes of
+phenomena once regarded as miraculous have been transferred to the
+domain of natural processes by the investigations and discoveries that
+have been made in the field of psychical research. The forewarning which
+God is said to have given the prophet Ahijah of the visit that the
+queen was about to pay him in disguise[6] is now recognized as one of
+many cases of the mysterious natural function that we label as
+"telepathy." The transformations of unruly, vicious, and mentally
+disordered characters by hypnotic influence that have been effected at
+the Salpêtrière in Paris, and elsewhere, by physicians expert in
+psychical therapeutics are closely analogous to the cures wrought by
+Jesus on some victims of "demoniac possession."[7] The cases of
+apparition,[8] also, which have been investigated and verified by the
+Society for Psychical Research have laid a solid basis of fact for the
+Biblical stories of angels, as at least, a class of phenomena to be
+regarded as by no means altogether legendary, but having their place
+among natural though mysterious occurrences.
+
+But this progressive paring down of the miraculous element in the Bible
+has caused outcries of unfeigned alarm. Christian scholars who have
+taken part in it are reproached as deserters to the camp of unbelief.
+They are accused of banishing God from his world, and of reducing the
+course of events to an order of agencies quite undivine. "Miracle,"
+writes one of these brethren,[9] "is the personal intervention of God
+into the chain of cause and effect." But what does this mean, except
+that, when no miracles occur, God is not personally, _i.e._ actively, in
+the chain of natural causes and effects? As Professor Drummond says, "If
+God appears periodically, he disappears periodically." It is precisely
+this view of the subject that really banishes God from his world. Those
+who thus define miracle regard miracles as having ceased at the end of
+the Apostolic age in the first century. Except, therefore, for the
+narrow 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 for
+traditional orthodoxy unwittingly but really come.
+
+The first pages of the Bible correct this error. "While the earth
+remaineth," so God is represented as assuring Noah, "seedtime and
+harvest, 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 be
+evinced by his regular sustentation of its natural order, rather than by
+irregular occurrences, such as the deluge, in seeming contravention of
+it. To seek the evidence of divine activity in human affairs and to
+ground one's faith in a controlling Providence in sporadic and cometary
+phenomena, rather than in the constant and cumulative signs of it to be
+seen in the majestic order of the starry skies, in the reign of
+intelligence throughout the cosmos, in the moral evolution of ancient
+savagery into modern philanthropy, in the historic manifestation
+throughout the centuries of a Power not our own that works for the
+increase of righteousness, is a mode of thought which in our time is
+being steadily and surely outgrown. It is one of those "idols of the
+tribe" whose power alike over civilized and uncivilized men is broken
+less by argument than by the ascent of man to wider horizons of
+knowledge.
+
+It is for the gain of religion that it should be broken,--of the
+spiritual religion whose God is not a tradition, a reminiscence, but a
+living presence, inhabiting alike the clod and the star, the flower in
+the crannied wall and the life of man. So thinking of God the religious
+man may rightly say,[10] "If it is more difficult to believe in
+miracles, it is less important. If the extraordinary manifestations of
+God recounted in ancient history appear less credible, the ordinary
+manifestations of God in current life appear more real. He is seen in
+American history not less than in Hebrew history; in the life of to-day
+not 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 reality
+as a "possession" that is "demoniac" indeed. It cannot be reasonably
+pronounced superstitious to judge that there is some probability for
+that view. At any rate, it is certain that the problem is not to be
+settled by dogmatic pronouncement. It is certain, also, that the burden
+of proof rests on those who contend that there can be no such thing. On
+the other hand, it may be conceded that the cases recorded in the New
+Testament do not seem to be of an essentially devilish kind. On the
+general subject of "possession" see F. W. H. Myers's work on _Human
+Personality 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 of
+being admitted by the scientist as a fact, now that he has the name of
+hysterodemonopathy by which to apperceive it." _Varieties of Religious
+Experience_, 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 last
+century, 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 occasional
+signs and wonders, reported from ancient times, as far less evidential
+for the reasonableness of religious faith than the steady sustentation
+of the Providential order and the moral progress of the world. Fully
+convinced of this, we should now estimate, before proceeding further,
+the present net results of the discussion, so far as it has gone, of
+what is called the miraculous element in the Bible.
+
+First, its former evidential value in proof of divine Revelation is gone
+for 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 its
+original promulgation, as was the fashion not very long since. This for
+two reasons; chiefly this: that _the decisive criterion of any truth,
+ethical or physical, must be truth of the same kind_. Ethical truth must
+be ethically attested. The moral and religious character of the
+Revelation presents its credentials of worth in its history of the
+moral and religious renovations it has wrought both in individuals and
+in society. This is its proper and incontrovertible attestation, in need
+of no corroboration from whatever wonderful physical occurrences may
+have accompanied its first utterance. Words of God are attested as such
+by the work of God which they effect. It may well be believed that those
+wonderful occurrences--the Biblical name for which is "signs," or
+"powers," terms not carrying, like "miracles," the idea of something
+contra-natural[11]--had an evidential value for those to whom the
+Revelation originally came. In fact, they were appealed to by the
+bearers of the Revelation as evidencing its divine origin by the mighty
+works of divine mercy which they wrought for sufferers from the evils of
+the world. But whatever their evidential value to the eye-witnesses at
+that remote day, it was of the inevitably volatile kind that exhales
+away like a perfume with lapse of time. Historic doubts attack remote
+events, especially when of the extraordinary character which tempts the
+narrator to that magnifying of the marvellous which experience has found
+to be a constantly recurring human trait. It is simply impossible that
+the original evidential value of the "signs" accompanying the Revelation
+should continue permanently unimpaired. To employ them now as
+"evidences of Christianity," when the Revelation has won on ethical
+grounds recognition of its divine character and can summon history to
+bear witness of its divine effects in the moral uplift of the world, is
+to imperil the Christian argument by the preposterous logical blunder of
+attempting to prove the more certain by the less certain.
+
+A second net result consequent on the preceding may be described as the
+transference of miracles from the ordnance department to the
+quartermaster's department of the Church. Until recently they were
+actively used as part of its armament, none of which could be dispensed
+with. Now they are carried as part of its baggage, _impedimenta_, from
+which everything superfluous must be removed. It is clearly seen that to
+retain all is to imperil the whole. That there are miracles and
+miracles is patent to minds that have learned to scan history more
+critically than when a scholar like John Milton began his _History of
+England_ with the legend of the voyage of "Brute the Trojan." One may
+reasonably believe that Jesus healed a case of violent insanity at
+Gadara, and reasonably disbelieve that the fire of heaven was twice
+obedient to Elijah's call to consume the military companies sent to
+arrest him. Cultivated discernment does not now put all Biblical
+miracles on a common level of credibility, any more than the historical
+work of Herodotus and that of the late Dr. Gardiner. To defend them all
+is not to vindicate, but to discredit all alike. The elimination of the
+indefensible, the setting aside of the legendary, the transference of
+the supposedly miraculous to the order of natural powers and processes
+so far as vindicable ground for such critical treatment is discovered,
+is the only way to answer the first of all questions concerning the
+Bible: How much of this is credible history? Thus it is not only
+thoroughly reasonable, but is in the interest of a reasonable belief
+that divine agency is revealed rather by the upholding of the
+established order of Nature than by any alleged interference therewith.
+With what God has established God never interferes. To allege his
+interference with his established order is virtually to deny his
+constant immanence therein, a failure to recognize the fundamental fact
+that "Nature is Spirit," as Principal Fairbairn has said, and all its
+processes and powers the various modes of the energizing of the divine
+Will.
+
+A third net result now highly probable is a still further reduction of
+the list of reputed miracles. The critical process of discriminating
+the historical from the legendary, and the natural from the non-natural,
+is still so comparatively recent that it can hardly be supposed to have
+reached its limit. Nor can it be stayed by any impeachment of it as
+hostile to Christianity, whose grand argument appeals to its present
+ethical effects, not to ancient thaumaturgical accompaniments. There is,
+however, a considerable class of cases in which the advancing critical
+process is likely even to gain credibility for the Biblical narrative in
+a point where it is now widely doubted--the resuscitations of the
+apparently dead. Among all the Biblical miracles none have more probably
+a secure historical basis.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[11] The Anglicized Latin word, "miracle," indiscriminately used in the
+Authorized Version, denotes the superficial character of the act or
+event it is applied to, as producing wonder or amazement in the
+beholders. The terms commonly employed in the New Testament
+(_s{=e}meion_, a sign; _dunamis_, power; less frequently _teras_, a
+portent) are of deeper significance, and connote the inner nature of the
+occurrence, either as requiring to be pondered for its meaning, or as
+the 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 are
+recorded,--three in the Old Testament and four in the New. Some critics
+arbitrarily reject all but one of these as legendary. Thus Oscar
+Holzmann, in his recent _Leben Jesu_, treats the raising of the widow's
+son, and of Lazarus. But he accepts the case of the ruler's daughter on
+the ground that Jesus is reported as saying that it was not a case of
+real but only of apparent death,--"the child is not dead, but sleepeth."
+But for the preservation of this saving declaration in the record, this
+case also would have been classed with the others as unhistorical. And
+yet the admission of one clear case of simulated death, so like real
+death as to deceive all the onlookers but Jesus, might reasonably check
+the critic with the suggestion that it may not have been a solitary
+case.[12] The headlong assumption involved in the discrimination made
+between these two classes, viz. that in a case of apparent but unreal
+death the primitive tradition can be depended on to put the fact upon
+record, is in the highest degree arbitrary and unwarrantable.
+
+The scepticism which lightly contradicts the Biblical narratives of the
+raising of the "dead" to life is seemingly ignorant of facts that go far
+to place these upon firm ground as historical occurrences. Catalepsy,
+or the simulation of death by a trance, in which the body is sometimes
+cold and rigid, sensation gone, the heart still, is well known to
+medical men.[13] In early times such a condition would inevitably have
+been regarded and treated as actual death, without the least suspicion
+that it was not so. Even now, the dreadful mistake of so regarding it
+sometimes occurs. So cautious a journal as the London _Spectator_ a few
+years ago expressed the belief that "a distinct percentage" of premature
+burials "occurs every year" in England.
+
+The proper line of critical approach to the study of the Biblical
+narratives of the raising of the "dead" is through the well-known facts
+of the deathlike trance and premature burial.
+
+Where burial occurred, as in the East, immediately after the apparent
+death,[14] resuscitation must have been rare. Yet cases of it were not
+unknown. Pliny has a chapter "on those who have revived on being carried
+forth for burial." Lord Bacon states that of this there have been "very
+many cases." A French writer of the eighteenth century, Bruhier, in his
+"_Dissertations sur l'Incertitude de la Mort et l'Abus des
+Enterrements_," records seventy-two cases of mistaken pronouncement of
+death, fifty-three of revival in the coffin before burial, and
+fifty-four of burial alive. A locally famous and thoroughly attested
+case in this country is that of the Rev. William Tennent, pastor in
+Freehold, New Jersey, in the eighteenth century, who lay apparently dead
+for three days, reviving from trance just as his delayed funeral was
+about to proceed. One who keeps a scrap-book could easily collect quite
+an assortment of such cases, and of such others as have a tragic ending,
+both from domestic and foreign journals. A work published some years ago
+by Dr. F. Hartmann[15] exhibits one hundred and eight cases as typical
+among over seven hundred that have been authenticated.[16]
+
+Facts like these have been strangely overlooked in the hasty judgment
+prompted by prejudice against whatever has obtained credence as
+miraculous. Some significant considerations must be seriously
+entertained.
+
+It cannot be that no such facts occurred in the long periods covered by
+the Biblical writers. Occurring, it is extremely improbable that they
+should have altogether escaped embodiment in popular tradition and its
+record. Furthermore, while on one hand the custom of speedy burial
+rendered them much rarer than they are now under other conditions, and
+so much the more extraordinary, the universal ignorance of the causes
+involved would have accepted resuscitation as veritable restoration from
+actual death. As such it would have passed into tradition. In cases
+where it had come to pass in connection with the efforts of a recognized
+prophet, or through any contact with him, it would certainly have been
+regarded as a genuine miracle.
+
+Among the raisings of the "dead" recorded in the Scriptures probably
+none has been so widely doubted by critical readers as the story in the
+thirteenth chapter of the second book of Kings, in which a corpse is
+restored to life by contact with the bones of Elisha. Dean Stanley's
+remark upon the suspicious similarity between the miracles related of
+Elisha and those found in Roman Catholic legends of great saints here
+seems 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 a
+critic to stamp it as fabricated to enhance the glory of the great
+prophet who had been a pillar of the throne. Yet nothing is more likely
+than that tradition has here preserved a bit of history, extraordinary,
+but real. There is not the least improbability in regarding the case as
+one of the many revivals from the deathlike trance that have been noted
+by writers ancient and modern. It is entirely reasonable to suppose that
+the trance in which the seemingly dead man lay was broken either by the
+shock of his fall into the prophet's tomb, or coincidently therewith;
+and stranger coincidences have happened. Such a happening would be
+precisely the sort of thing to live in popular tradition, and to be
+incorporated into the annals of the time.
+
+Here it may be rejoined that this is only a hypothesis. Only that, to be
+sure. But so is the allegation that the story is a mere fantastic
+fabrication only a hypothesis. Demonstration of the actual fact past all
+controversy being out of the question, all that can be offered for the
+attempt to rate the narrative at its proper value, either as history or
+as fiction, is hypothesis. The choice lies for us between two
+hypotheses. Surely, that hypothesis is the more credible which is based
+on a solid body of objective facts, and meets all the conditions of the
+case.
+
+Will it be replied to this that the critics can show for their
+hypothesis the admitted fact of the human proclivity to invent legends
+of miracle? The decisive answer is that the burden of proof rests on him
+who contests any statement ostensibly historical. If such a statement be
+found to square with admitted objective facts, it must be accepted
+notwithstanding considerations drawn from the subjective tendency to
+invent 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 the
+natural order of things. The statistics of premature burial and of the
+resuscitation of the apparently dead before burial are sufficiently
+strong to throw grave doubt on any contention that the resuscitations
+narrated of Elijah[17] and Elisha[18] do not belong in that historical
+series. It has been frequently observed, however, that there is much
+reluctance to apply to the New Testament the methods and canons of
+criticism that are applied to the Old. It will be so in the present
+case, through apprehension of somehow detracting from the distinctive
+glory of Christ. That fear will not disturb one who sees that glory not
+in his "mighty works," the like of which were wrought by the prophets,
+but in the spiritual majesty of his personality, the divineness of his
+message to the world, and of the life and death that illustrated it.
+
+One case, at least, among Jesus' raisings of the "dead," that of the
+young daughter of the ruler of the synagogue,[19] is admitted even by
+sceptical critics to have been a resuscitation from the trance that
+merely simulates death. But the fact that there is a record of his
+saying in this case, "the child is not dead, but sleepeth," and no
+record of his saying the same at the bier of the widow's son,[20] is
+slight ground, yet all the ground there is, against the great
+probabilities to the contrary, for regarding the latter case as so
+transcendently different from the former as the actual reëmbodiment of a
+departed spirit recalled from another world. Were these the only two
+cases of restoration to life in the ministry of Jesus, it is most
+probable that they would be regarded as of the same kind.
+
+The raising of Lazarus[21] presents peculiar features, in view of which
+it is generally regarded as of another kind, and the greatest of
+miracles, so stupendous that the Rev. W. J. Dawson, in his recent _Life
+of Christ_, written from an evangelical standpoint, says of it: "Even
+the most devout mind may be forgiven occasional pangs of incredulity."
+But the considerations already presented are certainly sufficient to
+justify a reëxamination of the case. And it is to be borne in mind that
+the question at issue is, not what the eye-witnesses at that time
+believed, not what the Church from that time to this has believed, not
+what we are willing to believe, or would like to believe, but what all
+the facts with any bearing on the case, taken together, fully justify us
+in believing as to the real nature of it.
+
+What Jesus is recorded as saying of it is, of course, of prime
+importance. "Our friend Lazarus is fallen asleep, but I go that I may
+awake him out of sleep." Were this all, the case might easily have been
+classed as one of trance. The disciples, however, understood Jesus to
+speak 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, "fallen
+asleep," so also is it qualified by that; the two are mutually
+explanatory, not contradictory. These alternatives are before us: Is the
+maximum or the minimum meaning to be assigned to the crucial word
+"dead"? For the minimum, one can say that a deathly trance, already made
+virtual death by immediate interment, would amply justify Jesus in using
+the word "dead" in order to impress the disciples with the gravity of
+the case, as not a natural but a deathly, and, in the existing
+situation, a fatal sleep. For the maximum, no more can be advanced than
+the hazardous assertion that Jesus _must_ have used the word with
+technical precision in its customary sense; an assertion of course
+protected from disproof by our ignorance of the actual fact.[22] But
+whatever support this view of the case derives from such ignorance is
+overbalanced by the support supplied to the other view by the long
+history of revivals from the deathly trance, and by the probabilities
+which 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 for
+reflection; but meanwhile some further considerations may be
+entertained.
+
+1. Aside from the unwillingness to abandon a long-cherished belief on
+any subject whatever, which is both a natural, and, when not pushed to
+an unreasonable length, a desirable brake on all inconsiderate change,
+no practical interest is threatened by the adoption of the view here
+suggested. Religious interest, so far as it is also intelligent, is
+certainly not threatened. The evidences of Jesus' divine character and
+mission resting, as for modern men it rests, not on remote wonders, but
+on now acknowledged facts of an ethical and spiritual kind, is
+altogether independent of our conclusion whether it was from actual or
+only apparent death that Lazarus was raised. Since all the mighty works
+wrought by Jesus, and this among them, were identical in type with those
+wrought by the ancient prophets, with whom his countrymen classed him in
+his lifetime, their evidential significance could be, even for the
+eye-witnesses at that tomb, no greater for him than for an
+Elisha,--signs of a divine mission attesting itself by works of mercy.
+
+2. As works of mercy these raisings from the "dead," including that of
+Lazarus, rank far higher in the view of them here proposed than in the
+traditional view. This regards them as the recall of departed spirits
+from what is hoped to be "a better world." Yet this, while it turns
+sorrow for a time into joy, involves not only the recurrence of that
+sorrow in all its keenness, but also a second tasting of the pains
+preliminary to the death-gate, when the time comes to pass that gate
+again. But in the other view, a raising from the death that is only
+simulated is a merciful deliverance from a calamity greater than simple
+death, if that be any calamity at all,--the fate of burial alive. In the
+former view, therefore, the quality of mercy, distinctive of the mighty
+works of Jesus, is imperfectly demonstrable. In the present view, as the
+rescue of the living from death in one of its most horrible forms, it is
+abundantly conspicuous.
+
+3. The onlookers by the tomb of Lazarus doubtless regarded his awakening
+as revival from actual death. Their opinion, however, does not bind our
+judgment any more than it is bound by the opinion of other onlookers,
+that Jesus' healing of the insane and epileptic was through the
+expulsion of demons that possessed them. In each instance it was
+understood as a sign of control over beings belonging to another world.
+But such an attestation of Jesus' divine mission, having been superseded
+for us by proofs of higher character, is now no more needful for us in
+the case of the "dead" than in the case of the "demons."
+
+4. The power of breaking the deathly trance, of quickening the dormant
+life, reënergizing the collapsed nervous organism, and ending its
+paralysis of sensation and motion, may be reasonably regarded as power
+of the same psychical kind that Jesus regularly exerted in healing the
+sufferers from nervous disorders who were reputed victims of demoniac
+possession.[23] In this view these resuscitations from apparent death
+appear in natural coherence with the many other works of mercy that
+Jesus wrought as the Great Physician of his people, and may be regarded
+as the crown and consummation of all his restorative ministries. Jesus'
+thanksgiving after the tomb had been opened--"Father, I thank thee that
+thou hast heard me"--shows that he had girded himself for a supreme
+effort by concentrating the utmost energy of his spirit in prayer.
+Physically parallel with this was the intensity of voice put into his
+call to the occupant of the tomb. This is better represented in the
+original than in our translation: "He shouted with a great voice,
+'Lazarus, come forth.'" The whole record indicates the utmost tension of
+all his energies, and closely comports with the view that this stood to
+the sequel in the relation of cause to effect.[24] Another circumstance
+not without bearing on the case is the energizing power of the intense
+sympathy with the bereaved family that stirred the soul of Jesus to weep
+and groan with them. And it is not without significance that this strong
+factor appears active in the larger number of the Biblical cases,--three
+of them only children, two of these the children of the pitiable class
+of widows.
+
+Peculiar, then, as was the case of Lazarus, our examination of it
+reveals no substantial ground for insisting that it was essentially
+unlike the previous case of the ruler's daughter, that it was the
+bringing back into a decaying body of a spirit that had entered into the
+world of departed souls. The actual fact, of course, is indemonstrable.
+Our conclusion has to be formed wholly upon the probabilities of the
+case, and must be formed in a reasonable choice between the greater
+probability and the less.
+
+The restoration of Dorcas to life by Peter, recorded in the book of
+Acts,[25] needs no special discussion beyond the various considerations
+already adduced in this chapter. The case of Eutychus, recorded in the
+same book,[26] requires mention only lest it should seem to have been
+forgotten, as it is not in point at all. The record makes it highly
+probable that the supposed death was nothing more than the loss of
+consciousness 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 the
+resurrection of Jesus himself, it must be pointed out that this is a
+fact of a totally different kind from any of the foregoing cases. To
+speak, as many do, of the "resurrection of Lazarus" is a misuse of
+words. Resuscitation to life in this world, and resurrection, the rising
+up of the released spirit into the life of the world to come, are as
+distinct as are the worlds to which they severally belong. We here
+consider only the _raisings_ which restored to the virtually dead their
+interrupted mortal life. The _rising_ from the mortal into the immortal
+state belongs to an entirely different field of study.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Apart, then, from traditional prepossessions, examination of the
+Biblical narratives discloses nothing to invalidate the hypothesis which
+one who is acquainted with the copious record of apparent but unreal
+death must seriously and impartially consider. The reputedly miraculous
+raisings of the "dead" related in both the Old and the New Testament
+may, with entire reason, and without detriment to religion, be classed
+with such as are related outside of the Scriptures, in ancient times as
+well as modern, and as phenomena wholly within the natural order,
+however extraordinary. The practical result of such a conclusion is
+likely to be a gain for the historicity of the Scripture narratives in
+the estimate of a large class of thoughtful minds.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[12] An objection to the historicity of the raising of Lazarus which is
+made on the ground that so great a work, if historical, would have been
+related by more than one of the Evangelists, yields on reflection the
+possibility that Jesus may have effected more than the three raisings
+recorded of him. John is the sole narrator of the raising of Lazarus.
+But he omits notice of the two raisings recorded by the other
+Evangelists, while Matthew and Mark do not record the raising of the
+widow's son recorded by Luke. All this suggests that the record may have
+preserved for us specimens rather than a complete list of this class of
+miracles. (Compare John xxi. 25.)
+
+[13] "We have frequent cases of trance, ... where the parties seem to
+die, but after a time the spirit returns, and life goes on as before. In
+all this there is no miracle. Why may not the resuscitations in Christ's
+time possibly have been similar cases? Is not this less improbable than
+that the natural order of the universe should have been set
+aside?"--_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 numerous
+stories of this dreadful accident which have obtained credence from time
+to time seem to be authentic" (_American Cyclopedia_, art. "Burial").
+Allowing a wide margin for exaggeration and credulity, there is
+certainly a residuum of fact. A correspondent of the (London)
+_Spectator_ a few years since testified to a distressing case in his own
+family.
+
+[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 impossible
+to reach a positive conclusion. In some directions his knowledge was
+certainly limited. That he was not aware of the reality might be
+inferred from his seeming to have allowed his act to pass for what, in
+the view of it here suggested, it was not,--the recall to life of one
+actually dead. This, however, assumes the completeness of a record whose
+silence on this point cannot be pressed as conclusive. It is, indeed,
+unlikely that Jesus knew all that medical men now know. But awareness of
+any fact may be in varying degrees from serious suspicion up to positive
+certitude. While far from positiveness, awareness may exist in a degree
+that gives courage for resolute effort resulting in clear and full
+verification. Jesus may have been ignorant of the objective reality of
+Lazarus's condition, and yet have been very hopeful of being empowered
+by the divine aid he prayed for (John xi. 41) to cope with it
+successfully.
+
+[23] See pages 28, 29, Note.
+
+[24] Jesus' works of healing are explicitly attributed by the
+Evangelists to a peculiar power that issued from him. In Mark v. 30,
+Luke vi. 19, and viii. 46, the original word _dunamis_, which the
+Authorized Version translates "virtue," is more correctly rendered
+"power" in the Revised Version. Especially noticeable is the peculiar
+phraseology of Mark v. 30: "Jesus perceiving in himself that the power
+proceeding from him had gone forth (R. V.)." The peculiar circumstances
+of the case suggest that the going forth of this power might be motived
+sub-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 of
+the proper meaning to attach to the generally ill-defined and hazy term
+_miracle_.[27] Matthew Arnold's fantastic illustration of the idea of
+miracle by supposing a pen changed to a pen-wiper may fit some miracles,
+especially those of the Catholic hagiology, but, if applied to those of
+Jesus, would be a caricature. In the New Testament a reputed miracle is
+not any sort of wonderful work upon any sort of occasion, but an act of
+benevolent will exerted for an immediate benefit,[28] and transcending
+the then existing range of human intelligence to explain and power to
+achieve. The historic reality of at least some such acts performed by
+Jesus is acknowledged by critics as free from the faintest trace of
+orthodox 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 reputed
+miracles of Jesus, particularly his works of healing, do not now, as
+then, transcend the existing range of knowledge and power, and
+accordingly are no longer reputed miraculous. And one cannot reasonably
+believe that a limit to the understanding and control of forces in
+Nature and mind that now are more or less occult has been already
+reached. It is, therefore, not incredible that some of the mighty works
+of Jesus, which still transcend the existing limits of knowledge and
+power, and so are still reputed miraculous, and are suspected by many as
+unhistorical, may in some yet remote and riper stage of humanity be
+transferred, as some have already been, to the class of the
+non-miraculous and natural.
+
+Dr. Robbins, Dean of the General Theological Seminary, New York, after
+remarking that "the word _miracle_ has done more to introduce confusion
+into Christian Evidences than any other," goes on to say: "To animals
+certain events to them inexplicable are signs of the presence of human
+intelligence and power. To men these miracles of Christ are signs of
+divine intelligence and power. But how is miracle to be differentiated
+from other providential dealings of God? Not by removing him further
+from common events. Abstruse speculations concerning the relation of
+miracles to other physical phenomena may be safely left to the
+adjustment of an age which shall have advanced to a more perfect
+synthesis of knowledge than the present can boast."[29]
+
+The truth to which such considerations conduct is, that no hard and fast
+line can be drawn between the miraculous and the non-miraculous. To the
+untutored mind, like that of the savage who thought it miraculous that a
+chip with a message written on it had talked to the recipient, the
+simplest thing that he cannot explain is miraculous: "_omne ignotum pro
+mirifico_," said Tacitus. As the range of knowledge and power widens,
+the range of the miraculous narrows correspondingly. Some twenty years
+since, the International Sunday-school Lessons employed as a proof of
+the divinity of Christ the reputedly miraculous knowledge which he
+evinced in his first interview with Nathanael of a solitary hour in
+Nathanael's experience.[30] Since then it has been demonstrated[31] by
+psychical research that the natural order of the world includes
+telepathy, and the range of the miraculous has been correspondingly
+reduced 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 one
+and the same thing. Miracle must therefore be defined as being what our
+whole course of thought has suggested that it is: in general, an elastic
+word; in particular, a provisional word,--a word whose application
+narrows with the enlarging range of human knowledge[32] and power which
+for the time it transcends; a word whose history, in its record of
+ranges already transcended, prompts expectation that ranges still beyond
+may be transcended in the illimitable progress of mankind. Professor Le
+Conte says that miracle is "an occurrence or a phenomenon according to a
+law 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 flying
+goal; that human attainment can never reach finality unless men cease to
+be. And so all widening of human knowledge and power must ever disclose
+further limitations to be transcended. There will always be a _Beyond_,
+in which dwells the secret of laws still undiscovered, that underlie
+mysteries unrevealed and marvels unexplained. This will have to be
+admitted, especially, by those to whom the marvellous is synonymous
+with the incredible. We have not been able to eviscerate even these
+prosaic and matter-of-fact modern times of marvels whose secret lies in
+the yet uncatalogued or indefinable powers of the mysterious agent that
+we name _life_: witness many well verified facts recorded by the Society
+for Psychical Research.[33] How, then, is it consistent to affirm that
+no such marvels in ancient records are historical realities? Nay, may it
+not be true that the ancient days of seers and prophets, the days of
+Jesus, days of the sublime strivings of great and lonely souls for
+closer converse with the Infinite Spirit behind his mask of Nature,
+offered better conditions for marvellous experiences and deeds than
+these days of scientific laboratories and factories, and world-markets
+and world-politics?
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[27] "Early and mediæval theologians agree in conceiving the miraculous
+as being above, not contrary to, nature. The question entered on a new
+phase when Hume defined a miracle as a violation of nature, and asserted
+the impossibility of substantiating its actual occurrence. The modern
+discussion has proceeded largely in view of Hume's destructive
+criticism. Assuming the possibility of a miracle, the questions of fact
+and of definition remain."--_Dictionary of Psychology._
+
+"When we find the definition for which we are searching, the miraculous
+will no longer be a problem."--PROFESSOR W. SANDAY, at the Anglican
+Church 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, of
+Harvard, the late Professor Henry Sidgwick, of Cambridge, England, and
+others of like eminence.
+
+[32] A hint of this was given by Augustine: "Portentum non fit contra
+naturam, sed contra quam est nota natura."--_De Civitate Dei._
+
+[33] Consult the late F. W. H. Myers's remarkable volumes on _Human
+Personality 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, the
+extraordinary effluence of extraordinary lives. Here at length we gain a
+clearer conception of miracle. _Life_ is the world's great
+magician,--life, so familiar, yet so mysterious; so commonplace, yet so
+transcendent. No miracle is more marvellous than its doings witnessed in
+the biological laboratory, or more inexplicable than its transformation
+of dead matter into living flesh, its development of a Shakespeare from
+a microscopic bit of protoplasm. But its mysterious processes are too
+common for general marvel; we marvel only at the uncommon. The boy Zerah
+Colburn in half a minute solved the problem, "How many seconds since the
+beginning of the Christian era?" We prefer to call this a prodigy rather
+than a miracle,--a distinction more verbal than real; and we fancy we
+have explained it when we say that such arithmetical power was a
+peculiar endowment of his mental life. Now all of the inexplicable,
+inimitable reality that at any time has to be left by the baffled
+intellect as an unsolved wonder under the name of miracle is just
+that,--_the natural product of an extraordinary endowment of life_. More
+of its marvellous capability is latent in common men, in the
+subconscious depths of being, than has ever yet flashed forth in the
+career of uncommon men. Some scientists say that it depends on chemical
+and physical forces. It indeed uses these to build the various bodies it
+inhabits, but again it leaves these to destroy those bodies when it
+quits them. The most constant and ubiquitous phenomenon in the world,
+the ultimate reality in the universe, is _life_, revealing its presence
+in innumerable modes of activity, from the dance of atoms in the rock to
+the philosophizing of the sage and the aspirations of the saint,--the
+creator of Nature, the administrator of the regular processes we call
+the laws of Nature, the author of the wonders men call miraculous
+because they are uncommon and ill understood.
