{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_26397/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_26397","id":"gutenberg_26397","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26397","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Jesus Christ -- Miracles","Miracles","Religion and science","Supernatural (Theology)"],"text":"Produced by Bryan Ness, Stephen Blundell and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This\nfile was produced from images generously made available\nby The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n                  MIRACLES\n\n                    AND\n\n           SUPERNATURAL RELIGION\n\n\n                     BY\n     JAMES MORRIS WHITON, PH.D. (YALE)\n\n\n   _Portentum non fit contra naturam, sed\n contra quam est nota natura_\n                                --AUGUSTINE\n\n\n                  New York\n           THE MACMILLAN COMPANY\n       LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.\n                    1903\n\n           _All rights reserved_\n\n\n\n\n                COPYRIGHT, 1903,\n           BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.\n\n Set up, electrotyped, and published May, 1903.\n\n\n                 Norwood Press\n    J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.\n            Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber's Note:\n\n    Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Variant\n    spellings have been retained. {=e} represents e with upper macron.\n\n\n\n\nTo\n\nM. B. W.\n\n\n\n\nPREFATORY NOTE\n\n\nWhile the present subject of discussion tempts to many an excursion into\nparticulars, its treatment is restricted to general outlines, with an\naim simply to clarify current ideas of miracle and the supernatural, so\nas to find firm holding ground for tenable positions in the present\n\"drift period\" of theology. The chief exception made to this general\ntreatment is the discussion given to a class of miracles regarded with\nas much incredulity as any, yet as capable as any of being accredited as\nprobably historical events--the raisings of the \"dead.\" The insistence\nof some writers on the virgin birth and corporeal resurrection of Jesus\nas essential to Christianity has required brief discussion of these\nalso, mainly with reference to the reasonableness of that demand. As to\nthe latter miracle, it must be observed that in the Biblical narratives\ntaken as a whole, whichever of their discordant features one be disposed\nto emphasize, the psychical element clearly preponderates over the\nphysical and material.\n\n                                                                J. M. W.\n NEW YORK,\n   April 11, 1903.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n                                                                    PAGE\n INTRODUCTORY                                                         13\n\n THE ARGUMENT\n\n                                I\n\n The gradual narrowing of the miraculous element in the Bible\n   by recent discovery and discussion.--The alarm thereby\n   excited in the Church.--The fallacy which generates the\n   fear.--The atheistic conception of nature which generates\n   the fallacy.--The present outgrowing of this conception.           25\n\n                                II\n\n The present net results of the discussion of the miraculous\n   element in the Bible.--Evaporation of the former evidential\n   value of miracles.--Further insistence on this value a\n   logical blunder.--The transfer of miracles from the\n   artillery to the baggage of the Church.--Probability of a\n   further reduction of the list of miracles.--Also of a\n   further transfer of events reputed miraculous to the domain\n   of history.                                                        37\n\n                                III\n\n Arbitrary criticism of the Biblical narratives of the raising\n   of the \"dead.\"--Facts which it ignores.--The subject\n   related to the phenomena of trance, and records of\n   premature burial.--The resuscitation in Elisha's tomb\n   probably historical.--Jesus' raising of the ruler's\n   daughter plainly such a case.--His raising of the widow's\n   son probably such.--The hypothesis that his raising of\n   Lazarus may also have been such critically examined.--The\n   record allows this supposition.--Further considerations\n   favoring it: 1. The supposition threatens no real interest\n   of Christianity.--2. Enhances the character of the act as a\n   work of mercy.--3. Is independent of the belief of the\n   witnesses of the act.--4. Is coherent with the general\n   conception of the healing works of Jesus as wrought by a\n   peculiar psychical power.--Other cases.--The resurrection\n   of Jesus an event in a wholly different order of\n   things.--The practical result of regarding these\n   resuscitations as in the order of nature.                          47\n\n                                IV\n\n A clearer conception of miracle approached.--Works of Jesus\n   once reputed miraculous not so reputed now, since not now\n   transcending as once the existing range of knowledge and\n   power.