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+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
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+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 ***
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+
+                  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
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