+
+The works of which any man is naturally capable are conditioned by the
+psychical quality of his life, and its power to use the forces of
+Nature. Through differences of vital endowment some can use color, as
+wonderful painters, and others employ sound, as wonderful musicians, in
+ways impossible to those otherwise endowed. So "a poet is born, not
+made." So persons of feeble frame, stimulated by disease or frenzied by
+passion, have put forth preternatural and prodigious muscular strength.
+By what we call "clairvoyant" power life calls up in intelligent
+perception things going on far beyond ocular vision. By what we call
+"telepathic" power life communicates intelligence with life separated by
+miles of space. Such are some of the powers that have been discovered,
+and fully attested, but not explained, as belonging to the world's
+master 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 we
+shall 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 already
+reached their ultimate development.
+
+We look with wonder and awe into the secret shrine of life, where two
+scarcely visible cells unite to form the human being whose thought shall
+arrange the starry heavens in majestic order, and harness the titanic
+energies of Nature for the world's work. There we behold the real
+supernatural. Nothing is more natural than life, and nothing also more
+supernatural. Biology studies all the various forms that the world shows
+of it, and affirms that life, though multiform, is one. This embryology
+attests, showing that the whole ascent of life through diverse forms
+from the lowest to the highest, during the millions of years since life
+first manifested its presence on this globe, is recapitulated in the
+stages of growth through which the human being passes in the few months
+before its birth. And philosophy, which does not seek the living among
+the dead, affirms, _omne vivum ex vivo_. The varied but unitary life of
+the world is the stream of an exhaustless spring. It is filial to the
+life of God, the Father Almighty. What the ancient creed affirmed of the
+Christ as the Son of God--whom his beloved disciple recognized as "the
+eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested unto
+us[34]"--may be truly affirmed of the mysterious reality that is known
+as life: "Begotten not made; being of one substance with the Father;
+through whom [or which] all things were made." Looking from the derived
+and 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, nor
+can see," up to the life underived, aboriginal, infinite, we recognize
+_God_ and _Life_ as terms of identical significance. How superficial the
+notion of miracles as "the personal intervention of God into the chain
+of cause and effect," in which he is the constant vital element. If an
+event deemed miraculous is ever ascribed, as of old, to "the finger of
+God," the reality behind the phenomenon is simply a higher or a stronger
+power of life than is recognized in an event of a common type--life that
+is 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 important
+question confronts us,--a question not wholly new. Within the memory of
+living men theologians have been compelled to ask themselves: What if
+the geologists should establish facts that contradict our Biblically
+derived doctrine that the universe was made in a week? Again have they
+been constrained to put to themselves the question: What if the
+evolutionists should supersede our doctrine that the creation is the
+immediate product of successive fiats of the Creator by showing that it
+came gradually into existence through the progressive operation of
+forces immanent in the cosmos? Still again have they had to face the
+question: What if modern criticism by the discovery of demonstrable
+errors in the Sacred Writings should fault our doctrine that, as the
+Word of God, the Bible is free from all and every error? In every
+instance the dreaded concession, when found at length to be enforced by
+modern learning, has been found to bring, not the loss that had been
+apprehended, but clear gain to the intellectual interests of religion.
+Now it is this same sort of question which returns with the
+uncertainties and difficulties widely felt in the Church to be gathering
+over its hitherto unvexed belief in miracles as signs of a divine
+activity more immediate than it has recognized in the regular processes
+of Nature.
+
+The majority of uneducated Christians still hold, as formerly in each of
+the points just mentioned, to the traditional view. Miracle as a divine
+intervention in the natural order, a more close and direct divine
+contact with the course of things than is the case in ordinary
+experience, they regard as the inseparable and necessary concomitant and
+proof of a divine Revelation. To deny miracles, thus understood, is
+censured as equivalent to denial of the reality of the Revelation. But
+it is rather surprising, because it is rare, to find a man of such note
+in literature as Dr. W. Robertson Nicoll affirming[35] that one cannot
+be a Christian without believing at least two miracles, the virgin
+birth and the physical resurrection of the Christ. Without comment on
+the significance of this retreat upon the minimum of miracle, it must
+here be noted that a minority of the Church, not inferior to their
+brethren in learning and piety, believe that there are no tides in God's
+presence 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 in
+Nature 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 this
+fundamental truth of religion they affirm that miracles in the
+traditional sense of the word, and in their traditional limitation to
+the small measure of time and space covered by Biblical narratives,
+never occurred. Events reputed miraculous have indeed occurred, but
+simply as unusual, inexplicable phenomena in the natural order of
+things, the natural products of exceptionally endowed life, and, whether
+in ancient time or modern, the same sort of thing the world over. To the
+argument that this involves denial of a supernatural Revelation they
+reply that it is mere reasoning in a circle. For if one begs the
+question at the outset by defining supernatural Revelation as revelation
+necessarily evidenced by miraculous divine intervention, then, of
+course, denial of this is denial of that, and how is the argument
+advanced? But, besides this, the question-begging definition is a
+fallacious confusing of the contents of the Revelation with its
+concomitants, and of its essentially spiritual character with phenomena
+in the sphere of the senses.
+
+The turning-point in this argument between the two parties in the Church
+has been reached in the antipodal change, already referred to, from the
+old to the new apologetics,--a change whose inevitable consequences do
+not yet seem to be clearly discerned by either party in the discussion.
+The contention that denial of miracles as traditionally understood
+carries denial of supernatural Revelation has been virtually set aside,
+with its question-begging definition and circular reasoning, by the
+apologetics now current among believers in at least a minimum of miracle
+in the traditional sense of the word,--especially in the two chief
+miracles of the virgin birth and the physical resurrection of Jesus. As
+an eminent representative of these the late Dr. A. B. Bruce may be
+cited. These adduce "the moral miracle," the sinlessness of Jesus, as
+evidential for the reality of the physical miracles as its "congruous
+accompaniments." "If," says Dr. Bruce, "we receive Him as the great
+moral miracle, we shall receive much more for His sake."[36] But what a
+turn-about of the traditional argument on the evidences! The older
+apologetes argued: This crown of miraculous power bespeaks the royal
+dignity of the wearer. The modern apologete reasons: This royal
+character must have a crown of miraculous power corresponding with his
+moral worth. In this antipodal reverse of Christian thought it is quite
+plain that for evidential purposes the miracle is stripped of its
+ancient value. And it has already been observed that modern knowledge
+has now transferred many of the Biblical miracles to the new rooms
+discovered for them in the natural order of things. It is not premature,
+therefore, for leaders of Christian thought to put once more to
+themselves the question, constantly recurring as learning advances:
+What theological readjustment should we have to make, if obliged to
+concede that the ancient belief in miracle is not inseparable from
+belief in a supernatural Revelation, not indispensable to belief
+therein? What modified conception must we form, if constrained to admit
+that the living God, ever immanent in Nature, intervenes in Nature no
+more at one time than another? What, indeed, but a revised and true in
+place of a mistaken conception of the term _Supernatural_?
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[35] "The Church asks, and it is entitled to ask the critic: Do you
+believe in the Incarnation and Resurrection of Jesus Christ?... If he
+replies in the negative, he has missed the way, and has put himself
+outside of the Church of Christ."--_The Church's One Foundation_, p. 4.
+[Note that "Incarnation" and "Resurrection" are terms which Dr. Nicoll
+construes as denoting physical miracles.]
+
+What Dr. Nicoll here means by "outside of the Church" he indicates by
+saying 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 judgment
+concerning the reality of remote occurrences is both unbiblical and
+unethical, as well as absurd when practically applied. Some years since,
+Dr. E. A. Abbott, who admits no miracle in the life of Christ, published
+a book, _The Spirit on the Waters_, in which he inculcated the worship
+of 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. But
+we cannot proceed without briefly reminding ourselves of the certain
+consequences of this now far advanced dropping of miracles by modern
+apologetics from their ancient use as evidences of a supernatural
+Revelation. We are not ignorant of the law, which holds throughout the
+material, the mental, and the moral realms, that disuse tends to atrophy
+and extinction. Disused organs cease to exist, as in the eyeless
+cave-fish. For centuries the story of the miraculous birth of Jesus was
+serviceable for confirmation of his claim to be the Son of God. In the
+address of the angel of the annunciation to Mary that claim is expressly
+rested on the miraculous conception of "the holy thing."[37] But as
+ethical enlightenment grows, the conviction grows that, whether the
+physiological ground of that claim be tenable or not, the ethical ground
+of it is essentially higher. _Father_ and _son_ even in human
+relationships are terms of more than physiological import. It is matter
+of frequent experience that, where the ethical character of such
+relationship is lacking, the physiological counts for nothing.
+Moreover, the divine sonship of Jesus in a purely ethical view rests on
+ground not only higher but incontestable. And so in our time theologians
+prefer to rest it on foundations that cannot be shaken, on his moral
+oneness with God, the divineness of his spirit, the ideal perfectness of
+his life. The strength of this position being realized, the world begins
+to hear from Christian thinkers the innovating affirmation that belief
+of the miraculous birth can no longer be deemed essential to
+Christianity; else it would not have been left unmentioned in two of the
+four Gospels, and in every extant Apostolic letter. And now we hear
+theologians saying: "I accept it, but I place it no more among the
+evidences of Christianity. I defend it, but cannot employ it in the
+defence of supernatural Revelation." Such a stage of thought is only
+transitional. An antiquated argument does not long survive in the world
+of thought.[38] Military weapons that have become unserviceable soon
+find their way either to the museum or the foundry. It is shortsighted
+not to foresee the inevitable effect on our theological material of the
+law of atrophy through disuse. The case of the miracle is the case of a
+pillar originally put in for the support of an ancient roof. When the
+roof has a modern truss put beneath it springing from wall to wall, the
+pillar becomes an obstacle, and is removed.
+
+But as in such a case the roof, otherwise supported, does not fall in
+when the pillar is removed, so neither is the central Christian truth of
+the incarnation imperilled by any weakening or vanishing of belief in
+the doctrine of the virgin birth. In a discussion of the subject in
+Convocation at York, England, while these pages were being written, the
+Dean of Ripon (Dr. Boyd Carpenter) urged that it must be borne in mind
+that the incarnation and the virgin birth were two different things, and
+that some who found difficulty in the latter fully accepted the former.
+In a recent sermon Dr. Briggs insists likewise upon this: "The virgin
+birth is only one of many statements of the mode of incarnation.... The
+doctrine of the incarnation does not depend upon the virgin birth.... It
+is only a minor matter connected with the incarnation, and should have a
+subordinate place in the doctrine.... At the same time the virgin birth
+is a New Testament doctrine, and we must give it its proper place and
+importance.... The favorite idea of the incarnation among the people has
+ever been the simpler one of the virgin birth, as in the Ave Maria. The
+theologians have ever preferred the more profound doctrine of the Hymn
+of the Logos [John i. 1-18]."[39] Nay, it may even be found that the
+weakening of belief in the incarnation as an isolated and miraculous
+event may tend to promote a profounder conception of it, that brings the
+divine and the human into touch and union at all points instead of in
+one point.[40]
+
+A similar change of thought, less remarked than its significance
+deserves, is concerned with that other great miracle, the corporeal
+resurrection of Jesus, which such writers as Dr. Nicoll couple with that
+of his virgin birth as the irreducible minimum of miracle, belief in
+which is essential to Christian discipleship.[41] For many centuries the
+resurrection story in the Gospels has served as the conclusive proof
+both of the divine sonship of Jesus,[42] and of our own resurrection to
+immortality.[43] In the churches it is still popularly regarded as the
+supreme, sufficient, and indispensable fact required for the basis of
+faith. But in many a Christian mind the thought has dawned, that a
+single fact cannot give adequate ground for the general inference of a
+universal principle; that a remote historical fact, however strongly
+attested, can evince only what _has_ taken place in a given case, not
+what _will_ or _must_ occur in other cases; while it is also inevitably
+more or less pursued by critical doubt of the attestations supporting
+it.
+
+This rising tide of reflection has compelled resort to higher ground, to
+the inward evidences in the nature of mind that are more secure from the
+doubt to which all that is merely external and historical is exposed. A
+clear distinction has been discerned between the _real_ resurrection of
+Jesus--his rising from the mortal state into the immortal, and his
+_phenomenal_ resurrection--the manifestations of his change that are
+related as having been objectively witnessed. What took place in the
+invisible world--his real resurrection--is now more emphasized by
+Christian thinkers than the phenomenal resurrection in the visible
+world. So conservatively orthodox a writer as Dr. G. D. Boardman goes so
+far as to say: "After all, the real question in the matter of his
+resurrection is not, 'Did Christ's body rise?' That is but a
+subordinate, incidental issue." The real question, as Dr. Boardman
+admits, is, "Whether Jesus Christ himself is risen, and is alive
+to-day."[44] The main stress of Christian thought to-day is not laid, as
+formerly, on the phenomena recorded in the story of the resurrection,
+but on the psychological, moral, and rational evidences of a
+resurrection to immortality that until recent times were comparatively
+disregarded.[45] Meanwhile the vindication of the reality of the
+phenomena related of the risen Jesus, including his bodily ascension,
+though not a matter of indifference to many of those who have found the
+higher grounds of faith, has become to them of subordinate importance.
+
+It is well for Christian faith that its supersensuous and impregnable
+grounds have been occupied. It is certain that ancient records of
+external phenomena cannot in future constitute, as heretofore, the
+stronghold of faith. But it is by no means yet certain that they have
+lost serviceableness as, at least, outworks of the stronghold. While the
+doctrine of the virgin birth seems to be threatened by atrophy, the
+doctrine of the bodily resurrection, though retired from primary to
+secondary rank, seems to be waiting rather for clarification by further
+knowledge.
+
+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 of
+Sunday as a day of sacred and joyful observance which is coeval with the
+earliest traditions, and antedates all records, is an attestation as
+significant as any monumental marble. No hallucination theory, no
+gradual rise and growth of hope in the minds of a reflective few, can
+account for that solid primeval monument. But _what_ occurred, the
+reality in distinctness from any legendary accretions, we shall be
+better able to conclude, when the truth shall have been threshed out
+concerning the reality, at present strongly attested, and as strongly
+controverted, of certain extraordinary but occult psychical powers.[46]
+
+A point of high significance for those who would cultivate a religious
+faith not liable to be affected by changes of intellectual outlook or
+insight is, that this lower valuation of miracle observable among
+Christian thinkers has not been reached through breaches made by
+sceptical doubts of the reality of a supernatural Revelation. They
+have, of course, felt the reasonableness of the difficulties with which
+traditional opinions have been encumbered by the advance of knowledge.
+But so far from giving way thereupon to doubts of the reality of divine
+Revelation, they have sought and found less assailable defences for
+their faith in it than those that sufficed their fathers. And their
+satisfaction therewith stands in no sympathy with those who hold it a
+mark of enlightenment to assume with Matthew Arnold, that "miracles do
+not happen." It has resulted rather from reaching the higher grounds of
+religious thought, on which supernatural Revelation is recognized in its
+essential character as distinctively moral and spiritual.
+
+The true supernatural is the _spiritual_, not the miraculous, a higher
+order of Nature, not a contradiction of Nature. The Revelation of Jesus
+was altogether spiritual. It consisted in the ideas of God which he
+communicated by his ministry and teaching, by his character and life.
+But this, the real supernatural, was not obvious as such to his
+contemporaries. They looked for it in the lower region of physical
+effects. And here the Church also in its embryonic spiritual life, in
+its proneness to externalize religion in forms of rite, and creed, and
+organization, has thought to find it. Jesus' reproof, "Except ye see
+signs and wonders ye will not believe," is still pertinent to those who
+will not have it that the supernatural Revelation--spiritual though it
+be--can be recognized or believed in apart from an acknowledgment of
+attendant miracles, wrought in physical nature by an intervention of
+God. Such a contention, however, is as futile and desperate as was John
+Wesley's declaration, "The giving up of witchcraft is in effect the
+giving up of the Bible." Such mischievous fallacies succeed only in
+blinding many a mind to the real issue which the moral and spiritual
+Revelation of Jesus makes with men of the twentieth century. It is these
+fallacies, and not their critics, that create the most of
+scepticism.[47]
+
+But while the question whether miracles are credible has ceased to be of
+vital importance, it has by no means lost all importance. On the
+contrary, so long as the path of progress is guided by the lamp of
+experience, so long will it be of consequence that the historical record
+of experience be found trustworthy. It may suit the overweening pride
+which defies both the past and the present to say with Bonaparte, that
+history is only a fable that men have agreed to believe. But it is a
+human interest, and a satisfaction of normal minds to establish, so far
+as reason permits, the credibility of every record ostensibly historic.
+To discover that ancient experiences, once supposed to be miraculous
+raisings from real death, may reasonably be classed with well attested
+experiences of to-day, better understood as resuscitations from a
+deathlike trance, should be welcomed by unprejudiced historical critics,
+as redeeming portions of the ancient record from mistaken disparagement
+as legendary. That further study may accredit as facts, or at least as
+founded on facts, some other marvels in that record cannot, except by
+arrant dogmatism, be pronounced improbable. Nevertheless, it cannot be
+expected that the legendary element, which both the Old and the New
+Testament in greater and less degree exhibit, can ever be eliminated.
+Such stories as that of the origin of languages at Babel, and that of
+the resurrection of ancient saints at Jesus' resurrection are
+indubitable cases of it. But the legendary element, though permanent, is
+at present undefined. To define it is the problem of the critical
+student, a problem most difficult to him whose judgment is least
+subjective; and he will welcome every contribution that advancing
+knowledge 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 Biblical
+record than in those studies of the exceptional phenomena and occult
+powers of life which are prosecuted by the Society for Psychical
+Research, whose results are recorded in its published _Proceedings_. For
+those familiar with this record the legendary element in the Bible tends
+to shrink into smaller compass than many critics assign it. In the
+interest both of the Bible and of science it is regrettable that the
+results of these researches, though conducted by men of high eminence
+in the scientific world, still encounter the same hostile scepticism
+even from some Christian believers that Hume directed against the
+Biblical miracles. Mr. Gladstone has put himself on record against this
+philistinism, saying that "psychical research is by far the most
+important work that is being done in the world." Were one disposed to
+prophesy, very reasonable grounds could be produced for the prediction
+that, great as was the advance of the nineteenth century in physical
+knowledge, the twentieth century will witness an advance in psychical
+knowledge equally great. In this advance one may not unreasonably
+anticipate that some, at least, of the Biblical miracles may be relieved
+from 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 the
+doctrine of the virgin birth appears in the recent utterance of so
+eminent an evangelical scholar as Dr. R. F. Horton, of London. The
+following report of his remarks in a Christmas sermon in 1901 is taken
+from 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 the
+latest touches in the Gospel, belonging to a period forty or fifty years
+after the Lord had passed away, when men had begun to realize what he
+was--the Son of God--and tried to express their conviction in this form
+or that." The implication here is unmistakable, that, in Dr. Horton's
+view, subjective considerations in the minds of pious believers, rather
+than objective fact, form the basis of the story.
+
+[39] See the Sermon on "Born of a Virgin," in the volume on _The
+Incarnation of Our Lord_.
+
+[40] "Christian thought has not erred by asserting too much concerning
+the incarnation of God, but, on the contrary, too little.... If ever
+overblown by blasts of denial, it is for wanting breadth of base.... Men
+have disbelieved the incarnation, because told that all there was of it
+was in Christ; and they reject what is presented as exceptional to the
+general way of God. They must be told to believe more; that the age-long
+way of God is in a perpetually increasing incarnation of life, whose
+climax and crown is the divine fulness of life in Christ."--From a
+discourse by the present writer on "Life and its Incarnations," in the
+volume, _New Points to Old Texts_. (James Clarke & Co., London. Thomas
+Whittaker, 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 one
+resurrection of which the New Testament knows, the one resurrection
+which 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 the
+resurrection (Luke xx. 37, 38) logically proceeds on the assumption that
+living 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 the
+sky, but between the lower life of mortals and the higher life immortal.
+
+For an extended exhibition of this line of evidence see "The Assurance
+of Immortality," and "The Present Pledge of Life to Come" (in two
+volumes 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 of
+hallucinations" conducted some ten years since by the Society for
+Psychical Research evinced the reality of veridical apparitions of
+deceased persons at or near the time of their death, showing the number
+of verified cases to be so large as to exclude the supposition of chance
+hallucination (see _Proceedings_, August, 1894). Or could it have been a
+material body suddenly becoming visible in a closed room, as narrated by
+Luke and John? First-class evidence, if there can be any such for such
+occurrences, has been exhibited for such phenomena as the passage of
+solid substances through intervening doors and walls--easy enough, say
+mathematicians, for a being familiar with the "fourth dimension"--and of
+the levitation of heavy bodies without physical support. (See
+_Proceedings_, January, 1894, and March, 1895.) As to such things
+scepticism is doubtless in order, but dogmatic contradiction is not.
+_Sub judice lis est._
+
+[47] Professor Borden P. Bowne has thus exhibited this great mistake and
+its grievous consequence:--
+
+"In popular thought, religious and irreligious alike, the natural is
+supposed to be something that runs itself without any internal guidance
+or external interference. The supernatural, on the other hand, if there
+be any such thing, is not supposed to manifest itself through the
+natural, but by means of portents, prodigies, interpositions, departures
+from, or infractions of, natural law in general. The realm of law
+belongs to the natural, and the natural runs itself. Hence, if we are to
+find anything supernatural, we must look for it in the abnormal, the
+chaotic, the lawless, or that which defies all reduction to order that
+may be depended on. This notion underlies the traditional debate between
+naturalism and supernaturalism.... This unhappy misconception of the
+relation of the natural to the supernatural has practically led the
+great body of uncritical thinkers into the grotesque inversion of all
+reason--the more law and order, the less God."--_Zion's Herald_, August
+22, 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 the
+considerations that have been presented. This is not the reality of
+miracles, but the reality of the supernatural, what it really is, as
+distinct from what it has been thought to be. The advance of science and
+philosophy has brought to the front this question: "Have those who
+reject the claims of supernatural Religion been misinformed as to what
+it is?" Is it, as they have been told, dependent for its attestation on
+signs and wonders occurring in the sphere of the senses? Does it require
+acceptance of these, as well as of its teachings? Or is its
+characteristic appeal wholly to the higher nature of man, relying for
+its attestation on the witness borne to it by this, rather than by
+extraordinary phenomena presented to the senses? There is at present no
+intellectual interest of Christianity more urgent than this: to present
+to minds imbued with modern learning the true conception of the
+supernatural and of supernatural Religion.
+
+Miracles, legitimately viewed as the natural product of extraordinary
+psychical power, or, to phrase it otherwise, of an exceptional vital
+endowment, belong not to the Hebrew race alone, nor did they cease when
+the last survivor of the Jewish apostles of Christianity passed away at
+the end of the first century. This traditional opinion ought by this
+time to have been entombed together with its long defunct relative,
+which represented this globe as the fixed centre of the revolving
+heavens. Miracles have the same universality as human life. Nor will
+their record be closed till the evolution of life is complete. Animal
+life, advancing through geologic æons to the advent of man, in him
+reached its climax. Spiritual life, appearing in him as a new bud on an
+old stock, is evidently far from its climax still. To believe in
+miracles, as rightly understood, is to believe in spirit and life, and
+in further unfoldings of their still latent powers.
+
+This, however, is just now of subordinate importance. The present
+interest of chief moment is a riddance of the hoary fallacy that
+vitiates the current idea of a supernatural Revelation by looking for
+its specific characteristics to the physical world. By this deplorable
+fallacy Christian theology has blinded the minds of many scientific men
+to the essential claims of Christianity, with immense damage in the
+arrested development of their religious nature through the scepticism
+inevitably but needlessly provoked by this great mistake. When Elijah
+proclaims to idolaters that their deity is no God, and, as we read,
+corroborates his words by calling down fire from heaven to consume his
+sacrifice, it is reckoned as supernatural Revelation. But it is not so
+reckoned when the sage in the book of Proverbs proclaims to a nation of
+religious formalists the moral character of God: "To do righteousness
+and justice is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice." This is
+accounted as ethical teaching, somewhat in advance of the times. A pagan
+rather than a Christian way of thinking is discoverable here. In each of
+the cases cited the specific character of supernatural Revelation is
+equally evident,--the disclosure of spiritual truth above the natural
+thought of the natural men to whom it came. The character of any
+revelation is determined by the character of the truth made known, not
+by the drapery of circumstances connected with the making known. Clothes
+do not make the man, though coarse or careless people may think so. What
+belongs to the moral and spiritual order is supernatural to what
+belongs to the material and physical order.
+
+This way of thinking will be forced on common minds by thoughtful
+observation of common things. Animate nature of the lowest rank, as in
+the grass, is of a higher natural order than inanimate nature in the
+soil the grass springs from. Sentient nature, as in the ox, is of a
+higher order than the non-sentient in the grass. Self-conscious and
+reflective nature in the man is of a higher order than the selfless and
+non-reflective nature in his beast of burden. In the composite being of
+man all these orders of nature coexist, and each higher is supernatural
+to the nature below it. Nature, the comprehensive term for _all that
+comes into being_, is a hierarchy of natures, rising rank above rank
+from the lowest to the highest. The highest nature known to us,
+supernatural to all below it, can only be the moral nature, whose full
+satisfaction is necessary to the highest satisfaction of a man, and in
+whose complete development only can be realized in permanency his
+perfected welfare as a social being.
+
+Now it is precisely in the progress of moral development that
+supernatural Religion manifests itself as a reality. Religion, indeed,
+is as natural to man as Art. But there is religion and Religion, as
+there is art and Art--the sexual religion of the primitive Semites, the
+animistic religion of China, the spiritual Religion that flowered on the
+Mount of the Beatitudes, embryonic religion and Religion adult; all,
+indeed, natural, yet of lower and of higher grade. Doubtless, Religion
+of whatever grade outranks all other human activities by its distinctive
+aspiration to transcend the bounds of space and time and sense, and to
+link the individual to the universal; and so all Religion sounds, feebly
+or distinctly, the note of the supernatural. But this is the resonant
+note of the spiritual Religion which unfolds in the moral progress of
+the world. As moral nature is supernatural to the psychical and the
+physical, so is its consummate bloom of spiritual Religion to be ranked
+as such, relatively to the religions which more or less dimly and
+blindly are yearning and groping toward the light that never was on sea
+or land. Thus defining the word according to the nature of the thing,
+supernatural Religion, with its corollary of supernatural Revelation not
+as an apparition from without, but as an unfolding from within, is both
+a fact and a factor in the development of spiritual man.
+
+The term _supernatural Religion_ has been rightly applied to that system
+of religious conceptions, ideals, and motives, whose effective culture
+of the moral nature is attested historically by a moral development
+superior to the product of any other known religion. Whether the
+greatest saints of Christianity are all of them whiter souls than any
+that can be found among the disciples of any other religion, may be
+matter for argument. There can be no gainsaying the fact that, of great
+and lowly together, no other religion shows so many saints, or has so
+advanced the general moral development in lands where it is widely
+followed. But its essential character has been obscured, its appeal to
+man's highest nature foiled, and its power lamed by the wretched fallacy
+that has transferred its distinctive note of the supernatural from its
+divine ideals to the physical marvels embedded in the record of its
+original promulgation, even conditioning its validity and authority upon
+their reality. Such is the false issue which, to the discredit of
+Christianity, theology has presented to science. Such is the confusion
+of ideas that in the light of modern knowledge inevitably blocks the way
+to a reasonable religious faith in multitudes of minds thereby offended.
+From this costly error Christian theology at length shows signs that it
+is 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, were
+wrought by Jesus. These, whatever they were, must be regarded as the
+natural effluence of a transcendently endowed life. Taking place in the
+sphere of the senses, they were _a_ revelation of the type seen before
+and since in the lives of wonder-workers ancient and modern, in whom the
+power of mind over matter, however astonishing and mysterious, is
+recognized as belonging to the natural order of things no less than the
+unexplored Antarctic belongs to the globe. But _the_ Revelation which he
+gave to human thought as a new thing, a heavenly vision unprecedented,
+was in the higher realm of the moral and spiritual life. This was the
+true supernatural, whose reality and power are separable from all its
+environment of circumstances, and wholly independent thereof. The
+characteristic ideals of Jesus, his profound consciousness of God, his
+filial thought of God, his saturation with the conviction of his moral
+oneness with God,[49] his realization of brotherhood with the meanest
+human being, still transcend the common level of natural humanity even
+among his disciples. As thus transcendent they are supernatural still.
+Till reached and realized, they manifest the fact of a supernatural
+Revelation in that peerless life as plainly as the sun is manifest in
+the splendor of a cloudless day.
+
+In the coming but distant age, when man's spiritual nature, now so
+embryonic, shall have become adult, it will doubtless so pervade and
+rule the physical and psychical natures which it inhabits that the
+distinction between natural and supernatural, so important in the
+period of its development, will become foreign alike to thought and
+speech. But until the making of man in the image of God is complete,
+when the spiritual element in our composite being, now struggling for
+development, shall be manifest in its ultimate maturity and ascendency
+as the distinctive and proper nature of humanity, it is of supreme
+importance for the Christian teacher, who would point and urge to the
+heights of being, to free men's minds of error as to what the real
+supernatural is. Not the fancied disturber of the world's ordered
+harmonies, but that highest Nature which is the moulder, the glory, and
+the crown of all the lower.