--This transfer of the miraculous to the natural\n   likely to continue.--No hard and fast line between the\n   miraculous and the non-miraculous.--Miracle a provisional\n   word, its application narrowing in the enlarging mastery of\n   the secrets of Nature and of life.                                 75\n\n                                V\n\n Biblical miracles the effluence of extraordinary lives.--Life\n   the world's magician and miracle-worker; its miracles now\n   termed _prodigies_.--Miracle the natural product of an\n   extraordinary endowment of life.--Life the ultimate\n   reality.--What any man can achieve is conditioned by the\n   psychical quality of his life.--Nothing more natural, more\n   supernatural, than life.--The derived life of the world\n   filial to the self-existent life of God; \"begotten, not\n   made.\"--Miracle as the product of life, the work of God.           85\n\n                                VI\n\n The question, old and new, now confronting\n   theologians.--Their recent retreat upon the minimum of\n   miracle.--The present conflict of opinion in the\n   Church.--Its turning-point reached in the antipodal\n   turn-about in the treatment of miracles from the old to the\n   new apologetics.--Revision of the traditional idea of the\n   supernatural required for theological readjustment.                95\n\n                                VII\n\n Account to be made of the law of atrophy through disuse.--The\n   virgin birth and the corporeal resurrection of Jesus, the\n   two miracles still insisted on as the irreducible minimum,\n   affected by this law.--The vital truths of the incarnation\n   and immortality independent of these miracles.--These\n   truths now placed on higher ground in a truer conception of\n   the supernatural.--The true supernatural is the spiritual,\n   not the miraculous.--Scepticism bred from the contrary\n   view.--The miracle-narratives, while less evidential for\n   religion, not unimportant for history.--Psychical research\n   a needed auxiliary for the scientific critic of these.            107\n\n                                VIII\n\n The cardinal point in the present discussion the reality not\n   of miracles, but of the supernatural.--Fallacy of pointing\n   to physical events as essential characteristics of\n   supernatural Revelation.--The character of a revelation\n   determined not by its circumstances, but by its\n   contents.--Moral nature supernatural to physical.--Nature a\n   hierarchy of natures.--Supernatural Religion historically\n   attested by the moral development it generates.--Transfer\n   of its distinctive note from moral ideals to physical\n   marvels a costly error.--Jesus' miracles _a_ revelation, of\n   a type common with others before and after.--The unique\n   Revelation of Jesus was in the higher realm of divine ideas\n   and ideals.--These, while unrealized in human life, still\n   exhibit the fact of a supernatural Revelation.--The\n   distinction of natural and supernatural belongs to the\n   period of moral progress up to the spiritual maturity of\n   man in the image of God.--The divine possibilities of\n   humanity, imaged in Jesus, revealed as our inheritance and\n   our prize.                                                        131\n\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTORY\n\n\nIn a historical retrospect greater and more revolutionary changes are\nseen to have occurred during the nineteenth century than in any century\npreceding. In these changes no department of thought and activity has\nfailed to share, and theological thought has been quite as much affected\nas scientific or ethical. Especially remarkable is the changed front of\nChristian theologians toward miracles, their distinctly lowered estimate\nof the significance of miracle, their antipodal reverse of the long\nestablished treatment of miracles. Referring to this a British\nevangelical writer[1] observes that \"the intelligent believer of our\nown day, ... instead of accepting Christianity on the ground of the\nmiracles, accepts it in spite of the miracles. Whether he admits these\nmiracles, or rejects them, his attitude toward them is toward\ndifficulties, not helps.\"\n\nBy this diametrical change of Christian thought a great amount of\nscepticism has already been antiquated. A once famous anti-Christian\nbook, _Supernatural Religion_, regarded as formidable thirty years ago,\nis now as much out of date for relevancy to present theological\nconditions as is the old smooth-bore cannon for naval warfare. That\nmany, indeed, are still unaware of the change that has been experienced\nby the leaders of Christian thought, no one acquainted with current\ndiscussions will deny; the fact is indubitable. It is reviewed in the\nfollowing pages with the constructive purpose of redeeming the idea of\nsupernatural Religion from pernicious perversion, and of exhibiting it\nin its true spiritual significance. The once highly reputed calculations\nmade to show how the earth's diurnal revolution could be imperceptibly\nstopped for Joshua's convenience, and the contention that the\nMediterranean produced fish with gullets capable of giving passage to\nJonah, are now as dead as the chemical controversy about phlogiston. Yet\nsome sceptical controversialists are still so far from cultivating the\nacquaintance with recent thought which they recommend to Christian\ntheologians, as to persist in affirmations of amazing ignorance, _e.g._\n\"It is admitted that miracles alone can attest the reality of divine\nrevelation.