+
+Imaged to us in the human perfectness of Jesus, the ideal Son of man, it
+is revealed as the distinctive inheritance and prize of the humanity
+that essays to think the thoughts and walk the ways of God. To each of
+us is it given in germ by our human birth, to be fostered and nourished
+in converse with the Infinite Presence that inhabits all things, till
+its divine possibilities appear in the ultimate "revealing of the sons
+of God,"[50] full grown "according to the measure of the stature of the
+fulness of Christ."[51]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[48] "Upon the conception of the supernatural as the personal,"
+says Professor Nash, "apologetics must found the claims of
+Christianity."--_Ethics and Revelation._
+
+[49] The words in which Jesus expresses this are much more extraordinary
+and profoundly significant than any of those mighty works of his, the
+like of which are recorded of the ancient prophets. Jesus was conscious
+of God as living in him, and of himself as living in God, in the unity
+of 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 sayings
+as, "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_.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Miracles and Supernatural Religion, by 
+James Morris Whiton
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MIRACLES AND SUPERNATURAL RELIGION ***
+
+***** This file should be named 26397-8.txt or 26397-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/2/6/3/9/26397/
+
+Produced by Bryan Ness, Stephen Blundell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/26397-8.zip b/26397-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a19e5c5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-8.zip
diff --git a/26397-h.zip b/26397-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3fd7c64
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-h.zip
diff --git a/26397-h/26397-h.htm b/26397-h/26397-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52ba5f7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-h/26397-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,3501 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Miracles and Supernatural Religion, by James Morris Whiton
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+/*<![CDATA[  XML blockout */
+<!--
+    p {margin-top: .75em; text-align: justify; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .noin {text-indent: 0em;}
+    body > p {text-indent: 1em;}
+    h1,h2,h3 {clear: both; font-weight: normal;}
+    hr {width: 65%; margin: 2em auto; clear: both;}
+    .shr {width: 45%;}
+    table,.shr,.figct,.poem {margin: 1em auto;}
+    table td {vertical-align: bottom;}
+    .td1 {width: 35em; text-align: justify; padding-right: 2em; padding-left: 2em; text-indent: -1em;}
+    .td2 {padding-top: 1.5em;}
+    body {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .pagenum {position: absolute; right: 1%; font-size: small; font-style: normal; text-align: right; text-indent: 0em;}
+    .bq1 {margin: 1em 10% 2em; font-size: 90%;}
+    .bq2 {margin: 1em 10%;}
+    .ctr,.p1,h1,h2,h3,.td2,.fsx {text-align: center;}
+    .smcap,.smcapl {font-variant: small-caps;}
+    .smcapl {text-transform: lowercase;}
+    .figct {width: 500px;}
+    .footnotes {border: dashed 1px; margin-top: 2em;}
+    .footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;}
+    .footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;}
+    .fnanchor {vertical-align: 0.25em; font-size: .8em; text-decoration: none;}
+    .poem,.lft,.p2,.p4 {text-align: left;}
+    .poem br {display: none;}
+    .i0,.i4,.i5 {display: block; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+    .i0 {margin-left: 0em;}
+    .i4 {margin-left: 4em;}
+    .i5 {margin-left: 5em;}
+    .trn {border: solid 1px; margin: 3em 15%; padding: .25em 1em;}
+    img {border: none;}
+    a:link, a:visited {text-decoration: none;}
+    .dcap {text-transform: uppercase;}
+    .figcp {float: left; margin-left: 0; margin-right: .5em; padding: 0; width: 75px; height: 75px;}
+    .p3 {text-indent: -0.3em;}
+    .fsm {font-size: medium;}
+    .fsx,.fxl {font-size: x-large;}
+    h1,h2,.p1 {line-height: 1.5em;}
+    .rgt {text-align: right;}
+    .bk2 {margin: 0 auto 5em; width: 20em;}
+    .bk2 p,.bk3 p,.figcp {margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0;}
+    .p2,.p8 {text-indent: 2em;}
+    .mt4 {margin-top: 4em;}
+    .p4 {font-weight: bold; margin-top: 1.5em; font-size: large;}
+    .p5 {padding-left: 4em; text-indent: -4em;}
+    .p6 {padding-left: 2em; text-indent: -2em;}
+    .p7,.fsx {margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;}
+    // -->
+    /* XML end  ]]>*/
+    </style>
+  </head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Miracles and Supernatural Religion, by 
+James Morris Whiton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Miracles and Supernatural Religion
+
+Author: James Morris Whiton
+
+Release Date: August 23, 2008 [EBook #26397]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MIRACLES AND SUPERNATURAL RELIGION ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bryan Ness, Stephen Blundell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<h1><big>MIRACLES</big><br />
+<span class="fsm">AND</span><br />
+SUPERNATURAL RELIGION</h1>
+
+<h2><span class="fsm">BY</span><br />
+JAMES MORRIS WHITON, <span class="smcap">Ph.D.</span> (<span class="smcap">Yale</span>)</h2>
+
+<div class="bk2"><p class="p2"><i>Portentum non fit contra naturam, sed
+contra quam est nota natura</i></p>
+<p class="rgt"><span class="smcap">&mdash;Augustine</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="p1">New York<br />
+<big>THE MACMILLAN COMPANY</big><br />
+<small>LONDON: MACMILLAN &amp; CO., <span class="smcap">Ltd.</span></small><br />
+1903<br /><br />
+<small><i>All rights reserved</i></small></div>
+
+<hr />
+<div class="ctr"><span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1903,<br />
+<span class="smcap">By</span> THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.<br />
+<br />
+Set up, electrotyped, and published May, 1903.</div>
+
+<div class="mt4"><p class="ctr"><small>Norwood Press<br />
+J. S. Cushing &amp; Co.&mdash;Berwick &amp; Smith Co.<br />
+Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.</small></p></div>
+
+<hr />
+<div class="p1">To<br />
+M. B. W.</div>
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></p>
+<h2>PREFATORY NOTE</h2>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">While</span> the present subject of discussion
+tempts to many an excursion into particulars,
+its treatment is restricted to general
+outlines, with an aim simply to clarify
+current ideas of miracle and the supernatural,
+so as to find firm holding ground
+for tenable positions in the present "drift
+period" of theology. The chief exception
+made to this general treatment is the discussion
+given to a class of miracles regarded
+with as much incredulity as any,
+yet as capable as any of being accredited
+as probably historical events&mdash;the raisings
+of the "dead." The insistence of some
+writers on the virgin birth and corporeal
+resurrection of Jesus as essential to Christianity
+has required brief discussion of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>
+these also, mainly with reference to the
+reasonableness of that demand. As to the
+latter miracle, it must be observed that in
+the Biblical narratives taken as a whole,
+whichever of their discordant features one
+be disposed to emphasize, the psychical
+element clearly preponderates over the
+physical and material.</p>
+
+<div class="bk3">
+<p class="rgt">J. M. W.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">New York</span>,</p>
+<p class="p2">April 11, 1903.</p></div>
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<div class='ctr'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td class="rgt" colspan="2"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lft"><span class="smcap">Introductory</span></td><td class="rgt"><a href="#Page_13">13</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lft"><span class="smcap">The Argument</span></td><td rowspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="td2"><big>I</big></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="td1">The gradual narrowing of the miraculous element in the Bible
+by recent discovery and discussion.&mdash;The
+alarm thereby excited in the Church.&mdash;The
+fallacy which generates the fear.&mdash;The
+atheistic conception of nature which generates
+the fallacy.&mdash;The present outgrowing of this
+conception.</td><td class="rgt"><a href="#Page_25">25</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="td2"><big>II</big></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="td1">The present net results of the discussion of the
+miraculous element in the Bible.&mdash;Evaporation
+of the former evidential value of miracles.&mdash;Further
+insistence on this value a logical blunder.&mdash;The
+transfer of miracles from the artillery
+to the baggage of the Church.&mdash;Probability of
+a further reduction of the list of miracles.&mdash;Also
+of a further transfer of events reputed
+miraculous to the domain of history.</td><td class="rgt"><a href="#Page_37">37</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="td2"><big>III</big></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="td1">Arbitrary criticism of the Biblical narratives of the
+raising of the "dead."&mdash;Facts which it ignores.&mdash;The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>
+subject related to the phenomena of
+trance, and records of premature burial.&mdash;The
+resuscitation in Elisha's tomb probably historical.&mdash;Jesus'
+raising of the ruler's daughter
+plainly such a case.&mdash;His raising of the widow's
+son probably such.&mdash;The hypothesis that his
+raising of Lazarus may also have been such
+critically examined.&mdash;The record allows this
+supposition.&mdash;Further considerations favoring
+it: 1. The supposition threatens no real interest
+of Christianity.&mdash;2. Enhances the character
+of the act as a work of mercy.&mdash;3. Is
+independent of the belief of the witnesses of
+the act.&mdash;4. Is coherent with the general
+conception of the healing works of Jesus as
+wrought by a peculiar psychical power.&mdash;Other
+cases.&mdash;The resurrection of Jesus an event in
+a wholly different order of things.&mdash;The practical
+result of regarding these resuscitations as
+in the order of nature.</td><td class="rgt"><a href="#Page_47">47</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="td2"><big>IV</big></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="td1">A clearer conception of miracle approached.&mdash;Works
+of Jesus once reputed miraculous not so
+reputed now, since not now transcending as
+once the existing range of knowledge and power.&mdash;This
+transfer of the miraculous to the natural
+likely to continue.&mdash;No hard and fast line
+between the miraculous and the non-miraculous.&mdash;Miracle
+a provisional word, its application
+narrowing in the enlarging mastery of the secrets
+of Nature and of life.</td><td class="rgt"><a href="#Page_75">75</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="td2"><big>V</big></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="td1"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>Biblical miracles the effluence of extraordinary
+lives.&mdash;Life the world's magician and miracle-worker;
+its miracles now termed <i>prodigies</i>.&mdash;Miracle
+the natural product of an extraordinary
+endowment of life.&mdash;Life the ultimate reality.&mdash;What
+any man can achieve is conditioned
+by the psychical quality of his life.&mdash;Nothing
+more natural, more supernatural, than life.&mdash;The
+derived life of the world filial to the self-existent
+life of God; "begotten, not made."&mdash;Miracle
+as the product of life, the work of God.</td><td class="rgt"><a href="#Page_85">85</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="td2"><big>VI</big></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="td1">The question, old and new, now confronting theologians.&mdash;Their
+recent retreat upon the minimum
+of miracle.&mdash;The present conflict of opinion
+in the Church.&mdash;Its turning-point reached
+in the antipodal turn-about in the treatment of
+miracles from the old to the new apologetics.&mdash;Revision
+of the traditional idea of the supernatural
+required for theological readjustment.</td><td class="rgt"><a href="#Page_95">95</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="td2"><big>VII</big></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="td1">Account to be made of the law of atrophy through
+disuse.&mdash;The virgin birth and the corporeal
+resurrection of Jesus, the two miracles still insisted
+on as the irreducible minimum, affected
+by this law.&mdash;The vital truths of the incarnation
+and immortality independent of these miracles.&mdash;These
+truths now placed on higher
+ground in a truer conception of the supernatural.&mdash;The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
+true supernatural is the spiritual,
+not the miraculous.&mdash;Scepticism bred from the
+contrary view.&mdash;The miracle-narratives, while
+less evidential for religion, not unimportant for
+history.&mdash;Psychical research a needed auxiliary
+for the scientific critic of these.</td><td class="rgt"><a href="#Page_107">107</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="td2"><big>VIII</big></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="td1">The cardinal point in the present discussion the
+reality not of miracles, but of the supernatural.&mdash;Fallacy
+of pointing to physical events as
+essential characteristics of supernatural Revelation.&mdash;The
+character of a revelation determined
+not by its circumstances, but by its contents.&mdash;Moral
+nature supernatural to physical.&mdash;Nature
+a hierarchy of natures.&mdash;Supernatural Religion
+historically attested by the moral development
+it generates.&mdash;Transfer of its distinctive note
+from moral ideals to physical marvels a costly
+error.&mdash;Jesus' miracles <i>a</i> revelation, of a type
+common with others before and after.&mdash;The
+unique Revelation of Jesus was in the higher
+realm of divine ideas and ideals.&mdash;These, while
+unrealized in human life, still exhibit the fact of
+a supernatural Revelation.&mdash;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.&mdash;The divine possibilities
+of humanity, imaged in Jesus, revealed
+as our inheritance and our prize.</td><td class="rgt"><a href="#Page_131">131</a></td></tr>
+
+</table></div>
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figct">
+<img src="images/001.png" width="500" height="86" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h2>INTRODUCTORY</h2>
+
+<div class="figcp">
+<img src="images/008.png" width="75" height="75" alt="I" title="" />
+</div><p class="p3"><span class="dcap">n</span> a historical retrospect greater
+and more revolutionary changes
+are seen to have occurred during
+the nineteenth century than in any
+century preceding. In these changes no
+department of thought and activity has
+failed to share, and theological thought
+has been quite as much affected as scientific
+or ethical. Especially remarkable is
+the changed front of Christian theologians
+toward miracles, their distinctly lowered
+estimate of the significance of miracle,
+their antipodal reverse of the long established
+treatment of miracles. Referring
+to this a British evangelical writer<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> observes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
+that "the intelligent believer of
+our own day, ... instead of accepting
+Christianity on the ground of the miracles,
+accepts it in spite of the miracles.
+Whether he admits these miracles, or
+rejects them, his attitude toward them
+is toward difficulties, not helps."</p>
+
+<p>By this diametrical change of Christian
+thought a great amount of scepticism has
+already been antiquated. A once famous
+anti-Christian book, <i>Supernatural Religion</i>,
+regarded as formidable thirty years
+ago, is now as much out of date for relevancy
+to present theological conditions as
+is the old smooth-bore cannon for naval
+warfare. That many, indeed, are still
+unaware of the change that has been
+experienced by the leaders of Christian
+thought, no one acquainted with current
+discussions will deny; the fact is indubitable.
+It is reviewed in the following
+pages with the constructive purpose of redeeming<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>
+the idea of supernatural Religion
+from pernicious perversion, and of exhibiting
+it in its true spiritual significance. The
+once highly reputed calculations made to
+show how the earth's diurnal revolution
+could be imperceptibly stopped for Joshua's
+convenience, and the contention that the
+Mediterranean produced fish with gullets
+capable of giving passage to Jonah, are
+now as dead as the chemical controversy
+about phlogiston. Yet some sceptical
+controversialists are still so far from cultivating
+the acquaintance with recent
+thought which they recommend to Christian
+theologians, as to persist in affirmations
+of amazing ignorance, <i>e.g.</i> "It is admitted
+that miracles alone can attest the
+reality of divine revelation."<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Sponsors
+for this statement must now be sought
+among unlearned Christians, or among a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>
+few scholars who survive as cultivators
+of the old-fashioned argument from the
+"evidences." Even among these latter
+the tendency to minimize miracle is undeniably
+apparent in a reduction of the
+list classified as such, and still more in
+the brevity of the list insisted on for the
+attestation of Christianity.</p>
+
+<p>A transitional state of mind is clearly
+evidenced by the present division and
+perplexity of Christian thought concerning
+the Christian miracles. Many seem
+to regard further discussion as profitless,
+and are ready to shelve the subject. But
+this attitude of weariness is also transitional.
+There must be some thoroughfare
+to firm ground and clear vision. It
+must be found in agreement, first of all,
+on the real meaning of a term so variously
+and vaguely used as <i>miracle</i>. In
+the present imperfect state of knowledge
+it may be impossible to enucleate miracle,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
+however defined, of all mystery. But
+even so will much be gained for clear
+thinking, if miracle can be reasonably
+related to the greater mystery which all
+accept, though none understand,&mdash;the
+mystery of <i>life</i>. This view of the dynamic
+relation of life to miracle<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> is here
+suggested for what it may prove to be
+worth.</p>
+
+<p>The great and general change that
+transfigured theology during the nineteenth
+century was characteristically
+ethical. This, indeed, is the distinctive
+feature of the so-called new theology, in
+contrast with that which the Protestant
+Reformers inherited from St. Augustine.
+God and Man, Faith, Salvation and Inspiration,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
+Redemption and Atonement,
+Judgment and Retribution,&mdash;all these
+themes are now presented in orthodox
+pulpits far more conformably to ethical
+principles, though in degrees varying
+with educated intelligence, than was customary
+in the sermons of half a century
+ago. "One great source and spring
+of theological progress," says Professor
+Bowne, in his recent work on <i>Theism</i>,
+"has been the need of finding a conception
+of God which the moral nature
+could accept. The necessity of moralizing
+theology has produced vast changes
+in that field; and the end is not yet."</p>
+
+<p>The ethical character of the theological
+change will perhaps be most
+obvious in the field of Biblical study,
+to which the present subject belongs.
+The traditional solution of such moral
+difficulties in the Old Testament as
+commands, ostensibly divine, to massacre<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>
+idolaters has been quite discarded.
+It is no longer the mode to say that
+deeds seemingly atrocious were not atrocious,
+because God commanded them.
+Writers of orthodox repute now say that
+the <i>Thus saith the Lord</i>, with which
+Samuel prefaced his order to exterminate
+the Amalekites, must be understood
+subjectively, as an expression of
+the prophet's belief, not objectively, as
+a divine command communicated to him.
+This great change is a quite recent
+change. If a personal reference may be
+indulged, it is not twenty years since the
+present writer's published protest against
+"The Anti-Christian Use of the Bible in
+the Sunday School,"<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> the exhibition to
+children of some vestiges of heathen
+superstition embedded in the Old Testament
+narratives as true illustrations of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
+God's ways toward men, drew forth from
+a religious journal a bitter editorial on
+"The Old Testament and its New Enemies."
+But a great light has since
+dawned in that quarter. It is no longer
+deemed subversive of faith in a divine
+Revelation to hold that the prophet
+Gad was not infallible in regarding the
+plague which scourged Jerusalem as sent
+to punish David's pride in his census of
+the nation.</p>
+
+<p>A significant fact is presented in the
+comparison of these two aspects of the
+theological change that has come to pass,&mdash;the
+growing importance of the ethical,
+and the dwindling importance of the
+miraculous in the religious thought of
+to-day. This may reassure those who
+fear whereto such change may grow.
+The inner significance of such a change
+is most auspicious. It portends the displacement
+of a false by the true conception<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>
+of supernatural Religion, and the
+removal thereby of a serious antagonism
+between Science and Christian Theology,
+as well as of a serious hindrance of many
+thoughtful minds from an intelligent embrace
+of Christianity.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Professor W. T. Adeney in the <i>Hibbert Journal</i>,
+January, 1903, p. 302.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See the recent new edition of <i>Supernatural
+Religion</i>, "carefully revised."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> For an earlier statement of this by the present
+writer, see a discourse on "Miracle and Life,"
+in <i>New Points to Old Texts</i>. London: James
+Clarke &amp; Co., 1889. New York: Thomas
+Whittaker.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> <i>The New Englander</i>, September, 1884.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<div class="fsx"><big>MIRACLES AND SUPERNATURAL<br />
+RELIGION</big><br /><br />
+I</div>
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figct">
+<img src="images/002.png" width="500" height="89" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h2>I</h2>
+
+<div class="bq1"><p><span class="smcap">Synopsis.</span>&mdash;The gradual narrowing of the miraculous
+element in the Bible by recent discovery and
+discussion.&mdash;The alarm thereby excited in the
+Church.&mdash;The fallacy which generates the fear.&mdash;The
+atheistic conception of nature which generates
+the fallacy.&mdash;The present outgrowing of this
+conception.</p></div>
+
+<div class="figcp">
+<img src="images/008.png" width="75" height="75" alt="I" title="" />
+</div><p class="p3"><span class="dcap">t</span> is barely forty years since that
+beloved and fearless Christian
+scholar, Dean Stanley, spoke
+thus of the miracles recorded of the
+prophet Elisha: "His works stand alone
+in the Bible in their likeness to the acts
+of medi&aelig;val saints. There alone in the
+Sacred History the gulf between Biblical
+and Ecclesiastical miracles almost disappears."<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a>
+It required some courage to say<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>
+as much as this then, while the storm
+of persecution was raging against Bishop
+Colenso for his critical work on the Pentateuch.
+The evangelical clergymen in
+England and the United States then prepared
+to confess as much as this, with all
+that it obviously implies, could have been
+seated in a small room. But time has
+moved on, and the Church, at least the
+scholars of the Church, have moved with it.
+No scholar of more than narrowly local
+repute now hesitates to acknowledge the
+presence of a legendary element both in
+the Old Testament and in the New. While
+the extent of it is still undetermined, many
+specimens of it are recognized. It is agreed
+that the early narratives in Genesis are of
+this character, and that it is marked in
+such stories as those of Samson, Elijah,
+and Elisha. Even the conservative revisers
+of the Authorized Version have
+eliminated from the Fourth Gospel the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
+story of the angel at the pool of Bethesda,
+and in their marginal notes on the Third
+Gospel have admitted a doubt concerning
+the historicity of the angel and the bloody
+sweat in Gethsemane.</p>
+
+<p>Furthermore, some events, recognized as
+historical, have been divested of the miraculous
+character once attributed to them,&mdash;the
+crossing of the Red Sea, for instance,
+by the Hebrew host. A landslip
+in the thirteenth century <span class="smcapl">A.D.</span> has been
+noted as giving historical character to the
+story of the Hebrew host under Joshua's
+command crossing the Jordan "on dry
+ground," but in a perfectly natural way.
+Other classes of phenomena once regarded
+as miraculous have been transferred to the
+domain of natural processes by the investigations
+and discoveries that have been
+made in the field of psychical research.
+The forewarning which God is said to have
+given the prophet Ahijah of the visit that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>
+the queen was about to pay him in disguise<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a>
+is now recognized as one of many
+cases of the mysterious natural function
+that we label as "telepathy." The transformations
+of unruly, vicious, and mentally
+disordered characters by hypnotic influence
+that have been effected at the Salp&ecirc;tri&egrave;re
+in Paris, and elsewhere, by physicians expert
+in psychical therapeutics are closely
+analogous to the cures wrought by Jesus
+on some victims of "demoniac possession."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span><a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a>
+The cases of apparition,<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> also, which have
+been investigated and verified by the Society
+for Psychical Research have laid a solid
+basis of fact for the Biblical stories of angels,
+as at least, a class of phenomena to
+be regarded as by no means altogether
+legendary, but having their place among
+natural though mysterious occurrences.</p>
+
+<p>But this progressive paring down of the
+miraculous element in the Bible has caused
+outcries of unfeigned alarm. Christian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
+scholars who have taken part in it are reproached
+as deserters to the camp of unbelief.
+They are accused of banishing God
+from his world, and of reducing the course
+of events to an order of agencies quite
+undivine. "Miracle," writes one of these
+brethren,<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> "is the personal intervention of
+God into the chain of cause and effect."
+But what does this mean, except that, when
+no miracles occur, God is not personally,
+<i>i.e.</i> actively, in the chain of natural causes
+and effects? As Professor Drummond
+says, "If God appears periodically, he disappears
+periodically." It is precisely this
+view of the subject that really banishes
+God from his world. Those who thus define
+miracle regard miracles as having
+ceased at the end of the Apostolic age in
+the first century. Except, therefore, for the
+narrow range of human history that the Bible<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>
+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 for traditional
+orthodoxy unwittingly but really come.</p>
+
+<p>The first pages of the Bible correct this
+error. "While the earth remaineth," so
+God is represented as assuring Noah, "seedtime
+and harvest, 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 be evinced by his
+regular sustentation of its natural order,
+rather than by irregular occurrences, such
+as the deluge, in seeming contravention of
+it. To seek the evidence of divine activity
+in human affairs and to ground one's
+faith in a controlling Providence in sporadic
+and cometary phenomena, rather than
+in the constant and cumulative signs of it
+to be seen in the majestic order of the
+starry skies, in the reign of intelligence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>
+throughout the cosmos, in the moral evolution
+of ancient savagery into modern
+philanthropy, in the historic manifestation
+throughout the centuries of a Power not
+our own that works for the increase of
+righteousness, is a mode of thought which
+in our time is being steadily and surely
+outgrown. It is one of those "idols of the
+tribe" whose power alike over civilized
+and uncivilized men is broken less by argument
+than by the ascent of man to wider
+horizons of knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>It is for the gain of religion that it
+should be broken,&mdash;of the spiritual religion
+whose God is not a tradition, a reminiscence,
+but a living presence, inhabiting alike
+the clod and the star, the flower in the crannied
+wall and the life of man. So thinking
+of God the religious man may rightly say,<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a>
+"If it is more difficult to believe in miracles,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>
+it is less important. If the extraordinary
+manifestations of God recounted in ancient
+history appear less credible, the ordinary
+manifestations of God in current life appear
+more real. He is seen in American
+history not less than in Hebrew history;
+in the life of to-day not less than in the
+life of long ago."</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> <i>Lectures on the History of the Jewish
+Church</i>, Vol. II, p. 362, American edition.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> 1 Kings xiv. 1-7.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> It is not intended to intimate that there is no
+such darker reality as a "possession" that is
+"demoniac" indeed. It cannot be reasonably
+pronounced superstitious to judge that there is
+some probability for that view. At any rate, it is
+certain that the problem is not to be settled by
+dogmatic pronouncement. It is certain, also, that
+the burden of proof rests on those who contend
+that there can be no such thing. On the other
+hand, it may be conceded that the cases recorded
+in the New Testament do not seem to
+be of an essentially devilish kind. On the general
+subject of "possession" see F. W. H.
+Myers's work on <i>Human Personality and Survival
+after Death</i>, Vol. I. (Longmans, Green &amp;
+Co., New York and London.) Professor William
+James half humorously remarks: "The time-honored
+phenomenon of diabolical possession is
+on the point of being admitted by the scientist
+as a fact, now that he has the name of hysterodemonopathy
+by which to apperceive it." <i>Varieties
+of Religious Experience</i>, p. 501, note.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> See <i>Dictionary of Psychology</i>, art. "Psychical
+Research."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Dr. Peloubet, <i>Teachers' Commentary on the
+Acts</i>, 1902.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> Dr. Lyman Abbott in <i>The Outlook</i>, February
+14, 1903.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<div class="fsx">II</div>
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figct">
+<img src="images/003.png" width="500" height="82" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h2>II</h2>
+
+<div class="bq1"><p><span class="smcap">Synopsis.</span>&mdash;The present net results of the discussion
+of the miraculous element in the Bible.&mdash;Evaporation
+of the former evidential value of miracles.&mdash;Further
+insistence on this value a logical
+blunder.&mdash;The transfer of miracles from the artillery
+to the baggage of the Church.&mdash;Probability
+of a further reduction of the list of miracles.&mdash;Also
+of a further transfer of events reputed miraculous
+to the domain of history.</p></div>
+
+<div class="figcp">
+<img src="images/009.png" width="75" height="75" alt="T" title="" />
+</div><p class="p3"><span class="dcap">he</span> cultivation of scientific and
+historical studies during the last
+century, especially in its latter
+half, has deepened the conviction that</p>
+
+<div class="poem" style="width: 20em;">
+<span class="i0">"Through the ages one increasing purpose runs;"<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noin">has disposed a growing number of
+thoughtful minds to regard occasional
+signs and wonders, reported from ancient
+times, as far less evidential for the reasonableness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>
+of religious faith than the steady
+sustentation of the Providential order and
+the moral progress of the world. Fully
+convinced of this, we should now estimate,
+before proceeding further, the present net
+results of the discussion, so far as it has
+gone, of what is called the miraculous
+element in the Bible.</p>
+
+<p>First, its former evidential value in
+proof of divine Revelation is gone for
+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 its original promulgation,
+as was the fashion not very long since.
+This for two reasons; chiefly this: that
+<i>the decisive criterion of any truth, ethical
+or physical, must be truth of the same
+kind</i>. Ethical truth must be ethically
+attested. The moral and religious character
+of the Revelation presents its credentials
+of worth in its history of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>
+moral and religious renovations it has
+wrought both in individuals and in
+society. This is its proper and incontrovertible
+attestation, in need of no
+corroboration from whatever wonderful
+physical occurrences may have accompanied
+its first utterance. Words of
+God are attested as such by the work
+of God which they effect. It may well
+be believed that those wonderful occurrences&mdash;the
+Biblical name for which is
+"signs," or "powers," terms not carrying,
+like "miracles," the idea of something
+contra-natural<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a>&mdash;had an evidential
+value for those to whom the Revelation
+originally came. In fact, they were appealed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>
+to by the bearers of the Revelation
+as evidencing its divine origin by
+the mighty works of divine mercy which
+they wrought for sufferers from the evils
+of the world. But whatever their evidential
+value to the eye-witnesses at that
+remote day, it was of the inevitably volatile
+kind that exhales away like a perfume
+with lapse of time. Historic doubts
+attack remote events, especially when of
+the extraordinary character which tempts
+the narrator to that magnifying of the
+marvellous which experience has found
+to be a constantly recurring human trait.
+It is simply impossible that the original
+evidential value of the "signs" accompanying
+the Revelation should continue<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>
+permanently unimpaired. To employ them
+now as "evidences of Christianity," when
+the Revelation has won on ethical grounds
+recognition of its divine character and can
+summon history to bear witness of its
+divine effects in the moral uplift of the
+world, is to imperil the Christian argument
+by the preposterous logical blunder
+of attempting to prove the more certain
+by the less certain.</p>
+
+<p>A second net result consequent on the
+preceding may be described as the transference
+of miracles from the ordnance
+department to the quartermaster's department
+of the Church. Until recently they
+were actively used as part of its armament,
+none of which could be dispensed
+with. Now they are carried as part of
+its baggage, <i>impedimenta</i>, from which
+everything superfluous must be removed.
+It is clearly seen that to retain all is to
+imperil the whole. That there are miracles<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
+and miracles is patent to minds
+that have learned to scan history more
+critically than when a scholar like John
+Milton began his <i>History of England</i>
+with the legend of the voyage of "Brute
+the Trojan." One may reasonably believe
+that Jesus healed a case of violent
+insanity at Gadara, and reasonably disbelieve
+that the fire of heaven was twice
+obedient to Elijah's call to consume the
+military companies sent to arrest him.
+Cultivated discernment does not now put
+all Biblical miracles on a common level
+of credibility, any more than the historical
+work of Herodotus and that of
+the late Dr. Gardiner. To defend them
+all is not to vindicate, but to discredit all
+alike. The elimination of the indefensible,
+the setting aside of the legendary,
+the transference of the supposedly miraculous
+to the order of natural powers
+and processes so far as vindicable ground<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>
+for such critical treatment is discovered,
+is the only way to answer the first of
+all questions concerning the Bible: How
+much of this is credible history? Thus
+it is not only thoroughly reasonable, but
+is in the interest of a reasonable belief
+that divine agency is revealed rather by
+the upholding of the established order
+of Nature than by any alleged interference
+therewith. With what God has
+established God never interferes. To
+allege his interference with his established
+order is virtually to deny his constant
+immanence therein, a failure to
+recognize the fundamental fact that "Nature
+is Spirit," as Principal Fairbairn has
+said, and all its processes and powers
+the various modes of the energizing of
+the divine Will.</p>
+
+<p>A third net result now highly probable
+is a still further reduction of the list of
+reputed miracles. The critical process of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>
+discriminating the historical from the legendary,
+and the natural from the non-natural,
+is still so comparatively recent
+that it can hardly be supposed to have
+reached its limit. Nor can it be stayed
+by any impeachment of it as hostile to
+Christianity, whose grand argument appeals
+to its present ethical effects, not to ancient
+thaumaturgical accompaniments. There
+is, however, a considerable class of cases
+in which the advancing critical process
+is likely even to gain credibility for the
+Biblical narrative in a point where it is
+now widely doubted&mdash;the resuscitations
+of the apparently dead. Among all the
+Biblical miracles none have more probably
+a secure historical basis.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> The Anglicized Latin word, "miracle,"
+indiscriminately used in the Authorized Version,
+denotes the superficial character of the act or
+event it is applied to, as producing wonder or
+amazement in the beholders. The terms commonly
+employed in the New Testament (<i>s&#275;meion</i>,
+a sign; <i>dunamis</i>, power; less frequently <i>teras</i>, a
+portent) are of deeper significance, and connote
+the inner nature of the occurrence, either as requiring
+to be pondered for its meaning, or as
+the product of a new and peculiar energy.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<div class="fsx">III</div>
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figct">
+<img src="images/004.png" width="500" height="85" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h2>III</h2>
+
+<div class="bq1"><p><span class="smcap">Synopsis.</span>&mdash;Arbitrary criticism of the Biblical
+narratives of the raising of the "dead."&mdash;Facts
+which it ignores.&mdash;The subject related to the
+phenomena of trance, and records of premature
+burial.&mdash;The resuscitation in Elisha's tomb probably
+historical.&mdash;Jesus' raising of the ruler's daughter
+plainly a case of this kind.&mdash;His raising of the
+widow's son probably such.&mdash;The hypothesis that
+his raising of Lazarus may also have been such
+critically examined.&mdash;The record allows this supposition.&mdash;Further
+considerations favoring it:
+1. The real interests of Christianity secure.&mdash;2. The
+miracle as a work of mercy.&mdash;3. Incompetency of
+the bystanders' opinion.&mdash;4. Congruity with the
+general conception of the healing works of Jesus,
+as wrought by a peculiar psychical power.&mdash;Other
+cases.&mdash;The resurrection of Jesus an event in a
+wholly different order of things.&mdash;The practical
+result of regarding these resuscitations as in the
+order of nature.</p></div>
+
+<div class="figcp">
+<img src="images/010.png" width="75" height="75" alt="O" title="" />
+</div><p class="p3"><span class="dcap">f</span> resuscitation from apparent
+death seven cases in all are
+recorded,&mdash;three in the Old
+Testament and four in the New. Some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
+critics arbitrarily reject all but one of these
+as legendary. Thus Oscar Holzmann, in
+his recent <i>Leben Jesu</i>, treats the raising
+of the widow's son, and of Lazarus. But
+he accepts the case of the ruler's daughter
+on the ground that Jesus is reported as
+saying that it was not a case of real but
+only of apparent death,&mdash;"the child is
+not dead, but sleepeth." But for the preservation
+of this saving declaration in the
+record, this case also would have been
+classed with the others as unhistorical.
+And yet the admission of one clear case
+of simulated death, so like real death as
+to deceive all the onlookers but Jesus,
+might reasonably check the critic with
+the suggestion that it may not have been
+a solitary case.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> The headlong assumption<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>
+involved in the discrimination made
+between these two classes, viz. that in a
+case of apparent but unreal death the
+primitive tradition can be depended on
+to put the fact upon record, is in the
+highest degree arbitrary and unwarrantable.</p>
+
+<p>The scepticism which lightly contradicts
+the Biblical narratives of the raising of the
+"dead" to life is seemingly ignorant of
+facts that go far to place these upon firm
+ground as historical occurrences. Catalepsy,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>
+or the simulation of death by a
+trance, in which the body is sometimes
+cold and rigid, sensation gone, the heart
+still, is well known to medical men.<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> In
+early times such a condition would inevitably
+have been regarded and treated as
+actual death, without the least suspicion
+that it was not so. Even now, the dreadful
+mistake of so regarding it sometimes
+occurs. So cautious a journal as the
+London <i>Spectator</i> a few years ago expressed
+the belief that "a distinct percentage"
+of premature burials "occurs
+every year" in England.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span></p>
+<p>The proper line of critical approach to
+the study of the Biblical narratives of the
+raising of the "dead" is through the well-known
+facts of the deathlike trance and
+premature burial.</p>
+
+<p>Where burial occurred, as in the East,
+immediately after the apparent death,<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> resuscitation
+must have been rare. Yet
+cases of it were not unknown. Pliny has
+a chapter "on those who have revived
+on being carried forth for burial." Lord
+Bacon states that of this there have been
+"very many cases." A French writer of
+the eighteenth century, Bruhier, in his
+"<i>Dissertations sur l'Incertitude de la
+Mort et l'Abus des Enterrements</i>," records
+seventy-two cases of mistaken pronouncement
+of death, fifty-three of revival in the
+coffin before burial, and fifty-four of burial<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>
+alive. A locally famous and thoroughly
+attested case in this country is that of the
+Rev. William Tennent, pastor in Freehold,
+New Jersey, in the eighteenth century,
+who lay apparently dead for three days,
+reviving from trance just as his delayed
+funeral was about to proceed. One who
+keeps a scrap-book could easily collect
+quite an assortment of such cases, and of
+such others as have a tragic ending, both
+from domestic and foreign journals. A
+work published some years ago by Dr.
+F. Hartmann<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> exhibits one hundred and
+eight cases as typical among over seven
+hundred that have been authenticated.<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span></p><p>Facts like these have been strangely overlooked
+in the hasty judgment prompted
+by prejudice against whatever has obtained
+credence as miraculous. Some
+significant considerations must be seriously
+entertained.</p>
+
+<p>It cannot be that no such facts occurred
+in the long periods covered by the Biblical
+writers. Occurring, it is extremely improbable
+that they should have altogether
+escaped embodiment in popular tradition
+and its record. Furthermore, while on
+one hand the custom of speedy burial
+rendered them much rarer than they are
+now under other conditions, and so much<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>
+the more extraordinary, the universal ignorance
+of the causes involved would
+have accepted resuscitation as veritable
+restoration from actual death. As such
+it would have passed into tradition. In
+cases where it had come to pass in connection
+with the efforts of a recognized
+prophet, or through any contact with him,
+it would certainly have been regarded as
+a genuine miracle.</p>
+
+<p>Among the raisings of the "dead" recorded
+in the Scriptures probably none
+has been so widely doubted by critical
+readers as the story in the thirteenth chapter
+of the second book of Kings, in which a
+corpse is restored to life by contact with
+the bones of Elisha. Dean Stanley's remark
+upon the suspicious similarity between
+the miracles related of Elisha and
+those found in Roman Catholic legends
+of great saints here seems quite pertinent.
+Let the record speak for itself.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="bq2"><p>"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."</p></div>
+
+<p>The bizarre character of such a story
+excusably predisposes many a critic to
+stamp it as fabricated to enhance the
+glory of the great prophet who had been
+a pillar of the throne. Yet nothing is
+more likely than that tradition has here
+preserved a bit of history, extraordinary,
+but real. There is not the least improbability
+in regarding the case as one of the
+many revivals from the deathlike trance
+that have been noted by writers ancient
+and modern. It is entirely reasonable to
+suppose that the trance in which the seemingly
+dead man lay was broken either by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>
+the shock of his fall into the prophet's
+tomb, or coincidently therewith; and
+stranger coincidences have happened.
+Such a happening would be precisely
+the sort of thing to live in popular tradition,
+and to be incorporated into the
+annals of the time.</p>
+
+<p>Here it may be rejoined that this is
+only a hypothesis. Only that, to be sure.
+But so is the allegation that the story is
+a mere fantastic fabrication only a hypothesis.
+Demonstration of the actual
+fact past all controversy being out of
+the question, all that can be offered for
+the attempt to rate the narrative at its
+proper value, either as history or as fiction,
+is hypothesis. The choice lies for us
+between two hypotheses. Surely, that
+hypothesis is the more credible which is
+based on a solid body of objective facts,
+and meets all the conditions of the case.</p>
+
+<p>Will it be replied to this that the critics<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>
+can show for their hypothesis the admitted
+fact of the human proclivity to
+invent legends of miracle? The decisive
+answer is that the burden of proof rests
+on him who contests any statement ostensibly
+historical. If such a statement
+be found to square with admitted objective
+facts, it must be accepted notwithstanding
+considerations drawn from the subjective
+tendency to invent extraordinary tales.</p>
+
+<p>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 the natural order of things. The statistics
+of premature burial and of the
+resuscitation of the apparently dead before
+burial are sufficiently strong to throw
+grave doubt on any contention that the
+resuscitations narrated of Elijah<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>
+Elisha<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> do not belong in that historical
+series. It has been frequently observed,
+however, that there is much reluctance to
+apply to the New Testament the methods
+and canons of criticism that are applied
+to the Old. It will be so in the present
+case, through apprehension of somehow
+detracting from the distinctive glory of
+Christ. That fear will not disturb one
+who sees that glory not in his "mighty
+works," the like of which were wrought
+by the prophets, but in the spiritual majesty
+of his personality, the divineness of his
+message to the world, and of the life and
+death that illustrated it.</p>
+
+<p>One case, at least, among Jesus' raisings
+of the "dead," that of the young
+daughter of the ruler of the synagogue,<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a>
+is admitted even by sceptical critics to
+have been a resuscitation from the trance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
+that merely simulates death. But the fact
+that there is a record of his saying in
+this case, "the child is not dead, but
+sleepeth," and no record of his saying
+the same at the bier of the widow's son,<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a>
+is slight ground, yet all the ground there
+is, against the great probabilities to the
+contrary, for regarding the latter case as
+so transcendently different from the former
+as the actual re&euml;mbodiment of a departed
+spirit recalled from another world. Were
+these the only two cases of restoration
+to life in the ministry of Jesus, it is most
+probable that they would be regarded as
+of the same kind.</p>
+
+<p>The raising of Lazarus<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> presents peculiar
+features, in view of which it is generally
+regarded as of another kind, and
+the greatest of miracles, so stupendous
+that the Rev. W. J. Dawson, in his recent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>
+<i>Life of Christ</i>, written from an evangelical
+standpoint, says of it: "Even the
+most devout mind may be forgiven occasional
+pangs of incredulity." But the
+considerations already presented are certainly
+sufficient to justify a re&euml;xamination
+of the case. And it is to be borne in
+mind that the question at issue is, not
+what the eye-witnesses at that time believed,
+not what the Church from that
+time to this has believed, not what we
+are willing to believe, or would like to
+believe, but what all the facts with any
+bearing on the case, taken together, fully
+justify us in believing as to the real nature
+of it.</p>
+
+<p>What Jesus is recorded as saying of
+it is, of course, of prime importance.
+"Our friend Lazarus is fallen asleep, but
+I go that I may awake him out of sleep."
+Were this all, the case might easily have
+been classed as one of trance. The disciples,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>
+however, understood Jesus to speak
+of natural sleep. "Then Jesus therefore
+said unto them plainly, <i>Lazarus is dead</i>."
+Tradition puts the maximum meaning
+into this word "dead." But if this word
+here qualifies the preceding word, "fallen
+asleep," so also is it qualified by that;
+the two are mutually explanatory, not
+contradictory. These alternatives are before
+us: Is the maximum or the minimum
+meaning to be assigned to the crucial
+word "dead"? For the minimum, one
+can say that a deathly trance, already
+made virtual death by immediate interment,
+would amply justify Jesus in using
+the word "dead" in order to impress the
+disciples with the gravity of the case, as
+not a natural but a deathly, and, in the
+existing situation, a fatal sleep. For the
+maximum, no more can be advanced than
+the hazardous assertion that Jesus <i>must</i>
+have used the word with technical precision<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>
+in its customary sense; an assertion
+of course protected from disproof
+by our ignorance of the actual fact.<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>
+whatever support this view of the case
+derives from such ignorance is overbalanced
+by the support supplied to the
+other view by the long history of revivals
+from the deathly trance, and by the probabilities
+which that history creates.</p>
+
+<p>Many, to whom the view here proposed
+seems not only new, but unwelcome, and
+even revolutionary, may reasonably prefer
+to suspend judgment for reflection;
+but meanwhile some further considerations
+may be entertained.</p>
+
+<p>1. Aside from the unwillingness to abandon
+a long-cherished belief on any subject
+whatever, which is both a natural,
+and, when not pushed to an unreasonable
+length, a desirable brake on all
+inconsiderate change, no practical interest
+is threatened by the adoption of the
+view here suggested. Religious interest,
+so far as it is also intelligent, is certainly
+not threatened. The evidences of Jesus'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>
+divine character and mission resting, as
+for modern men it rests, not on remote
+wonders, but on now acknowledged facts
+of an ethical and spiritual kind, is altogether
+independent of our conclusion
+whether it was from actual or only apparent
+death that Lazarus was raised.
+Since all the mighty works wrought by
+Jesus, and this among them, were identical
+in type with those wrought by the
+ancient prophets, with whom his countrymen
+classed him in his lifetime, their
+evidential significance could be, even
+for the eye-witnesses at that tomb, no
+greater for him than for an Elisha,&mdash;signs
+of a divine mission attesting itself
+by works of mercy.</p>
+
+<p>2. As works of mercy these raisings
+from the "dead," including that of
+Lazarus, rank far higher in the view of
+them here proposed than in the traditional
+view. This regards them as the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>
+recall of departed spirits from what is
+hoped to be "a better world." Yet this,
+while it turns sorrow for a time into joy,
+involves not only the recurrence of that
+sorrow in all its keenness, but also a
+second tasting of the pains preliminary
+to the death-gate, when the time comes
+to pass that gate again. But in the
+other view, a raising from the death that
+is only simulated is a merciful deliverance
+from a calamity greater than simple
+death, if that be any calamity at all,&mdash;the
+fate of burial alive. In the former
+view, therefore, the quality of mercy,
+distinctive of the mighty works of Jesus,
+is imperfectly demonstrable. In the present
+view, as the rescue of the living from
+death in one of its most horrible forms,
+it is abundantly conspicuous.</p>
+
+<p>3. The onlookers by the tomb of Lazarus
+doubtless regarded his awakening as
+revival from actual death. Their opinion,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>
+however, does not bind our judgment
+any more than it is bound by the opinion
+of other onlookers, that Jesus' healing of
+the insane and epileptic was through the
+expulsion of demons that possessed them.
+In each instance it was understood as a
+sign of control over beings belonging to
+another world. But such an attestation
+of Jesus' divine mission, having been superseded
+for us by proofs of higher
+character, is now no more needful for
+us in the case of the "dead" than in
+the case of the "demons."</p>
+
+<p>4. The power of breaking the deathly
+trance, of quickening the dormant life,
+re&euml;nergizing the collapsed nervous organism,
+and ending its paralysis of sensation
+and motion, may be reasonably regarded
+as power of the same psychical
+kind that Jesus regularly exerted in healing
+the sufferers from nervous disorders
+who were reputed victims of demoniac<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>
+possession.<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> In this view these resuscitations
+from apparent death appear in
+natural coherence with the many other
+works of mercy that Jesus wrought as
+the Great Physician of his people, and
+may be regarded as the crown and consummation
+of all his restorative ministries.
+Jesus' thanksgiving after the tomb
+had been opened&mdash;"Father, I thank
+thee that thou hast heard me"&mdash;shows
+that he had girded himself for a supreme
+effort by concentrating the utmost
+energy of his spirit in prayer. Physically
+parallel with this was the intensity of
+voice put into his call to the occupant
+of the tomb. This is better represented
+in the original than in our translation:
+"He shouted with a great voice, 'Lazarus,
+come forth.'" The whole record
+indicates the utmost tension of all his
+energies, and closely comports with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
+view that this stood to the sequel in the
+relation of cause to effect.<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> Another circumstance
+not without bearing on the
+case is the energizing power of the intense
+sympathy with the bereaved family
+that stirred the soul of Jesus to weep
+and groan with them. And it is not
+without significance that this strong factor
+appears active in the larger number
+of the Biblical cases,&mdash;three of them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>
+only children, two of these the children
+of the pitiable class of widows.</p>
+
+<p>Peculiar, then, as was the case of Lazarus,
+our examination of it reveals no substantial
+ground for insisting that it was
+essentially unlike the previous case of the
+ruler's daughter, that it was the bringing
+back into a decaying body of a spirit that
+had entered into the world of departed
+souls. The actual fact, of course, is indemonstrable.
+Our conclusion has to be
+formed wholly upon the probabilities of
+the case, and must be formed in a reasonable
+choice between the greater probability
+and the less.</p>
+
+<p>The restoration of Dorcas to life by
+Peter, recorded in the book of Acts,<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> needs
+no special discussion beyond the various
+considerations already adduced in this
+chapter. The case of Eutychus, recorded
+in the same book,<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> requires mention only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>
+lest it should seem to have been forgotten,
+as it is not in point at all. The record
+makes it highly probable that the supposed
+death was nothing more than the
+loss of consciousness for a few hours in
+consequence of a fall from the window.</p>
+
+<hr class="shr" />
+
+<p>If one should here suggest that no mention
+has yet been made of the resurrection
+of Jesus himself, it must be pointed out
+that this is a fact of a totally different
+kind from any of the foregoing cases. To
+speak, as many do, of the "resurrection of
+Lazarus" is a misuse of words. Resuscitation
+to life in this world, and resurrection,
+the rising up of the released spirit
+into the life of the world to come, are as
+distinct as are the worlds to which they
+severally belong. We here consider only
+the <i>raisings</i> which restored to the virtually
+dead their interrupted mortal life. The
+<i>rising</i> from the mortal into the immortal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>
+state belongs to an entirely different field
+of study.</p>
+
+<hr class="shr" />
+
+<p>Apart, then, from traditional prepossessions,
+examination of the Biblical narratives
+discloses nothing to invalidate the hypothesis
+which one who is acquainted with the
+copious record of apparent but unreal
+death must seriously and impartially consider.
+The reputedly miraculous raisings
+of the "dead" related in both the Old and
+the New Testament may, with entire reason,
+and without detriment to religion, be
+classed with such as are related outside of
+the Scriptures, in ancient times as well as
+modern, and as phenomena wholly within
+the natural order, however extraordinary.
+The practical result of such a conclusion is
+likely to be a gain for the historicity of the
+Scripture narratives in the estimate of a
+large class of thoughtful minds.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> An objection to the historicity of the raising
+of Lazarus which is made on the ground
+that so great a work, if historical, would have
+been related by more than one of the Evangelists,
+yields on reflection the possibility that
+Jesus may have effected more than the three
+raisings recorded of him. John is the sole
+narrator of the raising of Lazarus. But he omits
+notice of the two raisings recorded by the other
+Evangelists, while Matthew and Mark do not
+record the raising of the widow's son recorded
+by Luke. All this suggests that the record
+may have preserved for us specimens rather
+than a complete list of this class of miracles.
+(Compare John xxi. 25.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> "We have frequent cases of trance, ... where
+the parties seem to die, but after a time the
+spirit returns, and life goes on as before. In
+all this there is no miracle. Why may not the
+resuscitations in Christ's time possibly have been
+similar cases? Is not this less improbable than
+that the natural order of the universe should
+have been set aside?"&mdash;<i>The Problem of Final
+Destiny</i>, by William B. Brown, D.D., 1899.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> On account of the ceremonial "uncleanness"
+caused by the dead body. See Numbers v. 2,
+and many similar passages.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> <i>Buried Alive</i> (Universal Truth Publishing
+Co., Chicago). See also <i>Premature Burial</i>, by
+D. Walsh (William Wood &amp; Co., New York), and
+<i>Premature Burial</i>, by W. Tebb and E. P. Vollum
+(New Amsterdam Book Co., New York).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Other writers might be mentioned, as Mme.
+Necker (1790), Dr. Vign&eacute; (1841). Yet on the
+other hand it is alleged, that "none of the numerous
+stories of this dreadful accident which
+have obtained credence from time to time seem
+to be authentic" (<i>American Cyclopedia</i>, art.
+"Burial"). Allowing a wide margin for exaggeration
+and credulity, there is certainly a
+residuum of fact. A correspondent of the
+(London) <i>Spectator</i> a few years since testified
+to a distressing case in his own family.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> Kings xvii. 17-23.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> Kings iv. 32-36.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> Mark v. 35-43.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> Luke vii. 12-16.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> John xi. 11-44.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> Was Jesus aware that Lazarus was really
+not dead? It is impossible to reach a positive
+conclusion. In some directions his knowledge
+was certainly limited. That he was not aware
+of the reality might be inferred from his seeming
+to have allowed his act to pass for what,
+in the view of it here suggested, it was not,&mdash;the
+recall to life of one actually dead. This,
+however, assumes the completeness of a record
+whose silence on this point cannot be pressed
+as conclusive. It is, indeed, unlikely that Jesus
+knew all that medical men now know. But
+awareness of any fact may be in varying degrees
+from serious suspicion up to positive certitude.
+While far from positiveness, awareness
+may exist in a degree that gives courage for
+resolute effort resulting in clear and full verification.
+Jesus may have been ignorant of the
+objective reality of Lazarus's condition, and
+yet have been very hopeful of being empowered
+by the divine aid he prayed for (John xi. 41)
+to cope with it successfully.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> See pages <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Footnote_7_7">Note</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> Jesus' works of healing are explicitly attributed
+by the Evangelists to a peculiar power that
+issued from him. In Mark v. 30, Luke vi. 19,
+and viii. 46, the original word <i>dunamis</i>, which
+the Authorized Version translates "virtue," is
+more correctly rendered "power" in the Revised
+Version. Especially noticeable is the
+peculiar phraseology of Mark v. 30: "Jesus
+perceiving in himself that the power proceeding
+from him had gone forth (R. V.)." The peculiar
+circumstances of the case suggest that the
+going forth of this power might be motived
+sub-consciously, as well as by conscious volition.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> Acts ix. 36-42.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> Acts xx. 9-13.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<div class="fsx">IV</div>
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figct">
+<img src="images/005.png" width="500" height="87" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h2>IV</h2>
+
+<div class="bq1"><p><span class="smcap">Synopsis.</span>&mdash;A clearer conception of miracle approached.&mdash;Works
+of Jesus once reputed miraculous
+not so reputed now, since not now transcending, as
+once, the existing range of knowledge and power.&mdash;This
+transfer of the miraculous to the natural likely
+to continue.&mdash;No hard and fast line between the
+miraculous and the non-miraculous.&mdash;Miracle a provisional
+word, its application narrowing in the enlarging
+mastery of the secrets of nature and life.</p></div>
+
+<div class="figcp">
+<img src="images/011.png" width="75" height="75" alt="A" title="" />
+</div><p class="p3"><span class="dcap">t</span> this point it seems possible to
+approach a clearer understanding
+of the proper meaning to
+attach to the generally ill-defined and hazy
+term <i>miracle</i>.<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> Matthew Arnold's fantastic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>
+illustration of the idea of miracle by supposing
+a pen changed to a pen-wiper may
+fit some miracles, especially those of the
+Catholic hagiology, but, if applied to those
+of Jesus, would be a caricature. In the
+New Testament a reputed miracle is not
+any sort of wonderful work upon any sort
+of occasion, but an act of benevolent will
+exerted for an immediate benefit,<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> and
+transcending the then existing range of
+human intelligence to explain and power
+to achieve. The historic reality of at least<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>
+some such acts performed by Jesus is
+acknowledged by critics as free from the
+faintest trace of orthodox bias as Keim:
+"The picture of Jesus, the worker of miracles,
+belongs to the first believers in Christ,
+and is no invention."</p>
+
+<p>It has already been noted that a considerable
+number of the then reputed miracles
+of Jesus, particularly his works of healing,
+do not now, as then, transcend the
+existing range of knowledge and power,
+and accordingly are no longer reputed
+miraculous. And one cannot reasonably
+believe that a limit to the understanding
+and control of forces in Nature and mind
+that now are more or less occult has been
+already reached. It is, therefore, not incredible
+that some of the mighty works
+of Jesus, which still transcend the existing
+limits of knowledge and power, and so are
+still reputed miraculous, and are suspected
+by many as unhistorical, may in some yet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>
+remote and riper stage of humanity be
+transferred, as some have already been,
+to the class of the non-miraculous and
+natural.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Robbins, Dean of the General Theological
+Seminary, New York, after remarking
+that "the word <i>miracle</i> has done
+more to introduce confusion into Christian
+Evidences than any other," goes on
+to say: "To animals certain events to
+them inexplicable are signs of the presence
+of human intelligence and power.
+To men these miracles of Christ are signs
+of divine intelligence and power. But
+how is miracle to be differentiated from
+other providential dealings of God? Not
+by removing him further from common
+events. Abstruse speculations concerning
+the relation of miracles to other
+physical phenomena may be safely left
+to the adjustment of an age which shall
+have advanced to a more perfect synthesis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>
+of knowledge than the present can
+boast."<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a></p>
+
+<p>The truth to which such considerations
+conduct is, that no hard and fast line can
+be drawn between the miraculous and the
+non-miraculous. To the untutored mind,
+like that of the savage who thought it
+miraculous that a chip with a message
+written on it had talked to the recipient,
+the simplest thing that he cannot explain
+is miraculous: "<i>omne ignotum pro mirifico</i>,"
+said Tacitus. As the range of
+knowledge and power widens, the range
+of the miraculous narrows correspondingly.
+Some twenty years since, the International
+Sunday-school Lessons employed as a
+proof of the divinity of Christ the reputedly
+miraculous knowledge which he evinced
+in his first interview with Nathanael of
+a solitary hour in Nathanael's experience.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span><a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a>
+Since then it has been demonstrated<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> by
+psychical research that the natural order
+of the world includes telepathy, and the
+range of the miraculous has been correspondingly
+reduced without detriment to
+the argument for the divinity of Christ,
+now rested on less precarious ground.</p>
+
+<p>Under such conditions as we have reviewed
+a miracle cannot always be one
+and the same thing. Miracle must therefore
+be defined as being what our whole
+course of thought has suggested that it is:
+in general, an elastic word; in particular,
+a provisional word,&mdash;a word whose application
+narrows with the enlarging range of
+human knowledge<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> and power which for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>
+the time it transcends; a word whose
+history, in its record of ranges already
+transcended, prompts expectation that
+ranges still beyond may be transcended
+in the illimitable progress of mankind.
+Professor Le Conte says that miracle is
+"an occurrence or a phenomenon according
+to a law higher than any yet known."
+Thus it is a case of human ignorance, not
+of divine interference.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, we must believe that
+the goal of progress is a flying goal; that
+human attainment can never reach finality
+unless men cease to be. And so all widening
+of human knowledge and power must
+ever disclose further limitations to be
+transcended. There will always be a
+<i>Beyond</i>, in which dwells the secret of laws
+still undiscovered, that underlie mysteries
+unrevealed and marvels unexplained.
+This will have to be admitted, especially,
+by those to whom the marvellous is synonymous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
+with the incredible. We have not
+been able to eviscerate even these prosaic
+and matter-of-fact modern times of marvels
+whose secret lies in the yet uncatalogued
+or indefinable powers of the mysterious
+agent that we name <i>life</i>: witness many
+well verified facts recorded by the Society
+for Psychical Research.<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> How, then, is it
+consistent to affirm that no such marvels
+in ancient records are historical realities?
+Nay, may it not be true that the ancient
+days of seers and prophets, the days of
+Jesus, days of the sublime strivings of
+great and lonely souls for closer converse
+with the Infinite Spirit behind his mask of
+Nature, offered better conditions for marvellous
+experiences and deeds than these
+days of scientific laboratories and factories,
+and world-markets and world-politics?</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> "Early and medi&aelig;val theologians agree in
+conceiving the miraculous as being above, not
+contrary to, nature. The question entered on
+a new phase when Hume defined a miracle as
+a violation of nature, and asserted the impossibility
+of substantiating its actual occurrence.
+The modern discussion has proceeded largely in
+view of Hume's destructive criticism. Assuming
+the possibility of a miracle, the questions
+of fact and of definition remain."&mdash;<i>Dictionary
+of Psychology.</i>
+</p><p>
+"When we find the definition for which we
+are searching, the miraculous will no longer be
+a problem."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Professor W. Sanday</span>, at the
+Anglican Church Congress, 1902.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> For exceptions see Matthew xxi. 19; Acts
+xiii. 10, 11.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> <i>A Christian Apologetic</i>, p. 97.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> John i. 47-50.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> In the opinion of such psychologists as Professor
+William James, of Harvard, the late Professor
+Henry Sidgwick, of Cambridge, England,
+and others of like eminence.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> A hint of this was given by Augustine:
+"Portentum non fit contra naturam, sed contra
+quam est nota natura."&mdash;<i>De Civitate Dei.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> Consult the late F. W. H. Myers's remarkable
+volumes on <i>Human Personality and Survival
+after Death</i> (Longmans, Green &amp; Co.).</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<div class="fsx">V</div>
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figct">
+<img src="images/006.png" width="500" height="88" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h2>V</h2>
+
+<div class="bq1"><p><span class="smcap">Synopsis.</span>&mdash;Biblical miracles the effluence of
+extraordinary lives.&mdash;Life the world's magician and
+miracle worker; its miracles now termed <i>prodigies</i>.&mdash;Miracle
+the natural product of an extraordinary
+endowment of life.&mdash;Life the ultimate
+reality.&mdash;What any man can achieve is conditioned
+by the psychical quality of his life.&mdash;Nothing
+more natural, more supernatural, than life.&mdash;The
+derived life of the world filial to the self-existent
+life of God, "begotten, not made."&mdash;Miracle,
+as the product of life, the work of God.</p></div>
+
+<div class="figcp">
+<img src="images/012.png" width="75" height="75" alt="B" title="" />
+</div><p class="p3"><span class="dcap">e</span> it noted, now, that the marvellous
+phenomena of the Biblical
+record, whatever else be
+thought of them, are, even to a superficial
+view, the extraordinary effluence of extraordinary
+lives. Here at length we gain
+a clearer conception of miracle. <i>Life</i> is the
+world's great magician,&mdash;life, so familiar,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>
+yet so mysterious; so commonplace, yet so
+transcendent. No miracle is more marvellous
+than its doings witnessed in the
+biological laboratory, or more inexplicable
+than its transformation of dead matter into
+living flesh, its development of a Shakespeare
+from a microscopic bit of protoplasm.
+But its mysterious processes are
+too common for general marvel; we marvel
+only at the uncommon. The boy
+Zerah Colburn in half a minute solved the
+problem, "How many seconds since the
+beginning of the Christian era?" We
+prefer to call this a prodigy rather than a
+miracle,&mdash;a distinction more verbal than
+real; and we fancy we have explained it
+when we say that such arithmetical power
+was a peculiar endowment of his mental
+life. Now all of the inexplicable, inimitable
+reality that at any time has to be left
+by the baffled intellect as an unsolved
+wonder under the name of miracle is just<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
+that,&mdash;<i>the natural product of an extraordinary
+endowment of life</i>. More of its marvellous
+capability is latent in common
+men, in the subconscious depths of being,
+than has ever yet flashed forth in the
+career of uncommon men. Some scientists
+say that it depends on chemical and
+physical forces. It indeed uses these to
+build the various bodies it inhabits, but
+again it leaves these to destroy those bodies
+when it quits them. The most constant
+and ubiquitous phenomenon in the
+world, the ultimate reality in the universe,
+is <i>life</i>, revealing its presence in innumerable
+modes of activity, from the dance of
+atoms in the rock to the philosophizing of
+the sage and the aspirations of the saint,&mdash;the
+creator of Nature, the administrator
+of the regular processes we call the
+laws of Nature, the author of the wonders
+men call miraculous because they are
+uncommon and ill understood.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The works of which any man is naturally
+capable are conditioned by the psychical
+quality of his life, and its power to use
+the forces of Nature. Through differences
+of vital endowment some can use color,
+as wonderful painters, and others employ
+sound, as wonderful musicians, in ways impossible
+to those otherwise endowed. So
+"a poet is born, not made." So persons of
+feeble frame, stimulated by disease or
+frenzied by passion, have put forth preternatural
+and prodigious muscular strength.
+By what we call "clairvoyant" power life
+calls up in intelligent perception things
+going on far beyond ocular vision. By
+what we call "telepathic" power life
+communicates intelligence with life separated
+by miles of space. Such are some of
+the powers that have been discovered, and
+fully attested, but not explained, as belonging
+to the world's master magician,
+<i>Life</i>. And when the poet asks,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem" style="width: 24em;">
+<span class="i5">"Ah, what will our children be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The men of a hundred thousand, a million summers away?"<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noin">we can only answer with the Apostle: "It
+doth not yet appear what we shall be."
+But we cannot deem it likely that the
+powers of life,</p>
+
+<div class="poem" style="width: 15em;">
+<span class="i0">"Deep seated in our mystic frame,"<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noin">and giving forth such flashes of their inherent
+virtue, have already reached their
+ultimate development.</p>
+
+<p>We look with wonder and awe into the
+secret shrine of life, where two scarcely
+visible cells unite to form the human being
+whose thought shall arrange the starry
+heavens in majestic order, and harness the
+titanic energies of Nature for the world's
+work. There we behold the real supernatural.
+Nothing is more natural than
+life, and nothing also more supernatural.
+Biology studies all the various forms
+that the world shows of it, and affirms<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
+that life, though multiform, is one.
+This embryology attests, showing that
+the whole ascent of life through diverse
+forms from the lowest to the highest, during
+the millions of years since life first
+manifested its presence on this globe, is
+recapitulated in the stages of growth
+through which the human being passes in
+the few months before its birth. And philosophy,
+which does not seek the living
+among the dead, affirms, <i>omne vivum
+ex vivo</i>. The varied but unitary life of the
+world is the stream of an exhaustless
+spring. It is filial to the life of God, the
+Father Almighty. What the ancient
+creed affirmed of the Christ as the Son of
+God&mdash;whom his beloved disciple recognized
+as "the eternal life which was with
+the Father and was manifested unto us<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a>"&mdash;may
+be truly affirmed of the mysterious reality
+that is known as life: "Begotten not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>
+made; being of one substance with the
+Father; through whom [or which] all
+things were made." Looking from the
+derived and 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, nor can see," up to the
+life underived, aboriginal, infinite, we recognize
+<i>God</i> and <i>Life</i> as terms of identical
+significance. How superficial the notion
+of miracles as "the personal intervention
+of God into the chain of cause and effect,"
+in which he is the constant vital element.
+If an event deemed miraculous is ever ascribed,
+as of old, to "the finger of God," the
+reality behind the phenomenon is simply a
+higher or a stronger power of life than is
+recognized in an event of a common type&mdash;life
+that is one with the infinite and universal
+Life,</p>
+
+<div class="poem" style="width: 18em;">
+<span class="i4">"Life that in me has rest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As I, undying Life, have power in Thee."<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> 1 John i. 2.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<div class="fsx">VI</div>
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figct">
+<img src="images/007.png" width="500" height="86" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h2>VI</h2>
+
+<div class="bq1"><p><span class="smcap">Synopsis.</span>&mdash;The question, both old and new,
+now confronting theologians.&mdash;Their recent retreat
+upon the minimum of miracle.&mdash;The present conflict
+of opinion in the Church.&mdash;Its turning-point
+reached in the antipodal turn-about in the treatment
+of miracles from the old to the new apologetics.&mdash;Revision
+of the traditional idea of the
+supernatural required for theological readjustment.</p></div>
+
+<div class="figcp">
+<img src="images/009.png" width="75" height="75" alt="T" title="" />
+</div><p class="p3"><span class="dcap">he</span> present line of thought has
+now reached the point where
+an important question confronts
+us,&mdash;a question not wholly new. Within
+the memory of living men theologians
+have been compelled to ask themselves:
+What if the geologists should establish
+facts that contradict our Biblically derived
+doctrine that the universe was made
+in a week? Again have they been constrained
+to put to themselves the question:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>
+What if the evolutionists should supersede
+our doctrine that the creation is the
+immediate product of successive fiats of
+the Creator by showing that it came
+gradually into existence through the progressive
+operation of forces immanent in
+the cosmos? Still again have they had to
+face the question: What if modern criticism
+by the discovery of demonstrable
+errors in the Sacred Writings should fault
+our doctrine that, as the Word of God,
+the Bible is free from all and every
+error? In every instance the dreaded
+concession, when found at length to be
+enforced by modern learning, has been
+found to bring, not the loss that had
+been apprehended, but clear gain to the
+intellectual interests of religion. Now it
+is this same sort of question which returns
+with the uncertainties and difficulties
+widely felt in the Church to be gathering
+over its hitherto unvexed belief in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
+miracles as signs of a divine activity more
+immediate than it has recognized in the
+regular processes of Nature.</p>
+
+<p>The majority of uneducated Christians
+still hold, as formerly in each of the
+points just mentioned, to the traditional
+view. Miracle as a divine intervention
+in the natural order, a more close and
+direct divine contact with the course of
+things than is the case in ordinary experience,
+they regard as the inseparable and
+necessary concomitant and proof of a
+divine Revelation. To deny miracles,
+thus understood, is censured as equivalent
+to denial of the reality of the Revelation.
+But it is rather surprising, because
+it is rare, to find a man of such note in
+literature as Dr. W. Robertson Nicoll
+affirming<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> that one cannot be a Christian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>
+without believing at least two miracles,
+the virgin birth and the physical resurrection
+of the Christ. Without comment<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>
+on the significance of this retreat upon
+the minimum of miracle, it must here
+be noted that a minority of the Church,
+not inferior to their brethren in learning
+and piety, believe that there are no tides
+in God's presence in Nature, that his contact
+with it is always of the closest:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem" style="width: 25em;">
+<span class="i0">"Closer is he than breathing, and nearer than hands or feet."<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noin">All natural operations are to them divine
+operations. "Nature," said Dr. Martineau,
+"is God's mask, not his competitor."
+While his agency in Nature may be <i>recognized</i>
+at one time more than at another,
+it <i>exists</i> at any time fully as much as at
+any other. In the interest of this fundamental
+truth of religion they affirm that
+miracles in the traditional sense of the
+word, and in their traditional limitation
+to the small measure of time and space
+covered by Biblical narratives, never
+occurred. Events reputed miraculous have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>
+indeed occurred, but simply as unusual, inexplicable
+phenomena in the natural order
+of things, the natural products of exceptionally
+endowed life, and, whether in
+ancient time or modern, the same sort
+of thing the world over. To the argument
+that this involves denial of a supernatural
+Revelation they reply that it is
+mere reasoning in a circle. For if one
+begs the question at the outset by defining
+supernatural Revelation as revelation
+necessarily evidenced by miraculous divine
+intervention, then, of course, denial of
+this is denial of that, and how is the
+argument advanced? But, besides this,
+the question-begging definition is a fallacious
+confusing of the contents of the
+Revelation with its concomitants, and of
+its essentially spiritual character with
+phenomena in the sphere of the senses.</p>
+
+<p>The turning-point in this argument between
+the two parties in the Church has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>
+been reached in the antipodal change,
+already referred to, from the old to the
+new apologetics,&mdash;a change whose inevitable
+consequences do not yet seem to
+be clearly discerned by either party in the
+discussion. The contention that denial
+of miracles as traditionally understood
+carries denial of supernatural Revelation
+has been virtually set aside, with its question-begging
+definition and circular reasoning,
+by the apologetics now current among
+believers in at least a minimum of miracle
+in the traditional sense of the word,&mdash;especially
+in the two chief miracles of the
+virgin birth and the physical resurrection
+of Jesus. As an eminent representative
+of these the late Dr. A. B. Bruce may be
+cited. These adduce "the moral miracle,"
+the sinlessness of Jesus, as evidential for
+the reality of the physical miracles as its
+"congruous accompaniments." "If," says
+Dr. Bruce, "we receive Him as the great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>
+moral miracle, we shall receive much more
+for His sake."<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> But what a turn-about
+of the traditional argument on the evidences!
+The older apologetes argued:
+This crown of miraculous power bespeaks
+the royal dignity of the wearer. The
+modern apologete reasons: This royal
+character must have a crown of miraculous
+power corresponding with his moral
+worth. In this antipodal reverse of Christian
+thought it is quite plain that for
+evidential purposes the miracle is stripped
+of its ancient value. And it has already
+been observed that modern knowledge has
+now transferred many of the Biblical
+miracles to the new rooms discovered for
+them in the natural order of things. It
+is not premature, therefore, for leaders
+of Christian thought to put once more to
+themselves the question, constantly recurring<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>
+as learning advances: What theological
+readjustment should we have to
+make, if obliged to concede that the ancient
+belief in miracle is not inseparable
+from belief in a supernatural Revelation,
+not indispensable to belief therein? What
+modified conception must we form, if constrained
+to admit that the living God,
+ever immanent in Nature, intervenes in
+Nature no more at one time than another?
+What, indeed, but a revised and
+true in place of a mistaken conception
+of the term <i>Supernatural</i>?</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> "The Church asks, and it is entitled to ask
+the critic: Do you believe in the Incarnation
+and Resurrection of Jesus Christ?... If he
+replies in the negative, he has missed the way,
+and has put himself outside of the Church of
+Christ."&mdash;<i>The Church's One Foundation</i>, p. 4.
+[Note that "Incarnation" and "Resurrection"
+are terms which Dr. Nicoll construes as denoting
+physical miracles.]
+</p><p>
+What Dr. Nicoll here means by "outside of
+the Church" he indicates by saying elsewhere,
+that philosophers who reckon goodness as everything,
+and miracles as impossible, "are not
+Christians" (<i>op. cit.</i>, p. 10).
+</p><p>
+This conditioning of Christian character upon
+an intellectual judgment concerning the reality
+of remote occurrences is both unbiblical and
+unethical, as well as absurd when practically
+applied. Some years since, Dr. E. A. Abbott,
+who admits no miracle in the life of Christ,
+published a book, <i>The Spirit on the Waters</i>,
+in which he inculcated the worship of Christ.
+Yet, according to Dr. Nicoll, such a man is
+no Christian!</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> <i>The Miraculous Element in the Gospels</i>, p.
+353.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<div class="fsx">VII</div>
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figct">
+<img src="images/004.png" width="500" height="85" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h2>VII</h2>
+
+<div class="bq1"><p><span class="smcap">Synopsis.</span>&mdash;Account to be made of the law of
+atrophy through disuse.&mdash;The virgin birth and the
+corporeal resurrection of Jesus, the two miracles
+now insisted on as the irreducible minimum, affected
+by this law.&mdash;The vital truths of the incarnation
+and immortality independent of these miracles.&mdash;These
+truths now placed on higher ground in a
+truer conception of the supernatural.&mdash;The true
+supernatural is the spiritual, not the miraculous.&mdash;Scepticism
+bred from the contrary view.&mdash;The
+miracle narratives, while less evidential for religion,
+not unimportant for history.&mdash;Psychical research
+a needful auxiliary for the scientific critic of these.</p></div>
+
+<div class="figcp">
+<img src="images/009.png" width="75" height="75" alt="T" title="" />
+</div><p class="p3"><span class="dcap">o</span> the true conception of the supernatural
+we shall presently
+come. But we cannot proceed
+without briefly reminding ourselves of the
+certain consequences of this now far advanced
+dropping of miracles by modern
+apologetics from their ancient use as evidences
+of a supernatural Revelation. We<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>
+are not ignorant of the law, which holds
+throughout the material, the mental, and
+the moral realms, that disuse tends to
+atrophy and extinction. Disused organs
+cease to exist, as in the eyeless cave-fish.
+For centuries the story of the miraculous
+birth of Jesus was serviceable for confirmation
+of his claim to be the Son of
+God. In the address of the angel of the
+annunciation to Mary that claim is expressly
+rested on the miraculous conception
+of "the holy thing."<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> But as ethical
+enlightenment grows, the conviction grows
+that, whether the physiological ground of
+that claim be tenable or not, the ethical
+ground of it is essentially higher. <i>Father</i>
+and <i>son</i> even in human relationships are
+terms of more than physiological import.
+It is matter of frequent experience that,
+where the ethical character of such relationship
+is lacking, the physiological<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>
+counts for nothing. Moreover, the divine
+sonship of Jesus in a purely ethical view
+rests on ground not only higher but incontestable.
+And so in our time theologians
+prefer to rest it on foundations that cannot
+be shaken, on his moral oneness with
+God, the divineness of his spirit, the ideal
+perfectness of his life. The strength of
+this position being realized, the world begins
+to hear from Christian thinkers the
+innovating affirmation that belief of the
+miraculous birth can no longer be deemed
+essential to Christianity; else it would not
+have been left unmentioned in two of the
+four Gospels, and in every extant Apostolic
+letter. And now we hear theologians
+saying: "I accept it, but I place it
+no more among the evidences of Christianity.
+I defend it, but cannot employ
+it in the defence of supernatural Revelation."
+Such a stage of thought is only
+transitional. An antiquated argument<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>
+does not long survive in the world of
+thought.<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> Military weapons that have
+become unserviceable soon find their way
+either to the museum or the foundry. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>
+is shortsighted not to foresee the inevitable
+effect on our theological material of
+the law of atrophy through disuse. The
+case of the miracle is the case of a pillar
+originally put in for the support of an
+ancient roof. When the roof has a modern
+truss put beneath it springing from
+wall to wall, the pillar becomes an obstacle,
+and is removed.</p>
+
+<p>But as in such a case the roof, otherwise
+supported, does not fall in when the
+pillar is removed, so neither is the central
+Christian truth of the incarnation imperilled
+by any weakening or vanishing of belief
+in the doctrine of the virgin birth. In
+a discussion of the subject in Convocation
+at York, England, while these pages
+were being written, the Dean of Ripon
+(Dr. Boyd Carpenter) urged that it must
+be borne in mind that the incarnation
+and the virgin birth were two different
+things, and that some who found difficulty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>
+in the latter fully accepted the
+former. In a recent sermon Dr. Briggs
+insists likewise upon this: "The virgin
+birth is only one of many statements of
+the mode of incarnation.... The doctrine
+of the incarnation does not depend
+upon the virgin birth.... It is only a
+minor matter connected with the incarnation,
+and should have a subordinate
+place in the doctrine.... At the same
+time the virgin birth is a New Testament
+doctrine, and we must give it its
+proper place and importance.... The
+favorite idea of the incarnation among
+the people has ever been the simpler
+one of the virgin birth, as in the Ave
+Maria. The theologians have ever preferred
+the more profound doctrine of the
+Hymn of the Logos [John i. 1-18]."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span><a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a>
+Nay, it may even be found that the
+weakening of belief in the incarnation
+as an isolated and miraculous event may
+tend to promote a profounder conception
+of it, that brings the divine and the human
+into touch and union at all points
+instead of in one point.<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span></p><p>A similar change of thought, less remarked
+than its significance deserves, is
+concerned with that other great miracle,
+the corporeal resurrection of Jesus, which
+such writers as Dr. Nicoll couple with
+that of his virgin birth as the irreducible
+minimum of miracle, belief in which
+is essential to Christian discipleship.<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a>
+For many centuries the resurrection story
+in the Gospels has served as the conclusive
+proof both of the divine sonship
+of Jesus,<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a> and of our own resurrection
+to immortality.<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> In the churches it is
+still popularly regarded as the supreme,
+sufficient, and indispensable fact required
+for the basis of faith. But in many a
+Christian mind the thought has dawned,
+that a single fact cannot give adequate
+ground for the general inference of a
+universal principle; that a remote historical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>
+fact, however strongly attested,
+can evince only what <i>has</i> taken place in
+a given case, not what <i>will</i> or <i>must</i> occur
+in other cases; while it is also inevitably
+more or less pursued by critical doubt of
+the attestations supporting it.</p>
+
+<p>This rising tide of reflection has compelled
+resort to higher ground, to the
+inward evidences in the nature of mind
+that are more secure from the doubt to
+which all that is merely external and
+historical is exposed. A clear distinction
+has been discerned between the <i>real</i>
+resurrection of Jesus&mdash;his rising from
+the mortal state into the immortal, and
+his <i>phenomenal</i> resurrection&mdash;the manifestations
+of his change that are related
+as having been objectively witnessed.
+What took place in the invisible world&mdash;his
+real resurrection&mdash;is now more
+emphasized by Christian thinkers than
+the phenomenal resurrection in the visible<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>
+world. So conservatively orthodox
+a writer as Dr. G. D. Boardman goes
+so far as to say: "After all, the real
+question in the matter of his resurrection
+is not, 'Did Christ's body rise?' That
+is but a subordinate, incidental issue."
+The real question, as Dr. Boardman admits,
+is, "Whether Jesus Christ himself
+is risen, and is alive to-day."<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> The main
+stress of Christian thought to-day is not
+laid, as formerly, on the phenomena recorded
+in the story of the resurrection,
+but on the psychological, moral, and
+rational evidences of a resurrection to
+immortality that until recent times were
+comparatively disregarded.<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> Meanwhile<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>
+the vindication of the reality of the phenomena
+related of the risen Jesus, including
+his bodily ascension, though not a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>
+matter of indifference to many of those
+who have found the higher grounds of
+faith, has become to them of subordinate
+importance.</p>
+
+<p>It is well for Christian faith that its
+supersensuous and impregnable grounds
+have been occupied. It is certain that
+ancient records of external phenomena
+cannot in future constitute, as heretofore,
+the stronghold of faith. But it is by no
+means yet certain that they have lost
+serviceableness as, at least, outworks of
+the stronghold. While the doctrine of
+the virgin birth seems to be threatened
+by atrophy, the doctrine of the bodily
+resurrection, though retired from primary
+to secondary rank, seems to be waiting
+rather for clarification by further knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>Something of an objective nature certainly
+lies at its basis; <i>something</i> of an
+external sort, not the product of mere imagination,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>
+took place. To the fact thus
+indefinitely stated, that hallowing of Sunday
+as a day of sacred and joyful observance
+which is coeval with the earliest
+traditions, and antedates all records, is an
+attestation as significant as any monumental
+marble. No hallucination theory,
+no gradual rise and growth of hope in the
+minds of a reflective few, can account for
+that solid primeval monument. But <i>what</i>
+occurred, the reality in distinctness from
+any legendary accretions, we shall be better
+able to conclude, when the truth shall
+have been threshed out concerning the
+reality, at present strongly attested, and
+as strongly controverted, of certain extraordinary
+but occult psychical powers.<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span></p>
+<p>A point of high significance for those
+who would cultivate a religious faith not
+liable to be affected by changes of intellectual
+outlook or insight is, that this
+lower valuation of miracle observable
+among Christian thinkers has not been
+reached through breaches made by sceptical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>
+doubts of the reality of a supernatural
+Revelation. They have, of course, felt the
+reasonableness of the difficulties with which
+traditional opinions have been encumbered
+by the advance of knowledge. But so far
+from giving way thereupon to doubts of
+the reality of divine Revelation, they have
+sought and found less assailable defences
+for their faith in it than those that sufficed
+their fathers. And their satisfaction therewith
+stands in no sympathy with those who
+hold it a mark of enlightenment to assume
+with Matthew Arnold, that "miracles do
+not happen." It has resulted rather from
+reaching the higher grounds of religious
+thought, on which supernatural Revelation
+is recognized in its essential character as
+distinctively moral and spiritual.</p>
+
+<p>The true supernatural is the <i>spiritual</i>,
+not the miraculous, a higher order of
+Nature, not a contradiction of Nature.
+The Revelation of Jesus was altogether<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>
+spiritual. It consisted in the ideas of God
+which he communicated by his ministry
+and teaching, by his character and life.
+But this, the real supernatural, was not
+obvious as such to his contemporaries.
+They looked for it in the lower region of
+physical effects. And here the Church
+also in its embryonic spiritual life, in its
+proneness to externalize religion in forms
+of rite, and creed, and organization, has
+thought to find it. Jesus' reproof, "Except
+ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe,"
+is still pertinent to those who will
+not have it that the supernatural Revelation&mdash;spiritual
+though it be&mdash;can be
+recognized or believed in apart from an
+acknowledgment of attendant miracles,
+wrought in physical nature by an intervention
+of God. Such a contention, however,
+is as futile and desperate as was John
+Wesley's declaration, "The giving up of
+witchcraft is in effect the giving up of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>
+Bible." Such mischievous fallacies succeed
+only in blinding many a mind to the
+real issue which the moral and spiritual
+Revelation of Jesus makes with men of
+the twentieth century. It is these fallacies,
+and not their critics, that create the
+most of scepticism.<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span></p>
+<p>But while the question whether miracles
+are credible has ceased to be of vital
+importance, it has by no means lost all
+importance. On the contrary, so long as
+the path of progress is guided by the
+lamp of experience, so long will it be of
+consequence that the historical record of
+experience be found trustworthy. It may
+suit the overweening pride which defies
+both the past and the present to say with
+Bonaparte, that history is only a fable that
+men have agreed to believe. But it is a
+human interest, and a satisfaction of normal
+minds to establish, so far as reason<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>
+permits, the credibility of every record
+ostensibly historic. To discover that ancient
+experiences, once supposed to be
+miraculous raisings from real death, may
+reasonably be classed with well attested
+experiences of to-day, better understood as
+resuscitations from a deathlike trance,
+should be welcomed by unprejudiced historical
+critics, as redeeming portions of
+the ancient record from mistaken disparagement
+as legendary. That further
+study may accredit as facts, or at least as
+founded on facts, some other marvels in
+that record cannot, except by arrant dogmatism,
+be pronounced improbable.
+Nevertheless, it cannot be expected that
+the legendary element, which both the
+Old and the New Testament in greater
+and less degree exhibit, can ever be eliminated.
+Such stories as that of the origin
+of languages at Babel, and that of the
+resurrection of ancient saints at Jesus'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>
+resurrection are indubitable cases of it.
+But the legendary element, though permanent,
+is at present undefined. To define
+it is the problem of the critical student, a
+problem most difficult to him whose judgment
+is least subjective; and he will welcome
+every contribution that advancing
+knowledge can supply.</p>
+
+<p>Regarding miracle as the natural product
+of exceptionally endowed life, there
+is no source from which more light can be
+shed on its Biblical record than in those
+studies of the exceptional phenomena and
+occult powers of life which are prosecuted
+by the Society for Psychical Research,
+whose results are recorded in its published
+<i>Proceedings</i>. For those familiar with this
+record the legendary element in the Bible
+tends to shrink into smaller compass than
+many critics assign it. In the interest
+both of the Bible and of science it is
+regrettable that the results of these researches,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>
+though conducted by men of
+high eminence in the scientific world, still
+encounter the same hostile scepticism
+even from some Christian believers that
+Hume directed against the Biblical miracles.
+Mr. Gladstone has put himself on
+record against this philistinism, saying
+that "psychical research is by far the most
+important work that is being done in the
+world." Were one disposed to prophesy,
+very reasonable grounds could be produced
+for the prediction that, great as
+was the advance of the nineteenth century
+in physical knowledge, the twentieth century
+will witness an advance in psychical
+knowledge equally great. In this advance
+one may not unreasonably anticipate that
+some, at least, of the Biblical miracles may
+be relieved from the scepticism that now
+widely discredits them.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> Luke i. 35.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> To what extent the law of atrophy has begun
+to work upon the doctrine of the virgin
+birth appears in the recent utterance of so eminent
+an evangelical scholar as Dr. R. F. Horton,
+of London. The following report of his remarks
+in a Christmas sermon in 1901 is taken
+from the <i>Christian World</i>, 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 the latest touches
+in the Gospel, belonging to a period forty or
+fifty years after the Lord had passed away, when
+men had begun to realize what he was&mdash;the
+Son of God&mdash;and tried to express their conviction
+in this form or that." The implication
+here is unmistakable, that, in Dr. Horton's view,
+subjective considerations in the minds of pious
+believers, rather than objective fact, form the
+basis of the story.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> See the Sermon on "Born of a Virgin,"
+in the volume on <i>The Incarnation of Our
+Lord</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> "Christian thought has not erred by asserting
+too much concerning the incarnation of
+God, but, on the contrary, too little....
+If ever overblown by blasts of denial, it is for
+wanting breadth of base.... Men have disbelieved
+the incarnation, because told that all
+there was of it was in Christ; and they reject
+what is presented as exceptional to the general
+way of God. They must be told to believe
+more; that the age-long way of God is
+in a perpetually increasing incarnation of life,
+whose climax and crown is the divine fulness
+of life in Christ."&mdash;From a discourse by the
+present writer on "Life and its Incarnations,"
+in the volume, <i>New Points to Old Texts</i>.
+(James Clarke &amp; Co., London. Thomas Whittaker,
+New York, 1889.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> See page <a href="#Page_97">97</a> and <a href="#Footnote_35_35">Note</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> Romans i. 4.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> 1 Corinthians xv. 16-23.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> <i>Our Risen King's Forty Days</i>, 1902.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> 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 one resurrection of
+which the New Testament knows, the one resurrection
+which allows to language any meaning,
+is the resurrection of the body, the resurrection
+which leaves the grave empty" (<i>op. cit.</i>
+p. 134).
+</p><p>
+It should be noted here that Jesus' argument
+with the Sadducees on the resurrection
+(Luke xx. 37, 38) logically proceeds on the assumption
+that living after death and rising after
+death are convertible terms. Also, that the
+contrast involved in the idea of the resurrection
+(the <i>anastasis</i>, or rising up) is a contrast not
+between the grave and the sky, but between
+the lower life of mortals and the higher life
+immortal.
+</p><p>
+For an extended exhibition of this line of
+evidence see "The Assurance of Immortality,"
+and "The Present Pledge of Life to Come"
+(in two volumes of discourses by the present
+writer), London, James Clarke &amp; Co. New
+York, Thomas Whittaker, 1888 and 1889.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> Could it have been only an apparition? The
+"census of hallucinations" conducted some ten
+years since by the Society for Psychical Research
+evinced the reality of veridical apparitions of
+deceased persons at or near the time of their
+death, showing the number of verified cases to
+be so large as to exclude the supposition of
+chance hallucination (see <i>Proceedings</i>, August,
+1894). Or could it have been a material body
+suddenly becoming visible in a closed room, as
+narrated by Luke and John? First-class evidence,
+if there can be any such for such occurrences,
+has been exhibited for such phenomena
+as the passage of solid substances through intervening
+doors and walls&mdash;easy enough, say
+mathematicians, for a being familiar with the
+"fourth dimension"&mdash;and of the levitation of
+heavy bodies without physical support. (See
+<i>Proceedings</i>, January, 1894, and March, 1895.)
+As to such things scepticism is doubtless in
+order, but dogmatic contradiction is not. <i>Sub
+judice lis est.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> Professor Borden P. Bowne has thus exhibited
+this great mistake and its grievous consequence:&mdash;
+</p><p>
+"In popular thought, religious and irreligious
+alike, the natural is supposed to be something
+that runs itself without any internal guidance or
+external interference. The supernatural, on the
+other hand, if there be any such thing, is not
+supposed to manifest itself through the natural,
+but by means of portents, prodigies, interpositions,
+departures from, or infractions of, natural
+law in general. The realm of law belongs to
+the natural, and the natural runs itself. Hence,
+if we are to find anything supernatural, we must
+look for it in the abnormal, the chaotic, the
+lawless, or that which defies all reduction to
+order that may be depended on. This notion
+underlies the traditional debate between naturalism
+and supernaturalism.... This unhappy
+misconception of the relation of the natural to
+the supernatural has practically led the great
+body of uncritical thinkers into the grotesque
+inversion of all reason&mdash;the more law and
+order, the less God."&mdash;<i>Zion's Herald</i>, August
+22, 1900.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<div class="fsx">VIII</div>
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figct">
+<img src="images/001.png" width="500" height="86" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h2>VIII</h2>
+
+<div class="bq1"><p><span class="smcap">Synopsis.</span>&mdash;The cardinal point in the present
+discussion, the reality not of miracles but of the
+supernatural.&mdash;Fallacy of pointing to physical
+events as essential characteristics of supernatural
+Revelation.&mdash;The character of a revelation determined
+not by its circumstances, but by its contents.&mdash;Moral
+nature supernatural to physical.&mdash;Nature
+a hierarchy of natures.&mdash;Supernatural Religion historically
+attested by the moral development it generates.&mdash;Transfer
+of its distinctive note from moral
+ideals to physical marvels a costly error.&mdash;Jesus'
+miracles <i>a</i> revelation, of a type common with
+others before and since.&mdash;The unique Revelation of
+Jesus was in the higher realm of divine ideas and
+ideals.&mdash;These, while unrealized in human life, still
+exhibit the fact of a supernatural Revelation.&mdash;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.</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcp">
+<img src="images/008.png" width="75" height="75" alt="I" title="" />
+</div><p class="p3"><span class="dcap">t</span> remains finally to emphasize
+the point of cardinal importance
+in the considerations that have
+been presented. This is not the reality of
+miracles, but the reality of the supernatural,
+what it really is, as distinct from
+what it has been thought to be. The
+advance of science and philosophy has
+brought to the front this question: "Have
+those who reject the claims of supernatural
+Religion been misinformed as to
+what it is?" Is it, as they have been told,
+dependent for its attestation on signs and
+wonders occurring in the sphere of the
+senses? Does it require acceptance of
+these, as well as of its teachings? Or is its
+characteristic appeal wholly to the higher
+nature of man, relying for its attestation
+on the witness borne to it by this, rather
+than by extraordinary phenomena presented
+to the senses? There is at present
+no intellectual interest of Christianity more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>
+urgent than this: to present to minds
+imbued with modern learning the true
+conception of the supernatural and of
+supernatural Religion.</p>
+
+<p>Miracles, legitimately viewed as the natural
+product of extraordinary psychical
+power, or, to phrase it otherwise, of an exceptional
+vital endowment, belong not to
+the Hebrew race alone, nor did they cease
+when the last survivor of the Jewish apostles
+of Christianity passed away at the end
+of the first century. This traditional opinion
+ought by this time to have been entombed
+together with its long defunct
+relative, which represented this globe as
+the fixed centre of the revolving heavens.
+Miracles have the same universality as
+human life. Nor will their record be
+closed till the evolution of life is complete.
+Animal life, advancing through geologic
+&aelig;ons to the advent of man, in him
+reached its climax. Spiritual life, appearing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>
+in him as a new bud on an old stock, is
+evidently far from its climax still. To
+believe in miracles, as rightly understood,
+is to believe in spirit and life, and in further
+unfoldings of their still latent powers.</p>
+
+<p>This, however, is just now of subordinate
+importance. The present interest of chief
+moment is a riddance of the hoary fallacy
+that vitiates the current idea of a supernatural
+Revelation by looking for its specific
+characteristics to the physical world. By
+this deplorable fallacy Christian theology
+has blinded the minds of many scientific
+men to the essential claims of Christianity,
+with immense damage in the arrested
+development of their religious nature
+through the scepticism inevitably but
+needlessly provoked by this great mistake.
+When Elijah proclaims to idolaters that
+their deity is no God, and, as we read,
+corroborates his words by calling down
+fire from heaven to consume his sacrifice,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>
+it is reckoned as supernatural Revelation.
+But it is not so reckoned when the sage in
+the book of Proverbs proclaims to a nation
+of religious formalists the moral character
+of God: "To do righteousness and justice
+is more acceptable to the <span class="smcap">Lord</span> than sacrifice."
+This is accounted as ethical teaching,
+somewhat in advance of the times.
+A pagan rather than a Christian way of
+thinking is discoverable here. In each
+of the cases cited the specific character of
+supernatural Revelation is equally evident,&mdash;the
+disclosure of spiritual truth above
+the natural thought of the natural men to
+whom it came. The character of any
+revelation is determined by the character
+of the truth made known, not by the drapery
+of circumstances connected with the
+making known. Clothes do not make the
+man, though coarse or careless people may
+think so. What belongs to the moral and
+spiritual order is supernatural to what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>
+belongs to the material and physical
+order.</p>
+
+<p>This way of thinking will be forced on
+common minds by thoughtful observation
+of common things. Animate nature of
+the lowest rank, as in the grass, is of a
+higher natural order than inanimate nature
+in the soil the grass springs from. Sentient
+nature, as in the ox, is of a higher
+order than the non-sentient in the grass.
+Self-conscious and reflective nature in the
+man is of a higher order than the selfless
+and non-reflective nature in his beast of
+burden. In the composite being of man
+all these orders of nature coexist, and each
+higher is supernatural to the nature below
+it. Nature, the comprehensive term for
+<i>all that comes into being</i>, is a hierarchy
+of natures, rising rank above rank from
+the lowest to the highest. The highest
+nature known to us, supernatural to all
+below it, can only be the moral nature,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>
+whose full satisfaction is necessary to the
+highest satisfaction of a man, and in whose
+complete development only can be realized
+in permanency his perfected welfare as a
+social being.</p>
+
+<p>Now it is precisely in the progress of
+moral development that supernatural Religion
+manifests itself as a reality. Religion,
+indeed, is as natural to man as Art.
+But there is religion and Religion, as
+there is art and Art&mdash;the sexual religion
+of the primitive Semites, the animistic religion
+of China, the spiritual Religion that
+flowered on the Mount of the Beatitudes,
+embryonic religion and Religion adult;
+all, indeed, natural, yet of lower and of
+higher grade. Doubtless, Religion of whatever
+grade outranks all other human activities
+by its distinctive aspiration to transcend
+the bounds of space and time and sense,
+and to link the individual to the universal;
+and so all Religion sounds, feebly or distinctly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>
+the note of the supernatural. But
+this is the resonant note of the spiritual
+Religion which unfolds in the moral progress
+of the world. As moral nature is
+supernatural to the psychical and the physical,
+so is its consummate bloom of spiritual
+Religion to be ranked as such, relatively to
+the religions which more or less dimly and
+blindly are yearning and groping toward
+the light that never was on sea or land.
+Thus defining the word according to the
+nature of the thing, supernatural Religion,
+with its corollary of supernatural Revelation
+not as an apparition from without,
+but as an unfolding from within, is both a
+fact and a factor in the development of
+spiritual man.</p>
+
+<p>The term <i>supernatural Religion</i> has
+been rightly applied to that system of
+religious conceptions, ideals, and motives,
+whose effective culture of the moral nature
+is attested historically by a moral development<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>
+superior to the product of any other
+known religion. Whether the greatest
+saints of Christianity are all of them whiter
+souls than any that can be found among
+the disciples of any other religion, may
+be matter for argument. There can be
+no gainsaying the fact that, of great and
+lowly together, no other religion shows so
+many saints, or has so advanced the general
+moral development in lands where
+it is widely followed. But its essential
+character has been obscured, its appeal
+to man's highest nature foiled, and its
+power lamed by the wretched fallacy that
+has transferred its distinctive note of the
+supernatural from its divine ideals to the
+physical marvels embedded in the record
+of its original promulgation, even conditioning
+its validity and authority upon
+their reality. Such is the false issue
+which, to the discredit of Christianity,
+theology has presented to science. Such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>
+is the confusion of ideas that in the light
+of modern knowledge inevitably blocks
+the way to a reasonable religious faith
+in multitudes of minds thereby offended.
+From this costly error Christian theology
+at length shows signs that it is about to
+extricate itself.<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a></p>
+
+<p>As to the Christian miracles, there can
+be no reasonable doubt that "mighty
+works," deemed by many of his contemporaries
+superhuman, were wrought
+by Jesus. These, whatever they were,
+must be regarded as the natural effluence
+of a transcendently endowed life. Taking
+place in the sphere of the senses, they
+were <i>a</i> revelation of the type seen before
+and since in the lives of wonder-workers
+ancient and modern, in whom the power<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>
+of mind over matter, however astonishing
+and mysterious, is recognized as belonging
+to the natural order of things no less than
+the unexplored Antarctic belongs to the
+globe. But <i>the</i> Revelation which he gave
+to human thought as a new thing, a
+heavenly vision unprecedented, was in
+the higher realm of the moral and spiritual
+life. This was the true supernatural,
+whose reality and power are separable
+from all its environment of circumstances,
+and wholly independent thereof. The
+characteristic ideals of Jesus, his profound
+consciousness of God, his filial thought
+of God, his saturation with the conviction
+of his moral oneness with God,<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> his realization<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>
+of brotherhood with the meanest
+human being, still transcend the common
+level of natural humanity even among his
+disciples. As thus transcendent they are
+supernatural still. Till reached and realized,
+they manifest the fact of a supernatural
+Revelation in that peerless life
+as plainly as the sun is manifest in the
+splendor of a cloudless day.</p>
+
+<p>In the coming but distant age, when
+man's spiritual nature, now so embryonic,
+shall have become adult, it will doubtless
+so pervade and rule the physical and psychical
+natures which it inhabits that the
+distinction between natural and supernatural,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>
+so important in the period of its
+development, will become foreign alike to
+thought and speech. But until the making
+of man in the image of God is complete,
+when the spiritual element in our
+composite being, now struggling for development,
+shall be manifest in its ultimate
+maturity and ascendency as the distinctive
+and proper nature of humanity, it is
+of supreme importance for the Christian
+teacher, who would point and urge to the
+heights of being, to free men's minds of
+error as to what the real supernatural is.
+Not the fancied disturber of the world's ordered
+harmonies, but that highest Nature
+which is the moulder, the glory, and the
+crown of all the lower.</p>
+
+<p>Imaged to us in the human perfectness of
+Jesus, the ideal Son of man, it is revealed
+as the distinctive inheritance and prize of
+the humanity that essays to think the
+thoughts and walk the ways of God. To<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>
+each of us is it given in germ by our
+human birth, to be fostered and nourished
+in converse with the Infinite Presence
+that inhabits all things, till its divine possibilities
+appear in the ultimate "revealing
+of the sons of God,"<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> full grown "according
+to the measure of the stature of the
+fulness of Christ."<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> "Upon the conception of the supernatural
+as the personal," says Professor Nash, "apologetics
+must found the claims of Christianity."&mdash;<i>Ethics
+and Revelation.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> The words in which Jesus expresses this are
+much more extraordinary and profoundly significant
+than any of those mighty works of his,
+the like of which are recorded of the ancient
+prophets. Jesus was conscious of God as living
+in him, and of himself as living in God, in the
+unity of the one eternal life. Not merely as a
+man <i>of</i> God, but as a man <i>in</i> God, as no other
+man has consciously been, does Jesus utter
+such sayings as, "I am the light of the world,"
+"I and my Father are one." (See "Jesus the
+Ideal Man," by the present writer. <i>The New
+World</i>, June, 1897.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> Romans viii. 19.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> Ephesians iv. 13.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="bq2"><p class="ctr"><span class="fxl"><big>New Testament Handbooks</big></span></p>
+
+<p class="ctr">EDITED BY</p>
+
+<p class="ctr"><big><b>SHAILER MATHEWS</b></big><br />
+<i>Professor of New Testament History and Interpretation,
+University of Chicago</i></p>
+
+<div class="p7"><p class="p8">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:&mdash;</p></div>
+
+<p class="p4">The History of the Textual Criticism of the
+New Testament</p>
+
+<div class="bk3"><p class="p5">Prof. <span class="smcap">Marvin R. Vincent</span>, Professor of New Testament Exegesis,
+Union Theological Seminary.</p>
+
+<p class="rgt"><small>[<i>Now ready.</i></small></p></div>
+
+<p class="p6"><small>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"
+(<i>International Critical Commentary</i>), which was preceded by a "Students'
+New Testament Handbook," "Word Studies in the New Testament," and
+others.</small></p>
+
+<p class="p4">The History of the Higher Criticism of the
+New Testament</p>
+
+<div class="bk3"><p class="p5">Prof. <span class="smcap">Henry S. Nash</span>, Professor of New Testament Interpretation,
+Cambridge Divinity School.</p>
+
+<p class="rgt"><small>[<i>Now ready.</i></small></p></div>
+
+<p class="p6"><small>Of Professor Nash's "Genesis of the Social Conscience," <i>The Outlook</i> 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."</small></p>
+
+<p class="p4">Introduction to the Books of the New Testament</p>
+
+<div class="bk3"><p class="p5">Prof. B. <span class="smcap">Wisner Bacon</span>, Professor of New Testament Interpretation,
+Yale University.</p>
+
+<p class="rgt"><small>[<i>Now ready.</i></small></p></div>
+
+<p class="p6"><small>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 <i>American Journal of Theology</i>.</small></p>
+
+<p class="p4">The History of New Testament Times in Palestine</p>
+
+<div class="bk3"><p class="p5">Prof. <span class="smcap">Shailer Mathews</span>, Professor of New Testament History and
+Interpretation, The University of Chicago.</p>
+
+<p class="rgt"><small>[<i>Now ready.</i></small></p></div>
+
+<p class="p6"><small><i>The Congregationalist</i> 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."</small></p>
+
+<p class="p4">The Life of Paul</p>
+
+<p class="p5">Prof. <span class="smcap">Rush Rhees</span>, President of the University of Rochester.</p>
+
+<p class="p6"><small>Professor Rhees is well known from his series of "Inductive Lessons" contributed
+to the <i>Sunday School Times</i>. His "Outline of the Life of Paul," privately
+printed, has had a flattering reception from New Testament scholars.</small></p>
+
+<p class="p4">The History of the Apostolic Age</p>
+
+<p class="p5">Dr. <span class="smcap">C. W. Votaw</span>, Instructor in New Testament Literature, The
+University of Chicago.</p>
+
+<p class="p6"><small>Of Dr. Votaw's "Inductive Study of the Founding of the Christian Church," <i>Modern
+Church</i>, 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 <i>Founding of the
+Christian Church</i>, by Clyde W. Votaw. It is well adapted alike for practical
+and more scholarly students of the Bible."</small></p>
+
+<p class="p4">The Teaching of Jesus</p>
+
+<div class="bk3"><p class="p5">Prof. <span class="smcap">George B. Stevens</span>, Professor of Systematic Theology, Yale
+University.</p>
+
+<p class="rgt"><small>[<i>Now ready.</i></small></p></div>
+
+<p class="p6"><small>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.</small></p>
+
+<p class="p4">The Biblical Theology of the New Testament</p>
+
+<div class="bk3"><p class="p5">Prof. <span class="smcap">E. P. Gould</span>, Professor of New Testament Interpretation, Protestant
+Episcopal Divinity School, Philadelphia.</p>
+
+<p class="rgt"><small>[<i>Now ready.</i></small></p></div>
+
+<p class="p6"><small>Professor Gould's Commentaries on the Gospel of Mark (in the <i>International Critical
+Commentary</i>) and the Epistles to the Corinthians (in the <i>American Commentary</i>)
+are critical and exegetical attempts to supply those elements which
+are lacking in existing works of the same general aim and scope.</small></p>
+
+<p class="p4">The History of Christian Literature until Eusebius</p>
+
+<p class="p5">Prof. <span class="smcap">J. W. Platner</span>, Professor of Early Church History, Harvard
+University.</p>
+
+<p class="p6"><small>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.</small></p>
+
+<div class="p7"><p class="p1"><big>OTHERS TO FOLLOW</big></p></div>
+
+<p class="p6"><small>"An excellent series of scholarly, yet concise and inexpensive New Testament handbooks."&mdash;<i>Christian
+Advocate</i>, New York.</small></p>
+
+<p class="p6"><small>"These books are remarkably well suited in language, style, and price, to all
+students of the New Testament."&mdash;<i>The Congregationalist</i>, Boston.</small></p></div>
+
+<hr class="shr" />
+
+<p class="ctr"><span class="fxl">THE MACMILLAN COMPANY</span></p>
+<p class="ctr">66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK</p>
+
+<div class="trn"><p><b>Transcriber's Note:</b>
+Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.
+Variant spellings have been retained. The following significant correction has been made
+to the original text:</p>
+
+<p class="p2">p. <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, 'Saltp&ecirc;tri&egrave;re' amended to <i>Salp&ecirc;tri&egrave;re</i>.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Miracles and Supernatural Religion, by 
+James Morris Whiton
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MIRACLES AND SUPERNATURAL RELIGION ***
+
+***** This file should be named 26397-h.htm or 26397-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/2/6/3/9/26397/
+
+Produced by Bryan Ness, Stephen Blundell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+
+</pre>
+
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/26397-h/images/001.png b/26397-h/images/001.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b1b642d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-h/images/001.png
diff --git a/26397-h/images/002.png b/26397-h/images/002.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..147a4d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-h/images/002.png
diff --git a/26397-h/images/003.png b/26397-h/images/003.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..42b72fc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-h/images/003.png
diff --git a/26397-h/images/004.png b/26397-h/images/004.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..28061fb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-h/images/004.png
diff --git a/26397-h/images/005.png b/26397-h/images/005.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7c743d7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-h/images/005.png
diff --git a/26397-h/images/006.png b/26397-h/images/006.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46c44a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-h/images/006.png
diff --git a/26397-h/images/007.png b/26397-h/images/007.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a84f04e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-h/images/007.png
diff --git a/26397-h/images/008.png b/26397-h/images/008.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e718851
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-h/images/008.png
diff --git a/26397-h/images/009.png b/26397-h/images/009.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..75cb80d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-h/images/009.png
diff --git a/26397-h/images/010.png b/26397-h/images/010.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5022251
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-h/images/010.png
diff --git a/26397-h/images/011.png b/26397-h/images/011.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b25cdc7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-h/images/011.png
diff --git a/26397-h/images/012.png b/26397-h/images/012.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ee907b4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-h/images/012.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/f0003.png b/26397-page-images/f0003.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0dfd6a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/f0003.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/f0004.png b/26397-page-images/f0004.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..620ef67
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/f0004.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/f0005.png b/26397-page-images/f0005.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..674a9b6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/f0005.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/f0007.png b/26397-page-images/f0007.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5b2a0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/f0007.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/f0008.png b/26397-page-images/f0008.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ebcb3e6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/f0008.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/f0009.png b/26397-page-images/f0009.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..143edaf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/f0009.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/f0010.png b/26397-page-images/f0010.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e2fca04
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/f0010.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/f0011.png b/26397-page-images/f0011.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9cd29c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/f0011.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/f0012.png b/26397-page-images/f0012.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..413feee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/f0012.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0013-image1.png b/26397-page-images/p0013-image1.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3a40fbb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0013-image1.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0013.png b/26397-page-images/p0013.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0edb8b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0013.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0014.png b/26397-page-images/p0014.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a091488
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0014.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0015.png b/26397-page-images/p0015.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71330cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0015.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0016.png b/26397-page-images/p0016.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e565ccc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0016.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0017.png b/26397-page-images/p0017.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4998c57
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0017.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0018.png b/26397-page-images/p0018.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1dfffa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0018.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0019.png b/26397-page-images/p0019.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4e0236c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0019.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0020.png b/26397-page-images/p0020.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4df44f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0020.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0021.png b/26397-page-images/p0021.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e900fb2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0021.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0023.png b/26397-page-images/p0023.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e58ae55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0023.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0025-image1.png b/26397-page-images/p0025-image1.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7ee8f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0025-image1.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0025.png b/26397-page-images/p0025.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..003c655
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0025.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0026.png b/26397-page-images/p0026.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2bd8b8c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0026.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0027.png b/26397-page-images/p0027.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7662efa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0027.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0028.png b/26397-page-images/p0028.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e7352e5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0028.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0029.png b/26397-page-images/p0029.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9bedc7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0029.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0030.png b/26397-page-images/p0030.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc9fcf0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0030.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0031.png b/26397-page-images/p0031.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8781f83
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0031.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0032.png b/26397-page-images/p0032.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c22f673
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0032.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0033.png b/26397-page-images/p0033.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..12d4791
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0033.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0035.png b/26397-page-images/p0035.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1fc4a38
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0035.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0037-image1.png b/26397-page-images/p0037-image1.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d387f0c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0037-image1.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0037.png b/26397-page-images/p0037.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f5d850
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0037.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0038.png b/26397-page-images/p0038.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9754f5a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0038.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0039.png b/26397-page-images/p0039.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6a2fe93
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0039.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0040.png b/26397-page-images/p0040.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8870092
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0040.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0041.png b/26397-page-images/p0041.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b609202
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0041.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0042.png b/26397-page-images/p0042.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..87c3778
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0042.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0043.png b/26397-page-images/p0043.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d803788
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0043.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0044.png b/26397-page-images/p0044.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53f03f5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0044.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0045.png b/26397-page-images/p0045.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b09a306
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0045.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0047-image1.png b/26397-page-images/p0047-image1.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..56809fc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0047-image1.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0047.png b/26397-page-images/p0047.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0aae257
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0047.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0048.png b/26397-page-images/p0048.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ee31deb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0048.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0049.png b/26397-page-images/p0049.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..66badce
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0049.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0050.png b/26397-page-images/p0050.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7d10550
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0050.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0051.png b/26397-page-images/p0051.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4f74b9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0051.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0052.png b/26397-page-images/p0052.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dd7a534
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0052.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0053.png b/26397-page-images/p0053.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7200035
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0053.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0054.png b/26397-page-images/p0054.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9c488ed
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0054.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0055.png b/26397-page-images/p0055.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5e07f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0055.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0056.png b/26397-page-images/p0056.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..62bddbe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0056.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0057.png b/26397-page-images/p0057.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0b08b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0057.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0058.png b/26397-page-images/p0058.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c7f56ed
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0058.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0059.png b/26397-page-images/p0059.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3aced0d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0059.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0060.png b/26397-page-images/p0060.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f831af3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0060.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0061.png b/26397-page-images/p0061.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dfcc140
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0061.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0062.png b/26397-page-images/p0062.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e143c09
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0062.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0063.png b/26397-page-images/p0063.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e8b8bae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0063.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0064.png b/26397-page-images/p0064.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..636fbce
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0064.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0065.png b/26397-page-images/p0065.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ebee559
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0065.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0066.png b/26397-page-images/p0066.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4a75516
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0066.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0067.png b/26397-page-images/p0067.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0812a61
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0067.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0068.png b/26397-page-images/p0068.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9c5ff54
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0068.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0069.png b/26397-page-images/p0069.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ab231c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0069.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0070.png b/26397-page-images/p0070.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d6f1a67
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0070.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0071.png b/26397-page-images/p0071.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4b6c25c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0071.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0073.png b/26397-page-images/p0073.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0621ead
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0073.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0075-image1.png b/26397-page-images/p0075-image1.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..98ac4fa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0075-image1.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0075.png b/26397-page-images/p0075.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b2e241
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0075.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0076.png b/26397-page-images/p0076.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4a5abfb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0076.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0077.png b/26397-page-images/p0077.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..818525a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0077.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0078.png b/26397-page-images/p0078.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..730423d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0078.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0079.png b/26397-page-images/p0079.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0cf676
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0079.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0080.png b/26397-page-images/p0080.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6dad1a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0080.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0081.png b/26397-page-images/p0081.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..82ec24c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0081.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0082.png b/26397-page-images/p0082.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f17765
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0082.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0083.png b/26397-page-images/p0083.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b033624
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0083.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0085-image1.png b/26397-page-images/p0085-image1.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..00082c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0085-image1.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0085.png b/26397-page-images/p0085.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad9e22d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0085.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0086.png b/26397-page-images/p0086.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d596759
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0086.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0087.png b/26397-page-images/p0087.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dc51053
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0087.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0088.png b/26397-page-images/p0088.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..109346a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0088.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0089.png b/26397-page-images/p0089.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8821149
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0089.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0090.png b/26397-page-images/p0090.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..01d3c4d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0090.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0091.png b/26397-page-images/p0091.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..698ef8c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0091.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0092.png b/26397-page-images/p0092.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..770683c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0092.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0093.png b/26397-page-images/p0093.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f75ec5a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0093.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0095-image1.png b/26397-page-images/p0095-image1.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85b269f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0095-image1.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0095.png b/26397-page-images/p0095.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a1d2b43
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0095.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0096.png b/26397-page-images/p0096.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5279ec3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0096.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0097.png b/26397-page-images/p0097.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b4dd1d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0097.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0098.png b/26397-page-images/p0098.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e7ad524
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0098.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0099.png b/26397-page-images/p0099.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..83aa0b8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0099.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0100.png b/26397-page-images/p0100.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97b2244
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0100.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0101.png b/26397-page-images/p0101.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e48aa6d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0101.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0102.png b/26397-page-images/p0102.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b72c943
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0102.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0103.png b/26397-page-images/p0103.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9bb0ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0103.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0104.png b/26397-page-images/p0104.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8a48ade
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0104.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0105.png b/26397-page-images/p0105.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eb2bf69
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0105.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0106.png b/26397-page-images/p0106.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a4769b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0106.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0107.png b/26397-page-images/p0107.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8c38882
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0107.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0108.png b/26397-page-images/p0108.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43f3fa4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0108.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0109.png b/26397-page-images/p0109.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4a809d3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0109.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0110.png b/26397-page-images/p0110.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ed938ce
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0110.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0111.png b/26397-page-images/p0111.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5b07d4f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0111.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0112.png b/26397-page-images/p0112.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97c4425
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0112.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0113.png b/26397-page-images/p0113.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..37da0cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0113.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0114.png b/26397-page-images/p0114.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..60d2f9c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0114.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0115.png b/26397-page-images/p0115.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..810baa0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0115.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0116.png b/26397-page-images/p0116.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b15ed90
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0116.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0117.png b/26397-page-images/p0117.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..36050f5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0117.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0118.png b/26397-page-images/p0118.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..159e3b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0118.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0119.png b/26397-page-images/p0119.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e8851fd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0119.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0120.png b/26397-page-images/p0120.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dbfeb90
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0120.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0121.png b/26397-page-images/p0121.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77e395b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0121.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0122.png b/26397-page-images/p0122.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5ffc977
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0122.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0123.png b/26397-page-images/p0123.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..131b5d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0123.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0124.png b/26397-page-images/p0124.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21932e0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0124.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0125.png b/26397-page-images/p0125.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..90d8bc3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0125.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0126.png b/26397-page-images/p0126.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ddf0ac2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0126.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0127.png b/26397-page-images/p0127.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..80162cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0127.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0128.png b/26397-page-images/p0128.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b62bc38
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0128.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0129.png b/26397-page-images/p0129.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..549b227
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0129.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0130.png b/26397-page-images/p0130.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f37a72a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0130.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0131.png b/26397-page-images/p0131.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dd37303
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0131.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0132.png b/26397-page-images/p0132.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..746e3ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0132.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0133.png b/26397-page-images/p0133.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1292936
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0133.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0134.png b/26397-page-images/p0134.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a018c35
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0134.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0135.png b/26397-page-images/p0135.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9c93a1e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0135.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0136.png b/26397-page-images/p0136.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..91683b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0136.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0137.png b/26397-page-images/p0137.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d2ee976
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0137.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0138.png b/26397-page-images/p0138.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c2e7525
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0138.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0139.png b/26397-page-images/p0139.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ae248d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0139.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0140.png b/26397-page-images/p0140.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc7edc8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0140.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0141.png b/26397-page-images/p0141.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e8b5817
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0141.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0142.png b/26397-page-images/p0142.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ce0c613
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0142.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0143.png b/26397-page-images/p0143.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6e05318
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0143.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/p0144.png b/26397-page-images/p0144.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e5a1944
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/p0144.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/q0001.png b/26397-page-images/q0001.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2abbb83
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/q0001.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/q0002.png b/26397-page-images/q0002.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f16f43
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/q0002.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/ra-image1.png b/26397-page-images/ra-image1.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..649565a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/ra-image1.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/rb-image1.png b/26397-page-images/rb-image1.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..28ad6b7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/rb-image1.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/ri-image1.png b/26397-page-images/ri-image1.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1abdb6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/ri-image1.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/ro-image1.png b/26397-page-images/ro-image1.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c1c1946
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/ro-image1.png
diff --git a/26397-page-images/rt-image1.png b/26397-page-images/rt-image1.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e247b29
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397-page-images/rt-image1.png
diff --git a/26397.txt b/26397.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dd67ed5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,2475 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Miracles and Supernatural Religion, by
+James Morris Whiton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Miracles and Supernatural Religion
+
+Author: James Morris Whiton
+
+Release Date: August 23, 2008 [EBook #26397]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MIRACLES AND SUPERNATURAL RELIGION ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bryan Ness, Stephen Blundell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                  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 into
+particulars, its treatment is restricted to general outlines, with an
+aim simply to clarify current ideas of miracle and the supernatural, so
+as to find firm holding ground for tenable positions in the present
+"drift period" of theology. The chief exception made to this general
+treatment is the discussion given to a class of miracles regarded with
+as much incredulity as any, yet as capable as any of being accredited as
+probably historical events--the raisings of the "dead." The insistence
+of some writers on the virgin birth and corporeal resurrection of Jesus
+as essential to Christianity has required brief discussion of these
+also, mainly with reference to the reasonableness of that demand. As to
+the latter miracle, it must be observed that in the Biblical narratives
+taken as a whole, whichever of their discordant features one be disposed
+to emphasize, the psychical element clearly preponderates over the
+physical 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 are
+seen to have occurred during the nineteenth century than in any century
+preceding. In these changes no department of thought and activity has
+failed to share, and theological thought has been quite as much affected
+as scientific or ethical. Especially remarkable is the changed front of
+Christian theologians toward miracles, their distinctly lowered estimate
+of the significance of miracle, their antipodal reverse of the long
+established treatment of miracles. Referring to this a British
+evangelical writer[1] observes that "the intelligent believer of our
+own day, ... instead of accepting Christianity on the ground of the
+miracles, accepts it in spite of the miracles. Whether he admits these
+miracles, or rejects them, his attitude toward them is toward
+difficulties, not helps."
+
+By this diametrical change of Christian thought a great amount of
+scepticism has already been antiquated. A once famous anti-Christian
+book, _Supernatural Religion_, regarded as formidable thirty years ago,
+is now as much out of date for relevancy to present theological
+conditions as is the old smooth-bore cannon for naval warfare. That
+many, indeed, are still unaware of the change that has been experienced
+by the leaders of Christian thought, no one acquainted with current
+discussions will deny; the fact is indubitable. It is reviewed in the
+following pages with the constructive purpose of redeeming the idea of
+supernatural Religion from pernicious perversion, and of exhibiting it
+in its true spiritual significance. The once highly reputed calculations
+made to show how the earth's diurnal revolution could be imperceptibly
+stopped for Joshua's convenience, and the contention that the
+Mediterranean produced fish with gullets capable of giving passage to
+Jonah, are now as dead as the chemical controversy about phlogiston. Yet
+some sceptical controversialists are still so far from cultivating the
+acquaintance with recent thought which they recommend to Christian
+theologians, as to persist in affirmations of amazing ignorance, _e.g._
+"It is admitted that miracles alone can attest the reality of divine
+revelation."[2] Sponsors for this statement must now be sought among
+unlearned Christians, or among a few scholars who survive as
+cultivators of the old-fashioned argument from the "evidences." Even
+among these latter the tendency to minimize miracle is undeniably
+apparent in a reduction of the list classified as such, and still more
+in the brevity of the list insisted on for the attestation of
+Christianity.
+
+A transitional state of mind is clearly evidenced by the present
+division and perplexity of Christian thought concerning the Christian
+miracles. Many seem to regard further discussion as profitless, and are
+ready to shelve the subject. But this attitude of weariness is also
+transitional. There must be some thoroughfare to firm ground and clear
+vision. It must be found in agreement, first of all, on the real meaning
+of a term so variously and vaguely used as _miracle_. In the present
+imperfect state of knowledge it may be impossible to enucleate miracle,
+however defined, of all mystery. But even so will much be gained for
+clear thinking, if miracle can be reasonably related to the greater
+mystery which all accept, though none understand,--the mystery of
+_life_. This view of the dynamic relation of life to miracle[3] is here
+suggested for what it may prove to be worth.
+
+The great and general change that transfigured theology during the
+nineteenth century was characteristically ethical. This, indeed, is the
+distinctive feature of the so-called new theology, in contrast with that
+which the Protestant Reformers inherited from St. Augustine. God and
+Man, Faith, Salvation and Inspiration, Redemption and Atonement,
+Judgment and Retribution,--all these themes are now presented in
+orthodox pulpits far more conformably to ethical principles, though in
+degrees varying with educated intelligence, than was customary in the
+sermons of half a century ago. "One great source and spring of
+theological progress," says Professor Bowne, in his recent work on
+_Theism_, "has been the need of finding a conception of God which the
+moral nature could accept. The necessity of moralizing theology has
+produced vast changes in that field; and the end is not yet."
+
+The ethical character of the theological change will perhaps be most
+obvious in the field of Biblical study, to which the present subject
+belongs. The traditional solution of such moral difficulties in the Old
+Testament as commands, ostensibly divine, to massacre idolaters has
+been quite discarded. It is no longer the mode to say that deeds
+seemingly atrocious were not atrocious, because God commanded them.
+Writers of orthodox repute now say that the _Thus saith the Lord_, with
+which Samuel prefaced his order to exterminate the Amalekites, must be
+understood subjectively, as an expression of the prophet's belief, not
+objectively, as a divine command communicated to him. This great change
+is a quite recent change. If a personal reference may be indulged, it is
+not twenty years since the present writer's published protest against
+"The Anti-Christian Use of the Bible in the Sunday School,"[4] the
+exhibition to children of some vestiges of heathen superstition embedded
+in the Old Testament narratives as true illustrations of God's ways
+toward men, drew forth from a religious journal a bitter editorial on
+"The Old Testament and its New Enemies." But a great light has since
+dawned in that quarter. It is no longer deemed subversive of faith in a
+divine Revelation to hold that the prophet Gad was not infallible in
+regarding the plague which scourged Jerusalem as sent to punish David's
+pride in his census of the nation.
+
+A significant fact is presented in the comparison of these two aspects
+of the theological change that has come to pass,--the growing importance
+of the ethical, and the dwindling importance of the miraculous in the
+religious thought of to-day. This may reassure those who fear whereto
+such change may grow. The inner significance of such a change is most
+auspicious. It portends the displacement of a false by the true
+conception of supernatural Religion, and the removal thereby of a
+serious antagonism between Science and Christian Theology, as well as of
+a serious hindrance of many thoughtful minds from an intelligent embrace
+of Christianity.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Professor W. T. Adeney in the _Hibbert Journal_, January, 1903, p.
+302.
+
+[2] See the recent new edition of _Supernatural Religion_, "carefully
+revised."
+
+[3] For an earlier statement of this by the present writer, see a
+discourse 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 Christian
+scholar, Dean Stanley, spoke thus of the miracles recorded of the
+prophet Elisha: "His works stand alone in the Bible in their likeness to
+the acts of mediaeval saints. There alone in the Sacred History the gulf
+between Biblical and Ecclesiastical miracles almost disappears."[5] It
+required some courage to say as much as this then, while the storm of
+persecution was raging against Bishop Colenso for his critical work on
+the Pentateuch. The evangelical clergymen in England and the United
+States then prepared to confess as much as this, with all that it
+obviously implies, could have been seated in a small room. But time has
+moved on, and the Church, at least the scholars of the Church, have
+moved with it. No scholar of more than narrowly local repute now
+hesitates to acknowledge the presence of a legendary element both in the
+Old Testament and in the New. While the extent of it is still
+undetermined, many specimens of it are recognized. It is agreed that the
+early narratives in Genesis are of this character, and that it is marked
+in such stories as those of Samson, Elijah, and Elisha. Even the
+conservative revisers of the Authorized Version have eliminated from the
+Fourth Gospel the story of the angel at the pool of Bethesda, and in
+their marginal notes on the Third Gospel have admitted a doubt
+concerning the historicity of the angel and the bloody sweat in
+Gethsemane.
+
+Furthermore, some events, recognized as historical, have been divested
+of the miraculous character once attributed to them,--the crossing of
+the Red Sea, for instance, by the Hebrew host. A landslip in the
+thirteenth century A.D. has been noted as giving historical character to
+the story of the Hebrew host under Joshua's command crossing the Jordan
+"on dry ground," but in a perfectly natural way. Other classes of
+phenomena once regarded as miraculous have been transferred to the
+domain of natural processes by the investigations and discoveries that
+have been made in the field of psychical research. The forewarning which
+God is said to have given the prophet Ahijah of the visit that the
+queen was about to pay him in disguise[6] is now recognized as one of
+many cases of the mysterious natural function that we label as
+"telepathy." The transformations of unruly, vicious, and mentally
+disordered characters by hypnotic influence that have been effected at
+the Salpetriere in Paris, and elsewhere, by physicians expert in
+psychical therapeutics are closely analogous to the cures wrought by
+Jesus on some victims of "demoniac possession."[7] The cases of
+apparition,[8] also, which have been investigated and verified by the
+Society for Psychical Research have laid a solid basis of fact for the
+Biblical stories of angels, as at least, a class of phenomena to be
+regarded as by no means altogether legendary, but having their place
+among natural though mysterious occurrences.
+
+But this progressive paring down of the miraculous element in the Bible
+has caused outcries of unfeigned alarm. Christian scholars who have
+taken part in it are reproached as deserters to the camp of unbelief.
+They are accused of banishing God from his world, and of reducing the
+course of events to an order of agencies quite undivine. "Miracle,"
+writes one of these brethren,[9] "is the personal intervention of God
+into the chain of cause and effect." But what does this mean, except
+that, when no miracles occur, God is not personally, _i.e._ actively, in
+the chain of natural causes and effects? As Professor Drummond says, "If
+God appears periodically, he disappears periodically." It is precisely
+this view of the subject that really banishes God from his world. Those
+who thus define miracle regard miracles as having ceased at the end of
+the Apostolic age in the first century. Except, therefore, for the
+narrow 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 for
+traditional orthodoxy unwittingly but really come.
+
+The first pages of the Bible correct this error. "While the earth
+remaineth," so God is represented as assuring Noah, "seedtime and
+harvest, 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 be
+evinced by his regular sustentation of its natural order, rather than by
+irregular occurrences, such as the deluge, in seeming contravention of
+it. To seek the evidence of divine activity in human affairs and to
+ground one's faith in a controlling Providence in sporadic and cometary
+phenomena, rather than in the constant and cumulative signs of it to be
+seen in the majestic order of the starry skies, in the reign of
+intelligence throughout the cosmos, in the moral evolution of ancient
+savagery into modern philanthropy, in the historic manifestation
+throughout the centuries of a Power not our own that works for the
+increase of righteousness, is a mode of thought which in our time is
+being steadily and surely outgrown. It is one of those "idols of the
+tribe" whose power alike over civilized and uncivilized men is broken
+less by argument than by the ascent of man to wider horizons of
+knowledge.
+
+It is for the gain of religion that it should be broken,--of the
+spiritual religion whose God is not a tradition, a reminiscence, but a
+living presence, inhabiting alike the clod and the star, the flower in
+the crannied wall and the life of man. So thinking of God the religious
+man may rightly say,[10] "If it is more difficult to believe in
+miracles, it is less important. If the extraordinary manifestations of
+God recounted in ancient history appear less credible, the ordinary
+manifestations of God in current life appear more real. He is seen in
+American history not less than in Hebrew history; in the life of to-day
+not 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 reality
+as a "possession" that is "demoniac" indeed. It cannot be reasonably
+pronounced superstitious to judge that there is some probability for
+that view. At any rate, it is certain that the problem is not to be
+settled by dogmatic pronouncement. It is certain, also, that the burden
+of proof rests on those who contend that there can be no such thing. On
+the other hand, it may be conceded that the cases recorded in the New
+Testament do not seem to be of an essentially devilish kind. On the
+general subject of "possession" see F. W. H. Myers's work on _Human
+Personality 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 of
+being admitted by the scientist as a fact, now that he has the name of
+hysterodemonopathy by which to apperceive it." _Varieties of Religious
+Experience_, 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 last
+century, 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 occasional
+signs and wonders, reported from ancient times, as far less evidential
+for the reasonableness of religious faith than the steady sustentation
+of the Providential order and the moral progress of the world. Fully
+convinced of this, we should now estimate, before proceeding further,
+the present net results of the discussion, so far as it has gone, of
+what is called the miraculous element in the Bible.
+
+First, its former evidential value in proof of divine Revelation is gone
+for 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 its
+original promulgation, as was the fashion not very long since. This for
+two reasons; chiefly this: that _the decisive criterion of any truth,
+ethical or physical, must be truth of the same kind_. Ethical truth must
+be ethically attested. The moral and religious character of the
+Revelation presents its credentials of worth in its history of the
+moral and religious renovations it has wrought both in individuals and
+in society. This is its proper and incontrovertible attestation, in need
+of no corroboration from whatever wonderful physical occurrences may
+have accompanied its first utterance. Words of God are attested as such
+by the work of God which they effect. It may well be believed that those
+wonderful occurrences--the Biblical name for which is "signs," or
+"powers," terms not carrying, like "miracles," the idea of something
+contra-natural[11]--had an evidential value for those to whom the
+Revelation originally came. In fact, they were appealed to by the
+bearers of the Revelation as evidencing its divine origin by the mighty
+works of divine mercy which they wrought for sufferers from the evils of
+the world. But whatever their evidential value to the eye-witnesses at
+that remote day, it was of the inevitably volatile kind that exhales
+away like a perfume with lapse of time. Historic doubts attack remote
+events, especially when of the extraordinary character which tempts the
+narrator to that magnifying of the marvellous which experience has found
+to be a constantly recurring human trait. It is simply impossible that
+the original evidential value of the "signs" accompanying the Revelation
+should continue permanently unimpaired. To employ them now as
+"evidences of Christianity," when the Revelation has won on ethical
+grounds recognition of its divine character and can summon history to
+bear witness of its divine effects in the moral uplift of the world, is
+to imperil the Christian argument by the preposterous logical blunder of
+attempting to prove the more certain by the less certain.
+
+A second net result consequent on the preceding may be described as the
+transference of miracles from the ordnance department to the
+quartermaster's department of the Church. Until recently they were
+actively used as part of its armament, none of which could be dispensed
+with. Now they are carried as part of its baggage, _impedimenta_, from
+which everything superfluous must be removed. It is clearly seen that to
+retain all is to imperil the whole. That there are miracles and
+miracles is patent to minds that have learned to scan history more
+critically than when a scholar like John Milton began his _History of
+England_ with the legend of the voyage of "Brute the Trojan." One may
+reasonably believe that Jesus healed a case of violent insanity at
+Gadara, and reasonably disbelieve that the fire of heaven was twice
+obedient to Elijah's call to consume the military companies sent to
+arrest him. Cultivated discernment does not now put all Biblical
+miracles on a common level of credibility, any more than the historical
+work of Herodotus and that of the late Dr. Gardiner. To defend them all
+is not to vindicate, but to discredit all alike. The elimination of the
+indefensible, the setting aside of the legendary, the transference of
+the supposedly miraculous to the order of natural powers and processes
+so far as vindicable ground for such critical treatment is discovered,
+is the only way to answer the first of all questions concerning the
+Bible: How much of this is credible history? Thus it is not only
+thoroughly reasonable, but is in the interest of a reasonable belief
+that divine agency is revealed rather by the upholding of the
+established order of Nature than by any alleged interference therewith.
+With what God has established God never interferes. To allege his
+interference with his established order is virtually to deny his
+constant immanence therein, a failure to recognize the fundamental fact
+that "Nature is Spirit," as Principal Fairbairn has said, and all its
+processes and powers the various modes of the energizing of the divine
+Will.
+
+A third net result now highly probable is a still further reduction of
+the list of reputed miracles. The critical process of discriminating
+the historical from the legendary, and the natural from the non-natural,
+is still so comparatively recent that it can hardly be supposed to have
+reached its limit. Nor can it be stayed by any impeachment of it as
+hostile to Christianity, whose grand argument appeals to its present
+ethical effects, not to ancient thaumaturgical accompaniments. There is,
+however, a considerable class of cases in which the advancing critical
+process is likely even to gain credibility for the Biblical narrative in
+a point where it is now widely doubted--the resuscitations of the
+apparently dead. Among all the Biblical miracles none have more probably
+a secure historical basis.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[11] The Anglicized Latin word, "miracle," indiscriminately used in the
+Authorized Version, denotes the superficial character of the act or
+event it is applied to, as producing wonder or amazement in the
+beholders. The terms commonly employed in the New Testament
+(_s{=e}meion_, a sign; _dunamis_, power; less frequently _teras_, a
+portent) are of deeper significance, and connote the inner nature of the
+occurrence, either as requiring to be pondered for its meaning, or as
+the 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 are
+recorded,--three in the Old Testament and four in the New. Some critics
+arbitrarily reject all but one of these as legendary. Thus Oscar
+Holzmann, in his recent _Leben Jesu_, treats the raising of the widow's
+son, and of Lazarus. But he accepts the case of the ruler's daughter on
+the ground that Jesus is reported as saying that it was not a case of
+real but only of apparent death,--"the child is not dead, but sleepeth."
+But for the preservation of this saving declaration in the record, this
+case also would have been classed with the others as unhistorical. And
+yet the admission of one clear case of simulated death, so like real
+death as to deceive all the onlookers but Jesus, might reasonably check
+the critic with the suggestion that it may not have been a solitary
+case.[12] The headlong assumption involved in the discrimination made
+between these two classes, viz. that in a case of apparent but unreal
+death the primitive tradition can be depended on to put the fact upon
+record, is in the highest degree arbitrary and unwarrantable.
+
+The scepticism which lightly contradicts the Biblical narratives of the
+raising of the "dead" to life is seemingly ignorant of facts that go far
+to place these upon firm ground as historical occurrences. Catalepsy,
+or the simulation of death by a trance, in which the body is sometimes
+cold and rigid, sensation gone, the heart still, is well known to
+medical men.[13] In early times such a condition would inevitably have
+been regarded and treated as actual death, without the least suspicion
+that it was not so. Even now, the dreadful mistake of so regarding it
+sometimes occurs. So cautious a journal as the London _Spectator_ a few
+years ago expressed the belief that "a distinct percentage" of premature
+burials "occurs every year" in England.
+
+The proper line of critical approach to the study of the Biblical
+narratives of the raising of the "dead" is through the well-known facts
+of the deathlike trance and premature burial.
+
+Where burial occurred, as in the East, immediately after the apparent
+death,[14] resuscitation must have been rare. Yet cases of it were not
+unknown. Pliny has a chapter "on those who have revived on being carried
+forth for burial." Lord Bacon states that of this there have been "very
+many cases." A French writer of the eighteenth century, Bruhier, in his
+"_Dissertations sur l'Incertitude de la Mort et l'Abus des
+Enterrements_," records seventy-two cases of mistaken pronouncement of
+death, fifty-three of revival in the coffin before burial, and
+fifty-four of burial alive. A locally famous and thoroughly attested
+case in this country is that of the Rev. William Tennent, pastor in
+Freehold, New Jersey, in the eighteenth century, who lay apparently dead
+for three days, reviving from trance just as his delayed funeral was
+about to proceed. One who keeps a scrap-book could easily collect quite
+an assortment of such cases, and of such others as have a tragic ending,
+both from domestic and foreign journals. A work published some years ago
+by Dr. F. Hartmann[15] exhibits one hundred and eight cases as typical
+among over seven hundred that have been authenticated.[16]
+
+Facts like these have been strangely overlooked in the hasty judgment
+prompted by prejudice against whatever has obtained credence as
+miraculous. Some significant considerations must be seriously
+entertained.
+
+It cannot be that no such facts occurred in the long periods covered by
+the Biblical writers. Occurring, it is extremely improbable that they
+should have altogether escaped embodiment in popular tradition and its
+record. Furthermore, while on one hand the custom of speedy burial
+rendered them much rarer than they are now under other conditions, and
+so much the more extraordinary, the universal ignorance of the causes
+involved would have accepted resuscitation as veritable restoration from
+actual death. As such it would have passed into tradition. In cases
+where it had come to pass in connection with the efforts of a recognized
+prophet, or through any contact with him, it would certainly have been
+regarded as a genuine miracle.
+
+Among the raisings of the "dead" recorded in the Scriptures probably
+none has been so widely doubted by critical readers as the story in the
+thirteenth chapter of the second book of Kings, in which a corpse is
+restored to life by contact with the bones of Elisha. Dean Stanley's
+remark upon the suspicious similarity between the miracles related of
+Elisha and those found in Roman Catholic legends of great saints here
+seems 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 a
+critic to stamp it as fabricated to enhance the glory of the great
+prophet who had been a pillar of the throne. Yet nothing is more likely
+than that tradition has here preserved a bit of history, extraordinary,
+but real. There is not the least improbability in regarding the case as
+one of the many revivals from the deathlike trance that have been noted
+by writers ancient and modern. It is entirely reasonable to suppose that
+the trance in which the seemingly dead man lay was broken either by the
+shock of his fall into the prophet's tomb, or coincidently therewith;
+and stranger coincidences have happened. Such a happening would be
+precisely the sort of thing to live in popular tradition, and to be
+incorporated into the annals of the time.
+
+Here it may be rejoined that this is only a hypothesis. Only that, to be
+sure. But so is the allegation that the story is a mere fantastic
+fabrication only a hypothesis. Demonstration of the actual fact past all
+controversy being out of the question, all that can be offered for the
+attempt to rate the narrative at its proper value, either as history or
+as fiction, is hypothesis. The choice lies for us between two
+hypotheses. Surely, that hypothesis is the more credible which is based
+on a solid body of objective facts, and meets all the conditions of the
+case.
+
+Will it be replied to this that the critics can show for their
+hypothesis the admitted fact of the human proclivity to invent legends
+of miracle? The decisive answer is that the burden of proof rests on him
+who contests any statement ostensibly historical. If such a statement be
+found to square with admitted objective facts, it must be accepted
+notwithstanding considerations drawn from the subjective tendency to
+invent 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 the
+natural order of things. The statistics of premature burial and of the
+resuscitation of the apparently dead before burial are sufficiently
+strong to throw grave doubt on any contention that the resuscitations
+narrated of Elijah[17] and Elisha[18] do not belong in that historical
+series. It has been frequently observed, however, that there is much
+reluctance to apply to the New Testament the methods and canons of
+criticism that are applied to the Old. It will be so in the present
+case, through apprehension of somehow detracting from the distinctive
+glory of Christ. That fear will not disturb one who sees that glory not
+in his "mighty works," the like of which were wrought by the prophets,
+but in the spiritual majesty of his personality, the divineness of his
+message to the world, and of the life and death that illustrated it.
+
+One case, at least, among Jesus' raisings of the "dead," that of the
+young daughter of the ruler of the synagogue,[19] is admitted even by
+sceptical critics to have been a resuscitation from the trance that
+merely simulates death. But the fact that there is a record of his
+saying in this case, "the child is not dead, but sleepeth," and no
+record of his saying the same at the bier of the widow's son,[20] is
+slight ground, yet all the ground there is, against the great
+probabilities to the contrary, for regarding the latter case as so
+transcendently different from the former as the actual reembodiment of a
+departed spirit recalled from another world. Were these the only two
+cases of restoration to life in the ministry of Jesus, it is most
+probable that they would be regarded as of the same kind.
+
+The raising of Lazarus[21] presents peculiar features, in view of which
+it is generally regarded as of another kind, and the greatest of
+miracles, so stupendous that the Rev. W. J. Dawson, in his recent _Life
+of Christ_, written from an evangelical standpoint, says of it: "Even
+the most devout mind may be forgiven occasional pangs of incredulity."
+But the considerations already presented are certainly sufficient to
+justify a reexamination of the case. And it is to be borne in mind that
+the question at issue is, not what the eye-witnesses at that time
+believed, not what the Church from that time to this has believed, not
+what we are willing to believe, or would like to believe, but what all
+the facts with any bearing on the case, taken together, fully justify us
+in believing as to the real nature of it.
+
+What Jesus is recorded as saying of it is, of course, of prime
+importance. "Our friend Lazarus is fallen asleep, but I go that I may
+awake him out of sleep." Were this all, the case might easily have been
+classed as one of trance. The disciples, however, understood Jesus to
+speak 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, "fallen
+asleep," so also is it qualified by that; the two are mutually
+explanatory, not contradictory. These alternatives are before us: Is the
+maximum or the minimum meaning to be assigned to the crucial word
+"dead"? For the minimum, one can say that a deathly trance, already made
+virtual death by immediate interment, would amply justify Jesus in using
+the word "dead" in order to impress the disciples with the gravity of
+the case, as not a natural but a deathly, and, in the existing
+situation, a fatal sleep. For the maximum, no more can be advanced than
+the hazardous assertion that Jesus _must_ have used the word with
+technical precision in its customary sense; an assertion of course
+protected from disproof by our ignorance of the actual fact.[22] But
+whatever support this view of the case derives from such ignorance is
+overbalanced by the support supplied to the other view by the long
+history of revivals from the deathly trance, and by the probabilities
+which 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 for
+reflection; but meanwhile some further considerations may be
+entertained.
+
+1. Aside from the unwillingness to abandon a long-cherished belief on
+any subject whatever, which is both a natural, and, when not pushed to
+an unreasonable length, a desirable brake on all inconsiderate change,
+no practical interest is threatened by the adoption of the view here
+suggested. Religious interest, so far as it is also intelligent, is
+certainly not threatened. The evidences of Jesus' divine character and
+mission resting, as for modern men it rests, not on remote wonders, but
+on now acknowledged facts of an ethical and spiritual kind, is
+altogether independent of our conclusion whether it was from actual or
+only apparent death that Lazarus was raised. Since all the mighty works
+wrought by Jesus, and this among them, were identical in type with those
+wrought by the ancient prophets, with whom his countrymen classed him in
+his lifetime, their evidential significance could be, even for the
+eye-witnesses at that tomb, no greater for him than for an
+Elisha,--signs of a divine mission attesting itself by works of mercy.
+
+2. As works of mercy these raisings from the "dead," including that of
+Lazarus, rank far higher in the view of them here proposed than in the
+traditional view. This regards them as the recall of departed spirits
+from what is hoped to be "a better world." Yet this, while it turns
+sorrow for a time into joy, involves not only the recurrence of that
+sorrow in all its keenness, but also a second tasting of the pains
+preliminary to the death-gate, when the time comes to pass that gate
+again. But in the other view, a raising from the death that is only
+simulated is a merciful deliverance from a calamity greater than simple
+death, if that be any calamity at all,--the fate of burial alive. In the
+former view, therefore, the quality of mercy, distinctive of the mighty
+works of Jesus, is imperfectly demonstrable. In the present view, as the
+rescue of the living from death in one of its most horrible forms, it is
+abundantly conspicuous.
+
+3. The onlookers by the tomb of Lazarus doubtless regarded his awakening
+as revival from actual death. Their opinion, however, does not bind our
+judgment any more than it is bound by the opinion of other onlookers,
+that Jesus' healing of the insane and epileptic was through the
+expulsion of demons that possessed them. In each instance it was
+understood as a sign of control over beings belonging to another world.
+But such an attestation of Jesus' divine mission, having been superseded
+for us by proofs of higher character, is now no more needful for us in
+the case of the "dead" than in the case of the "demons."
+
+4. The power of breaking the deathly trance, of quickening the dormant
+life, reenergizing the collapsed nervous organism, and ending its
+paralysis of sensation and motion, may be reasonably regarded as power
+of the same psychical kind that Jesus regularly exerted in healing the
+sufferers from nervous disorders who were reputed victims of demoniac
+possession.[23] In this view these resuscitations from apparent death
+appear in natural coherence with the many other works of mercy that
+Jesus wrought as the Great Physician of his people, and may be regarded
+as the crown and consummation of all his restorative ministries. Jesus'
+thanksgiving after the tomb had been opened--"Father, I thank thee that
+thou hast heard me"--shows that he had girded himself for a supreme
+effort by concentrating the utmost energy of his spirit in prayer.
+Physically parallel with this was the intensity of voice put into his
+call to the occupant of the tomb. This is better represented in the
+original than in our translation: "He shouted with a great voice,
+'Lazarus, come forth.'" The whole record indicates the utmost tension of
+all his energies, and closely comports with the view that this stood to
+the sequel in the relation of cause to effect.[24] Another circumstance
+not without bearing on the case is the energizing power of the intense
+sympathy with the bereaved family that stirred the soul of Jesus to weep
+and groan with them. And it is not without significance that this strong
+factor appears active in the larger number of the Biblical cases,--three
+of them only children, two of these the children of the pitiable class
+of widows.
+
+Peculiar, then, as was the case of Lazarus, our examination of it
+reveals no substantial ground for insisting that it was essentially
+unlike the previous case of the ruler's daughter, that it was the
+bringing back into a decaying body of a spirit that had entered into the
+world of departed souls. The actual fact, of course, is indemonstrable.
+Our conclusion has to be formed wholly upon the probabilities of the
+case, and must be formed in a reasonable choice between the greater
+probability and the less.
+
+The restoration of Dorcas to life by Peter, recorded in the book of
+Acts,[25] needs no special discussion beyond the various considerations
+already adduced in this chapter. The case of Eutychus, recorded in the
+same book,[26] requires mention only lest it should seem to have been
+forgotten, as it is not in point at all. The record makes it highly
+probable that the supposed death was nothing more than the loss of
+consciousness 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 the
+resurrection of Jesus himself, it must be pointed out that this is a
+fact of a totally different kind from any of the foregoing cases. To
+speak, as many do, of the "resurrection of Lazarus" is a misuse of
+words. Resuscitation to life in this world, and resurrection, the rising
+up of the released spirit into the life of the world to come, are as
+distinct as are the worlds to which they severally belong. We here
+consider only the _raisings_ which restored to the virtually dead their
+interrupted mortal life. The _rising_ from the mortal into the immortal
+state belongs to an entirely different field of study.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Apart, then, from traditional prepossessions, examination of the
+Biblical narratives discloses nothing to invalidate the hypothesis which
+one who is acquainted with the copious record of apparent but unreal
+death must seriously and impartially consider. The reputedly miraculous
+raisings of the "dead" related in both the Old and the New Testament
+may, with entire reason, and without detriment to religion, be classed
+with such as are related outside of the Scriptures, in ancient times as
+well as modern, and as phenomena wholly within the natural order,
+however extraordinary. The practical result of such a conclusion is
+likely to be a gain for the historicity of the Scripture narratives in
+the estimate of a large class of thoughtful minds.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[12] An objection to the historicity of the raising of Lazarus which is
+made on the ground that so great a work, if historical, would have been
+related by more than one of the Evangelists, yields on reflection the
+possibility that Jesus may have effected more than the three raisings
+recorded of him. John is the sole narrator of the raising of Lazarus.
+But he omits notice of the two raisings recorded by the other
+Evangelists, while Matthew and Mark do not record the raising of the
+widow's son recorded by Luke. All this suggests that the record may have
+preserved for us specimens rather than a complete list of this class of
+miracles. (Compare John xxi. 25.)
+
+[13] "We have frequent cases of trance, ... where the parties seem to
+die, but after a time the spirit returns, and life goes on as before. In
+all this there is no miracle. Why may not the resuscitations in Christ's
+time possibly have been similar cases? Is not this less improbable than
+that the natural order of the universe should have been set
+aside?"--_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. Vigne
+(1841). Yet on the other hand it is alleged, that "none of the numerous
+stories of this dreadful accident which have obtained credence from time
+to time seem to be authentic" (_American Cyclopedia_, art. "Burial").
+Allowing a wide margin for exaggeration and credulity, there is
+certainly a residuum of fact. A correspondent of the (London)
+_Spectator_ a few years since testified to a distressing case in his own
+family.
+
+[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 impossible
+to reach a positive conclusion. In some directions his knowledge was
+certainly limited. That he was not aware of the reality might be
+inferred from his seeming to have allowed his act to pass for what, in
+the view of it here suggested, it was not,--the recall to life of one
+actually dead. This, however, assumes the completeness of a record whose
+silence on this point cannot be pressed as conclusive. It is, indeed,
+unlikely that Jesus knew all that medical men now know. But awareness of
+any fact may be in varying degrees from serious suspicion up to positive
+certitude. While far from positiveness, awareness may exist in a degree
+that gives courage for resolute effort resulting in clear and full
+verification. Jesus may have been ignorant of the objective reality of
+Lazarus's condition, and yet have been very hopeful of being empowered
+by the divine aid he prayed for (John xi. 41) to cope with it
+successfully.
+
+[23] See pages 28, 29, Note.
+
+[24] Jesus' works of healing are explicitly attributed by the
+Evangelists to a peculiar power that issued from him. In Mark v. 30,
+Luke vi. 19, and viii. 46, the original word _dunamis_, which the
+Authorized Version translates "virtue," is more correctly rendered
+"power" in the Revised Version. Especially noticeable is the peculiar
+phraseology of Mark v. 30: "Jesus perceiving in himself that the power
+proceeding from him had gone forth (R. V.)." The peculiar circumstances
+of the case suggest that the going forth of this power might be motived
+sub-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 of
+the proper meaning to attach to the generally ill-defined and hazy term
+_miracle_.[27] Matthew Arnold's fantastic illustration of the idea of
+miracle by supposing a pen changed to a pen-wiper may fit some miracles,
+especially those of the Catholic hagiology, but, if applied to those of
+Jesus, would be a caricature. In the New Testament a reputed miracle is
+not any sort of wonderful work upon any sort of occasion, but an act of
+benevolent will exerted for an immediate benefit,[28] and transcending
+the then existing range of human intelligence to explain and power to
+achieve. The historic reality of at least some such acts performed by
+Jesus is acknowledged by critics as free from the faintest trace of
+orthodox 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 reputed
+miracles of Jesus, particularly his works of healing, do not now, as
+then, transcend the existing range of knowledge and power, and
+accordingly are no longer reputed miraculous. And one cannot reasonably
+believe that a limit to the understanding and control of forces in
+Nature and mind that now are more or less occult has been already
+reached. It is, therefore, not incredible that some of the mighty works
+of Jesus, which still transcend the existing limits of knowledge and
+power, and so are still reputed miraculous, and are suspected by many as
+unhistorical, may in some yet remote and riper stage of humanity be
+transferred, as some have already been, to the class of the
+non-miraculous and natural.
+
+Dr. Robbins, Dean of the General Theological Seminary, New York, after
+remarking that "the word _miracle_ has done more to introduce confusion
+into Christian Evidences than any other," goes on to say: "To animals
+certain events to them inexplicable are signs of the presence of human
+intelligence and power. To men these miracles of Christ are signs of
+divine intelligence and power. But how is miracle to be differentiated
+from other providential dealings of God? Not by removing him further
+from common events. Abstruse speculations concerning the relation of
+miracles to other physical phenomena may be safely left to the
+adjustment of an age which shall have advanced to a more perfect
+synthesis of knowledge than the present can boast."[29]
+
+The truth to which such considerations conduct is, that no hard and fast
+line can be drawn between the miraculous and the non-miraculous. To the
+untutored mind, like that of the savage who thought it miraculous that a
+chip with a message written on it had talked to the recipient, the
+simplest thing that he cannot explain is miraculous: "_omne ignotum pro
+mirifico_," said Tacitus. As the range of knowledge and power widens,
+the range of the miraculous narrows correspondingly. Some twenty years
+since, the International Sunday-school Lessons employed as a proof of
+the divinity of Christ the reputedly miraculous knowledge which he
+evinced in his first interview with Nathanael of a solitary hour in
+Nathanael's experience.[30] Since then it has been demonstrated[31] by
+psychical research that the natural order of the world includes
+telepathy, and the range of the miraculous has been correspondingly
+reduced 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 one
+and the same thing. Miracle must therefore be defined as being what our
+whole course of thought has suggested that it is: in general, an elastic
+word; in particular, a provisional word,--a word whose application
+narrows with the enlarging range of human knowledge[32] and power which
+for the time it transcends; a word whose history, in its record of
+ranges already transcended, prompts expectation that ranges still beyond
+may be transcended in the illimitable progress of mankind. Professor Le
+Conte says that miracle is "an occurrence or a phenomenon according to a
+law 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 flying
+goal; that human attainment can never reach finality unless men cease to
+be. And so all widening of human knowledge and power must ever disclose
+further limitations to be transcended. There will always be a _Beyond_,
+in which dwells the secret of laws still undiscovered, that underlie
+mysteries unrevealed and marvels unexplained. This will have to be
+admitted, especially, by those to whom the marvellous is synonymous
+with the incredible. We have not been able to eviscerate even these
+prosaic and matter-of-fact modern times of marvels whose secret lies in
+the yet uncatalogued or indefinable powers of the mysterious agent that
+we name _life_: witness many well verified facts recorded by the Society
+for Psychical Research.[33] How, then, is it consistent to affirm that
+no such marvels in ancient records are historical realities? Nay, may it
+not be true that the ancient days of seers and prophets, the days of
+Jesus, days of the sublime strivings of great and lonely souls for
+closer converse with the Infinite Spirit behind his mask of Nature,
+offered better conditions for marvellous experiences and deeds than
+these days of scientific laboratories and factories, and world-markets
+and world-politics?
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[27] "Early and mediaeval theologians agree in conceiving the miraculous
+as being above, not contrary to, nature. The question entered on a new
+phase when Hume defined a miracle as a violation of nature, and asserted
+the impossibility of substantiating its actual occurrence. The modern
+discussion has proceeded largely in view of Hume's destructive
+criticism. Assuming the possibility of a miracle, the questions of fact
+and of definition remain."--_Dictionary of Psychology._
+
+"When we find the definition for which we are searching, the miraculous
+will no longer be a problem."--PROFESSOR W. SANDAY, at the Anglican
+Church 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, of
+Harvard, the late Professor Henry Sidgwick, of Cambridge, England, and
+others of like eminence.
+
+[32] A hint of this was given by Augustine: "Portentum non fit contra
+naturam, sed contra quam est nota natura."--_De Civitate Dei._
+
+[33] Consult the late F. W. H. Myers's remarkable volumes on _Human
+Personality 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, the
+extraordinary effluence of extraordinary lives. Here at length we gain a
+clearer conception of miracle. _Life_ is the world's great
+magician,--life, so familiar, yet so mysterious; so commonplace, yet so
+transcendent. No miracle is more marvellous than its doings witnessed in
+the biological laboratory, or more inexplicable than its transformation
+of dead matter into living flesh, its development of a Shakespeare from
+a microscopic bit of protoplasm. But its mysterious processes are too
+common for general marvel; we marvel only at the uncommon. The boy Zerah
+Colburn in half a minute solved the problem, "How many seconds since the
+beginning of the Christian era?" We prefer to call this a prodigy rather
+than a miracle,--a distinction more verbal than real; and we fancy we
+have explained it when we say that such arithmetical power was a
+peculiar endowment of his mental life. Now all of the inexplicable,
+inimitable reality that at any time has to be left by the baffled
+intellect as an unsolved wonder under the name of miracle is just
+that,--_the natural product of an extraordinary endowment of life_. More
+of its marvellous capability is latent in common men, in the
+subconscious depths of being, than has ever yet flashed forth in the
+career of uncommon men. Some scientists say that it depends on chemical
+and physical forces. It indeed uses these to build the various bodies it
+inhabits, but again it leaves these to destroy those bodies when it
+quits them. The most constant and ubiquitous phenomenon in the world,
+the ultimate reality in the universe, is _life_, revealing its presence
+in innumerable modes of activity, from the dance of atoms in the rock to
+the philosophizing of the sage and the aspirations of the saint,--the
+creator of Nature, the administrator of the regular processes we call
+the laws of Nature, the author of the wonders men call miraculous
+because they are uncommon and ill understood.
+
+The works of which any man is naturally capable are conditioned by the
+psychical quality of his life, and its power to use the forces of
+Nature. Through differences of vital endowment some can use color, as
+wonderful painters, and others employ sound, as wonderful musicians, in
+ways impossible to those otherwise endowed. So "a poet is born, not
+made." So persons of feeble frame, stimulated by disease or frenzied by
+passion, have put forth preternatural and prodigious muscular strength.
+By what we call "clairvoyant" power life calls up in intelligent
+perception things going on far beyond ocular vision. By what we call
+"telepathic" power life communicates intelligence with life separated by
+miles of space. Such are some of the powers that have been discovered,
+and fully attested, but not explained, as belonging to the world's
+master 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 we
+shall 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 already
+reached their ultimate development.
+
+We look with wonder and awe into the secret shrine of life, where two
+scarcely visible cells unite to form the human being whose thought shall
+arrange the starry heavens in majestic order, and harness the titanic
+energies of Nature for the world's work. There we behold the real
+supernatural. Nothing is more natural than life, and nothing also more
+supernatural. Biology studies all the various forms that the world shows
+of it, and affirms that life, though multiform, is one. This embryology
+attests, showing that the whole ascent of life through diverse forms
+from the lowest to the highest, during the millions of years since life
+first manifested its presence on this globe, is recapitulated in the
+stages of growth through which the human being passes in the few months
+before its birth. And philosophy, which does not seek the living among
+the dead, affirms, _omne vivum ex vivo_. The varied but unitary life of
+the world is the stream of an exhaustless spring. It is filial to the
+life of God, the Father Almighty. What the ancient creed affirmed of the
+Christ as the Son of God--whom his beloved disciple recognized as "the
+eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested unto
+us[34]"--may be truly affirmed of the mysterious reality that is known
+as life: "Begotten not made; being of one substance with the Father;
+through whom [or which] all things were made." Looking from the derived
+and 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, nor
+can see," up to the life underived, aboriginal, infinite, we recognize
+_God_ and _Life_ as terms of identical significance. How superficial the
+notion of miracles as "the personal intervention of God into the chain
+of cause and effect," in which he is the constant vital element. If an
+event deemed miraculous is ever ascribed, as of old, to "the finger of
+God," the reality behind the phenomenon is simply a higher or a stronger
+power of life than is recognized in an event of a common type--life that
+is 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 important
+question confronts us,--a question not wholly new. Within the memory of
+living men theologians have been compelled to ask themselves: What if
+the geologists should establish facts that contradict our Biblically
+derived doctrine that the universe was made in a week? Again have they
+been constrained to put to themselves the question: What if the
+evolutionists should supersede our doctrine that the creation is the
+immediate product of successive fiats of the Creator by showing that it
+came gradually into existence through the progressive operation of
+forces immanent in the cosmos? Still again have they had to face the
+question: What if modern criticism by the discovery of demonstrable
+errors in the Sacred Writings should fault our doctrine that, as the
+Word of God, the Bible is free from all and every error? In every
+instance the dreaded concession, when found at length to be enforced by
+modern learning, has been found to bring, not the loss that had been
+apprehended, but clear gain to the intellectual interests of religion.
+Now it is this same sort of question which returns with the
+uncertainties and difficulties widely felt in the Church to be gathering
+over its hitherto unvexed belief in miracles as signs of a divine
+activity more immediate than it has recognized in the regular processes
+of Nature.
+
+The majority of uneducated Christians still hold, as formerly in each of
+the points just mentioned, to the traditional view. Miracle as a divine
+intervention in the natural order, a more close and direct divine
+contact with the course of things than is the case in ordinary
+experience, they regard as the inseparable and necessary concomitant and
+proof of a divine Revelation. To deny miracles, thus understood, is
+censured as equivalent to denial of the reality of the Revelation. But
+it is rather surprising, because it is rare, to find a man of such note
+in literature as Dr. W. Robertson Nicoll affirming[35] that one cannot
+be a Christian without believing at least two miracles, the virgin
+birth and the physical resurrection of the Christ. Without comment on
+the significance of this retreat upon the minimum of miracle, it must
+here be noted that a minority of the Church, not inferior to their
+brethren in learning and piety, believe that there are no tides in God's
+presence 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 in
+Nature 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 this
+fundamental truth of religion they affirm that miracles in the
+traditional sense of the word, and in their traditional limitation to
+the small measure of time and space covered by Biblical narratives,
+never occurred. Events reputed miraculous have indeed occurred, but
+simply as unusual, inexplicable phenomena in the natural order of
+things, the natural products of exceptionally endowed life, and, whether
+in ancient time or modern, the same sort of thing the world over. To the
+argument that this involves denial of a supernatural Revelation they
+reply that it is mere reasoning in a circle. For if one begs the
+question at the outset by defining supernatural Revelation as revelation
+necessarily evidenced by miraculous divine intervention, then, of
+course, denial of this is denial of that, and how is the argument
+advanced? But, besides this, the question-begging definition is a
+fallacious confusing of the contents of the Revelation with its
+concomitants, and of its essentially spiritual character with phenomena
+in the sphere of the senses.
+
+The turning-point in this argument between the two parties in the Church
+has been reached in the antipodal change, already referred to, from the
+old to the new apologetics,--a change whose inevitable consequences do
+not yet seem to be clearly discerned by either party in the discussion.
+The contention that denial of miracles as traditionally understood
+carries denial of supernatural Revelation has been virtually set aside,
+with its question-begging definition and circular reasoning, by the
+apologetics now current among believers in at least a minimum of miracle
+in the traditional sense of the word,--especially in the two chief
+miracles of the virgin birth and the physical resurrection of Jesus. As
+an eminent representative of these the late Dr. A. B. Bruce may be
+cited. These adduce "the moral miracle," the sinlessness of Jesus, as
+evidential for the reality of the physical miracles as its "congruous
+accompaniments." "If," says Dr. Bruce, "we receive Him as the great
+moral miracle, we shall receive much more for His sake."[36] But what a
+turn-about of the traditional argument on the evidences! The older
+apologetes argued: This crown of miraculous power bespeaks the royal
+dignity of the wearer. The modern apologete reasons: This royal
+character must have a crown of miraculous power corresponding with his
+moral worth. In this antipodal reverse of Christian thought it is quite
+plain that for evidential purposes the miracle is stripped of its
+ancient value. And it has already been observed that modern knowledge
+has now transferred many of the Biblical miracles to the new rooms
+discovered for them in the natural order of things. It is not premature,
+therefore, for leaders of Christian thought to put once more to
+themselves the question, constantly recurring as learning advances:
+What theological readjustment should we have to make, if obliged to
+concede that the ancient belief in miracle is not inseparable from
+belief in a supernatural Revelation, not indispensable to belief
+therein? What modified conception must we form, if constrained to admit
+that the living God, ever immanent in Nature, intervenes in Nature no
+more at one time than another? What, indeed, but a revised and true in
+place of a mistaken conception of the term _Supernatural_?
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[35] "The Church asks, and it is entitled to ask the critic: Do you
+believe in the Incarnation and Resurrection of Jesus Christ?... If he
+replies in the negative, he has missed the way, and has put himself
+outside of the Church of Christ."--_The Church's One Foundation_, p. 4.
+[Note that "Incarnation" and "Resurrection" are terms which Dr. Nicoll
+construes as denoting physical miracles.]
+
+What Dr. Nicoll here means by "outside of the Church" he indicates by
+saying 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 judgment
+concerning the reality of remote occurrences is both unbiblical and
+unethical, as well as absurd when practically applied. Some years since,
+Dr. E. A. Abbott, who admits no miracle in the life of Christ, published
+a book, _The Spirit on the Waters_, in which he inculcated the worship
+of 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. But
+we cannot proceed without briefly reminding ourselves of the certain
+consequences of this now far advanced dropping of miracles by modern
+apologetics from their ancient use as evidences of a supernatural
+Revelation. We are not ignorant of the law, which holds throughout the
+material, the mental, and the moral realms, that disuse tends to atrophy
+and extinction. Disused organs cease to exist, as in the eyeless
+cave-fish. For centuries the story of the miraculous birth of Jesus was
+serviceable for confirmation of his claim to be the Son of God. In the
+address of the angel of the annunciation to Mary that claim is expressly
+rested on the miraculous conception of "the holy thing."[37] But as
+ethical enlightenment grows, the conviction grows that, whether the
+physiological ground of that claim be tenable or not, the ethical ground
+of it is essentially higher. _Father_ and _son_ even in human
+relationships are terms of more than physiological import. It is matter
+of frequent experience that, where the ethical character of such
+relationship is lacking, the physiological counts for nothing.
+Moreover, the divine sonship of Jesus in a purely ethical view rests on
+ground not only higher but incontestable. And so in our time theologians
+prefer to rest it on foundations that cannot be shaken, on his moral
+oneness with God, the divineness of his spirit, the ideal perfectness of
+his life. The strength of this position being realized, the world begins
+to hear from Christian thinkers the innovating affirmation that belief
+of the miraculous birth can no longer be deemed essential to
+Christianity; else it would not have been left unmentioned in two of the
+four Gospels, and in every extant Apostolic letter. And now we hear
+theologians saying: "I accept it, but I place it no more among the
+evidences of Christianity. I defend it, but cannot employ it in the
+defence of supernatural Revelation." Such a stage of thought is only
+transitional. An antiquated argument does not long survive in the world
+of thought.[38] Military weapons that have become unserviceable soon
+find their way either to the museum or the foundry. It is shortsighted
+not to foresee the inevitable effect on our theological material of the
+law of atrophy through disuse. The case of the miracle is the case of a
+pillar originally put in for the support of an ancient roof. When the
+roof has a modern truss put beneath it springing from wall to wall, the
+pillar becomes an obstacle, and is removed.
+
+But as in such a case the roof, otherwise supported, does not fall in
+when the pillar is removed, so neither is the central Christian truth of
+the incarnation imperilled by any weakening or vanishing of belief in
+the doctrine of the virgin birth. In a discussion of the subject in
+Convocation at York, England, while these pages were being written, the
+Dean of Ripon (Dr. Boyd Carpenter) urged that it must be borne in mind
+that the incarnation and the virgin birth were two different things, and
+that some who found difficulty in the latter fully accepted the former.
+In a recent sermon Dr. Briggs insists likewise upon this: "The virgin
+birth is only one of many statements of the mode of incarnation.... The
+doctrine of the incarnation does not depend upon the virgin birth.... It
+is only a minor matter connected with the incarnation, and should have a
+subordinate place in the doctrine.... At the same time the virgin birth
+is a New Testament doctrine, and we must give it its proper place and
+importance.... The favorite idea of the incarnation among the people has
+ever been the simpler one of the virgin birth, as in the Ave Maria. The
+theologians have ever preferred the more profound doctrine of the Hymn
+of the Logos [John i. 1-18]."[39] Nay, it may even be found that the
+weakening of belief in the incarnation as an isolated and miraculous
+event may tend to promote a profounder conception of it, that brings the
+divine and the human into touch and union at all points instead of in
+one point.[40]
+
+A similar change of thought, less remarked than its significance
+deserves, is concerned with that other great miracle, the corporeal
+resurrection of Jesus, which such writers as Dr. Nicoll couple with that
+of his virgin birth as the irreducible minimum of miracle, belief in
+which is essential to Christian discipleship.[41] For many centuries the
+resurrection story in the Gospels has served as the conclusive proof
+both of the divine sonship of Jesus,[42] and of our own resurrection to
+immortality.[43] In the churches it is still popularly regarded as the
+supreme, sufficient, and indispensable fact required for the basis of
+faith. But in many a Christian mind the thought has dawned, that a
+single fact cannot give adequate ground for the general inference of a
+universal principle; that a remote historical fact, however strongly
+attested, can evince only what _has_ taken place in a given case, not
+what _will_ or _must_ occur in other cases; while it is also inevitably
+more or less pursued by critical doubt of the attestations supporting
+it.
+
+This rising tide of reflection has compelled resort to higher ground, to
+the inward evidences in the nature of mind that are more secure from the
+doubt to which all that is merely external and historical is exposed. A
+clear distinction has been discerned between the _real_ resurrection of
+Jesus--his rising from the mortal state into the immortal, and his
+_phenomenal_ resurrection--the manifestations of his change that are
+related as having been objectively witnessed. What took place in the
+invisible world--his real resurrection--is now more emphasized by
+Christian thinkers than the phenomenal resurrection in the visible
+world. So conservatively orthodox a writer as Dr. G. D. Boardman goes so
+far as to say: "After all, the real question in the matter of his
+resurrection is not, 'Did Christ's body rise?' That is but a
+subordinate, incidental issue." The real question, as Dr. Boardman
+admits, is, "Whether Jesus Christ himself is risen, and is alive
+to-day."[44] The main stress of Christian thought to-day is not laid, as
+formerly, on the phenomena recorded in the story of the resurrection,
+but on the psychological, moral, and rational evidences of a
+resurrection to immortality that until recent times were comparatively
+disregarded.[45] Meanwhile the vindication of the reality of the
+phenomena related of the risen Jesus, including his bodily ascension,
+though not a matter of indifference to many of those who have found the
+higher grounds of faith, has become to them of subordinate importance.
+
+It is well for Christian faith that its supersensuous and impregnable
+grounds have been occupied. It is certain that ancient records of
+external phenomena cannot in future constitute, as heretofore, the
+stronghold of faith. But it is by no means yet certain that they have
+lost serviceableness as, at least, outworks of the stronghold. While the
+doctrine of the virgin birth seems to be threatened by atrophy, the
+doctrine of the bodily resurrection, though retired from primary to
+secondary rank, seems to be waiting rather for clarification by further
+knowledge.
+
+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 of
+Sunday as a day of sacred and joyful observance which is coeval with the
+earliest traditions, and antedates all records, is an attestation as
+significant as any monumental marble. No hallucination theory, no
+gradual rise and growth of hope in the minds of a reflective few, can
+account for that solid primeval monument. But _what_ occurred, the
+reality in distinctness from any legendary accretions, we shall be
+better able to conclude, when the truth shall have been threshed out
+concerning the reality, at present strongly attested, and as strongly
+controverted, of certain extraordinary but occult psychical powers.[46]
+
+A point of high significance for those who would cultivate a religious
+faith not liable to be affected by changes of intellectual outlook or
+insight is, that this lower valuation of miracle observable among
+Christian thinkers has not been reached through breaches made by
+sceptical doubts of the reality of a supernatural Revelation. They
+have, of course, felt the reasonableness of the difficulties with which
+traditional opinions have been encumbered by the advance of knowledge.
+But so far from giving way thereupon to doubts of the reality of divine
+Revelation, they have sought and found less assailable defences for
+their faith in it than those that sufficed their fathers. And their
+satisfaction therewith stands in no sympathy with those who hold it a
+mark of enlightenment to assume with Matthew Arnold, that "miracles do
+not happen." It has resulted rather from reaching the higher grounds of
+religious thought, on which supernatural Revelation is recognized in its
+essential character as distinctively moral and spiritual.
+
+The true supernatural is the _spiritual_, not the miraculous, a higher
+order of Nature, not a contradiction of Nature. The Revelation of Jesus
+was altogether spiritual. It consisted in the ideas of God which he
+communicated by his ministry and teaching, by his character and life.
+But this, the real supernatural, was not obvious as such to his
+contemporaries. They looked for it in the lower region of physical
+effects. And here the Church also in its embryonic spiritual life, in
+its proneness to externalize religion in forms of rite, and creed, and
+organization, has thought to find it. Jesus' reproof, "Except ye see
+signs and wonders ye will not believe," is still pertinent to those who
+will not have it that the supernatural Revelation--spiritual though it
+be--can be recognized or believed in apart from an acknowledgment of
+attendant miracles, wrought in physical nature by an intervention of
+God. Such a contention, however, is as futile and desperate as was John
+Wesley's declaration, "The giving up of witchcraft is in effect the
+giving up of the Bible." Such mischievous fallacies succeed only in
+blinding many a mind to the real issue which the moral and spiritual
+Revelation of Jesus makes with men of the twentieth century. It is these
+fallacies, and not their critics, that create the most of
+scepticism.[47]
+
+But while the question whether miracles are credible has ceased to be of
+vital importance, it has by no means lost all importance. On the
+contrary, so long as the path of progress is guided by the lamp of
+experience, so long will it be of consequence that the historical record
+of experience be found trustworthy. It may suit the overweening pride
+which defies both the past and the present to say with Bonaparte, that
+history is only a fable that men have agreed to believe. But it is a
+human interest, and a satisfaction of normal minds to establish, so far
+as reason permits, the credibility of every record ostensibly historic.
+To discover that ancient experiences, once supposed to be miraculous
+raisings from real death, may reasonably be classed with well attested
+experiences of to-day, better understood as resuscitations from a
+deathlike trance, should be welcomed by unprejudiced historical critics,
+as redeeming portions of the ancient record from mistaken disparagement
+as legendary. That further study may accredit as facts, or at least as
+founded on facts, some other marvels in that record cannot, except by
+arrant dogmatism, be pronounced improbable. Nevertheless, it cannot be
+expected that the legendary element, which both the Old and the New
+Testament in greater and less degree exhibit, can ever be eliminated.
+Such stories as that of the origin of languages at Babel, and that of
+the resurrection of ancient saints at Jesus' resurrection are
+indubitable cases of it. But the legendary element, though permanent, is
+at present undefined. To define it is the problem of the critical
+student, a problem most difficult to him whose judgment is least
+subjective; and he will welcome every contribution that advancing
+knowledge 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 Biblical
+record than in those studies of the exceptional phenomena and occult
+powers of life which are prosecuted by the Society for Psychical
+Research, whose results are recorded in its published _Proceedings_. For
+those familiar with this record the legendary element in the Bible tends
+to shrink into smaller compass than many critics assign it. In the
+interest both of the Bible and of science it is regrettable that the
+results of these researches, though conducted by men of high eminence
+in the scientific world, still encounter the same hostile scepticism
+even from some Christian believers that Hume directed against the
+Biblical miracles. Mr. Gladstone has put himself on record against this
+philistinism, saying that "psychical research is by far the most
+important work that is being done in the world." Were one disposed to
+prophesy, very reasonable grounds could be produced for the prediction
+that, great as was the advance of the nineteenth century in physical
+knowledge, the twentieth century will witness an advance in psychical
+knowledge equally great. In this advance one may not unreasonably
+anticipate that some, at least, of the Biblical miracles may be relieved
+from 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 the
+doctrine of the virgin birth appears in the recent utterance of so
+eminent an evangelical scholar as Dr. R. F. Horton, of London. The
+following report of his remarks in a Christmas sermon in 1901 is taken
+from 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 the
+latest touches in the Gospel, belonging to a period forty or fifty years
+after the Lord had passed away, when men had begun to realize what he
+was--the Son of God--and tried to express their conviction in this form
+or that." The implication here is unmistakable, that, in Dr. Horton's
+view, subjective considerations in the minds of pious believers, rather
+than objective fact, form the basis of the story.
+
+[39] See the Sermon on "Born of a Virgin," in the volume on _The
+Incarnation of Our Lord_.
+
+[40] "Christian thought has not erred by asserting too much concerning
+the incarnation of God, but, on the contrary, too little.... If ever
+overblown by blasts of denial, it is for wanting breadth of base.... Men
+have disbelieved the incarnation, because told that all there was of it
+was in Christ; and they reject what is presented as exceptional to the
+general way of God. They must be told to believe more; that the age-long
+way of God is in a perpetually increasing incarnation of life, whose
+climax and crown is the divine fulness of life in Christ."--From a
+discourse by the present writer on "Life and its Incarnations," in the
+volume, _New Points to Old Texts_. (James Clarke & Co., London. Thomas
+Whittaker, 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 one
+resurrection of which the New Testament knows, the one resurrection
+which 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 the
+resurrection (Luke xx. 37, 38) logically proceeds on the assumption that
+living 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 the
+sky, but between the lower life of mortals and the higher life immortal.
+
+For an extended exhibition of this line of evidence see "The Assurance
+of Immortality," and "The Present Pledge of Life to Come" (in two
+volumes 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 of
+hallucinations" conducted some ten years since by the Society for
+Psychical Research evinced the reality of veridical apparitions of
+deceased persons at or near the time of their death, showing the number
+of verified cases to be so large as to exclude the supposition of chance
+hallucination (see _Proceedings_, August, 1894). Or could it have been a
+material body suddenly becoming visible in a closed room, as narrated by
+Luke and John? First-class evidence, if there can be any such for such
+occurrences, has been exhibited for such phenomena as the passage of
+solid substances through intervening doors and walls--easy enough, say
+mathematicians, for a being familiar with the "fourth dimension"--and of
+the levitation of heavy bodies without physical support. (See
+_Proceedings_, January, 1894, and March, 1895.) As to such things
+scepticism is doubtless in order, but dogmatic contradiction is not.
+_Sub judice lis est._
+
+[47] Professor Borden P. Bowne has thus exhibited this great mistake and
+its grievous consequence:--
+
+"In popular thought, religious and irreligious alike, the natural is
+supposed to be something that runs itself without any internal guidance
+or external interference. The supernatural, on the other hand, if there
+be any such thing, is not supposed to manifest itself through the
+natural, but by means of portents, prodigies, interpositions, departures
+from, or infractions of, natural law in general. The realm of law
+belongs to the natural, and the natural runs itself. Hence, if we are to
+find anything supernatural, we must look for it in the abnormal, the
+chaotic, the lawless, or that which defies all reduction to order that
+may be depended on. This notion underlies the traditional debate between
+naturalism and supernaturalism.... This unhappy misconception of the
+relation of the natural to the supernatural has practically led the
+great body of uncritical thinkers into the grotesque inversion of all
+reason--the more law and order, the less God."--_Zion's Herald_, August
+22, 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 the
+considerations that have been presented. This is not the reality of
+miracles, but the reality of the supernatural, what it really is, as
+distinct from what it has been thought to be. The advance of science and
+philosophy has brought to the front this question: "Have those who
+reject the claims of supernatural Religion been misinformed as to what
+it is?" Is it, as they have been told, dependent for its attestation on
+signs and wonders occurring in the sphere of the senses? Does it require
+acceptance of these, as well as of its teachings? Or is its
+characteristic appeal wholly to the higher nature of man, relying for
+its attestation on the witness borne to it by this, rather than by
+extraordinary phenomena presented to the senses? There is at present no
+intellectual interest of Christianity more urgent than this: to present
+to minds imbued with modern learning the true conception of the
+supernatural and of supernatural Religion.
+
+Miracles, legitimately viewed as the natural product of extraordinary
+psychical power, or, to phrase it otherwise, of an exceptional vital
+endowment, belong not to the Hebrew race alone, nor did they cease when
+the last survivor of the Jewish apostles of Christianity passed away at
+the end of the first century. This traditional opinion ought by this
+time to have been entombed together with its long defunct relative,
+which represented this globe as the fixed centre of the revolving
+heavens. Miracles have the same universality as human life. Nor will
+their record be closed till the evolution of life is complete. Animal
+life, advancing through geologic aeons to the advent of man, in him
+reached its climax. Spiritual life, appearing in him as a new bud on an
+old stock, is evidently far from its climax still. To believe in
+miracles, as rightly understood, is to believe in spirit and life, and
+in further unfoldings of their still latent powers.
+
+This, however, is just now of subordinate importance. The present
+interest of chief moment is a riddance of the hoary fallacy that
+vitiates the current idea of a supernatural Revelation by looking for
+its specific characteristics to the physical world. By this deplorable
+fallacy Christian theology has blinded the minds of many scientific men
+to the essential claims of Christianity, with immense damage in the
+arrested development of their religious nature through the scepticism
+inevitably but needlessly provoked by this great mistake. When Elijah
+proclaims to idolaters that their deity is no God, and, as we read,
+corroborates his words by calling down fire from heaven to consume his
+sacrifice, it is reckoned as supernatural Revelation. But it is not so
+reckoned when the sage in the book of Proverbs proclaims to a nation of
+religious formalists the moral character of God: "To do righteousness
+and justice is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice." This is
+accounted as ethical teaching, somewhat in advance of the times. A pagan
+rather than a Christian way of thinking is discoverable here. In each of
+the cases cited the specific character of supernatural Revelation is
+equally evident,--the disclosure of spiritual truth above the natural
+thought of the natural men to whom it came. The character of any
+revelation is determined by the character of the truth made known, not
+by the drapery of circumstances connected with the making known. Clothes
+do not make the man, though coarse or careless people may think so. What
+belongs to the moral and spiritual order is supernatural to what
+belongs to the material and physical order.
+
+This way of thinking will be forced on common minds by thoughtful
+observation of common things. Animate nature of the lowest rank, as in
+the grass, is of a higher natural order than inanimate nature in the
+soil the grass springs from. Sentient nature, as in the ox, is of a
+higher order than the non-sentient in the grass. Self-conscious and
+reflective nature in the man is of a higher order than the selfless and
+non-reflective nature in his beast of burden. In the composite being of
+man all these orders of nature coexist, and each higher is supernatural
+to the nature below it. Nature, the comprehensive term for _all that
+comes into being_, is a hierarchy of natures, rising rank above rank
+from the lowest to the highest. The highest nature known to us,
+supernatural to all below it, can only be the moral nature, whose full
+satisfaction is necessary to the highest satisfaction of a man, and in
+whose complete development only can be realized in permanency his
+perfected welfare as a social being.
+
+Now it is precisely in the progress of moral development that
+supernatural Religion manifests itself as a reality. Religion, indeed,
+is as natural to man as Art. But there is religion and Religion, as
+there is art and Art--the sexual religion of the primitive Semites, the
+animistic religion of China, the spiritual Religion that flowered on the
+Mount of the Beatitudes, embryonic religion and Religion adult; all,
+indeed, natural, yet of lower and of higher grade. Doubtless, Religion
+of whatever grade outranks all other human activities by its distinctive
+aspiration to transcend the bounds of space and time and sense, and to
+link the individual to the universal; and so all Religion sounds, feebly
+or distinctly, the note of the supernatural. But this is the resonant
+note of the spiritual Religion which unfolds in the moral progress of
+the world. As moral nature is supernatural to the psychical and the
+physical, so is its consummate bloom of spiritual Religion to be ranked
+as such, relatively to the religions which more or less dimly and
+blindly are yearning and groping toward the light that never was on sea
+or land. Thus defining the word according to the nature of the thing,
+supernatural Religion, with its corollary of supernatural Revelation not
+as an apparition from without, but as an unfolding from within, is both
+a fact and a factor in the development of spiritual man.
+
+The term _supernatural Religion_ has been rightly applied to that system
+of religious conceptions, ideals, and motives, whose effective culture
+of the moral nature is attested historically by a moral development
+superior to the product of any other known religion. Whether the
+greatest saints of Christianity are all of them whiter souls than any
+that can be found among the disciples of any other religion, may be
+matter for argument. There can be no gainsaying the fact that, of great
+and lowly together, no other religion shows so many saints, or has so
+advanced the general moral development in lands where it is widely
+followed. But its essential character has been obscured, its appeal to
+man's highest nature foiled, and its power lamed by the wretched fallacy
+that has transferred its distinctive note of the supernatural from its
+divine ideals to the physical marvels embedded in the record of its
+original promulgation, even conditioning its validity and authority upon
+their reality. Such is the false issue which, to the discredit of
+Christianity, theology has presented to science. Such is the confusion
+of ideas that in the light of modern knowledge inevitably blocks the way
+to a reasonable religious faith in multitudes of minds thereby offended.
+From this costly error Christian theology at length shows signs that it
+is 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, were
+wrought by Jesus. These, whatever they were, must be regarded as the
+natural effluence of a transcendently endowed life. Taking place in the
+sphere of the senses, they were _a_ revelation of the type seen before
+and since in the lives of wonder-workers ancient and modern, in whom the
+power of mind over matter, however astonishing and mysterious, is
+recognized as belonging to the natural order of things no less than the
+unexplored Antarctic belongs to the globe. But _the_ Revelation which he
+gave to human thought as a new thing, a heavenly vision unprecedented,
+was in the higher realm of the moral and spiritual life. This was the
+true supernatural, whose reality and power are separable from all its
+environment of circumstances, and wholly independent thereof. The
+characteristic ideals of Jesus, his profound consciousness of God, his
+filial thought of God, his saturation with the conviction of his moral
+oneness with God,[49] his realization of brotherhood with the meanest
+human being, still transcend the common level of natural humanity even
+among his disciples. As thus transcendent they are supernatural still.
+Till reached and realized, they manifest the fact of a supernatural
+Revelation in that peerless life as plainly as the sun is manifest in
+the splendor of a cloudless day.
+
+In the coming but distant age, when man's spiritual nature, now so
+embryonic, shall have become adult, it will doubtless so pervade and
+rule the physical and psychical natures which it inhabits that the
+distinction between natural and supernatural, so important in the
+period of its development, will become foreign alike to thought and
+speech. But until the making of man in the image of God is complete,
+when the spiritual element in our composite being, now struggling for
+development, shall be manifest in its ultimate maturity and ascendency
+as the distinctive and proper nature of humanity, it is of supreme
+importance for the Christian teacher, who would point and urge to the
+heights of being, to free men's minds of error as to what the real
+supernatural is. Not the fancied disturber of the world's ordered
+harmonies, but that highest Nature which is the moulder, the glory, and
+the crown of all the lower.
+
+Imaged to us in the human perfectness of Jesus, the ideal Son of man, it
+is revealed as the distinctive inheritance and prize of the humanity
+that essays to think the thoughts and walk the ways of God. To each of
+us is it given in germ by our human birth, to be fostered and nourished
+in converse with the Infinite Presence that inhabits all things, till
+its divine possibilities appear in the ultimate "revealing of the sons
+of God,"[50] full grown "according to the measure of the stature of the
+fulness of Christ."[51]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[48] "Upon the conception of the supernatural as the personal,"
+says Professor Nash, "apologetics must found the claims of
+Christianity."--_Ethics and Revelation._
+
+[49] The words in which Jesus expresses this are much more extraordinary
+and profoundly significant than any of those mighty works of his, the
+like of which are recorded of the ancient prophets. Jesus was conscious
+of God as living in him, and of himself as living in God, in the unity
+of 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 sayings
+as, "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, 'Saltpetriere' amended to _Salpetriere_.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Miracles and Supernatural Religion, by
+James Morris Whiton
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MIRACLES AND SUPERNATURAL RELIGION ***
+
+***** This file should be named 26397.txt or 26397.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/2/6/3/9/26397/
+
+Produced by Bryan Ness, Stephen Blundell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/26397.zip b/26397.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..210274e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/26397.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d53f5b1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #26397 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26397)