\"[2] Sponsors for this statement must now be sought among\nunlearned Christians, or among a few scholars who survive as\ncultivators of the old-fashioned argument from the \"evidences.\" Even\namong these latter the tendency to minimize miracle is undeniably\napparent in a reduction of the list classified as such, and still more\nin the brevity of the list insisted on for the attestation of\nChristianity.\n\nA transitional state of mind is clearly evidenced by the present\ndivision and perplexity of Christian thought concerning the Christian\nmiracles. Many seem to regard further discussion as profitless, and are\nready to shelve the subject. But this attitude of weariness is also\ntransitional. There must be some thoroughfare to firm ground and clear\nvision. It must be found in agreement, first of all, on the real meaning\nof a term so variously and vaguely used as _miracle_. In the present\nimperfect state of knowledge it may be impossible to enucleate miracle,\nhowever defined, of all mystery. But even so will much be gained for\nclear thinking, if miracle can be reasonably related to the greater\nmystery which all accept, though none understand,--the mystery of\n_life_. This view of the dynamic relation of life to miracle[3] is here\nsuggested for what it may prove to be worth.\n\nThe great and general change that transfigured theology during the\nnineteenth century was characteristically ethical. This, indeed, is the\ndistinctive feature of the so-called new theology, in contrast with that\nwhich the Protestant Reformers inherited from St. Augustine. God and\nMan, Faith, Salvation and Inspiration, Redemption and Atonement,\nJudgment and Retribution,--all these themes are now presented in\northodox pulpits far more conformably to ethical principles, though in\ndegrees varying with educated intelligence, than was customary in the\nsermons of half a century ago. \"One great source and spring of\ntheological progress,\" says Professor Bowne, in his recent work on\n_Theism_, \"has been the need of finding a conception of God which the\nmoral nature could accept. The necessity of moralizing theology has\nproduced vast changes in that field; and the end is not yet.\"\n\nThe ethical character of the theological change will perhaps be most\nobvious in the field of Biblical study, to which the present subject\nbelongs. The traditional solution of such moral difficulties in the Old\nTestament as commands, ostensibly divine, to massacre idolaters has\nbeen quite discarded. It is no longer the mode to say that deeds\nseemingly atrocious were not atrocious, because God commanded them.\nWriters of orthodox repute now say that the _Thus saith the Lord_, with\nwhich Samuel prefaced his order to exterminate the Amalekites, must be\nunderstood subjectively, as an expression of the prophet's belief, not\nobjectively, as a divine command communicated to him. This great change\nis a quite recent change. If a personal reference may be indulged, it is\nnot twenty years since the present writer's published protest against\n\"The Anti-Christian Use of the Bible in the Sunday School,\"[4] the\nexhibition to children of some vestiges of heathen superstition embedded\nin the Old Testament narratives as true illustrations of God's ways\ntoward men, drew forth from a religious journal a bitter editorial on\n\"The Old Testament and its New Enemies.\" But a great light has since\ndawned in that quarter. It is no longer deemed subversive of faith in a\ndivine Revelation to hold that the prophet Gad was not infallible in\nregarding the plague which scourged Jerusalem as sent to punish David's\npride in his census of the nation.\n\nA significant fact is presented in the comparison of these two aspects\nof the theological change that has come to pass,--the growing importance\nof the ethical, and the dwindling importance of the miraculous in the\nreligious thought of to-day. This may reassure those who fear whereto\nsuch change may grow. The inner significance of such a change is most\nauspicious. It portends the displacement of a false by the true\nconception of supernatural Religion, and the removal thereby of a\nserious antagonism between Science and Christian Theology, as well as of\na serious hindrance of many thoughtful minds from an intelligent embrace\nof Christianity.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[1] Professor W. T. Adeney in the _Hibbert Journal_, January, 1903, p.\n302.\n\n[2] See the recent new edition of _Supernatural Religion_, \"carefully\nrevised.\"\n\n[3] For an earlier statement of this by the present writer, see a\ndiscourse on \"Miracle and Life,\" in _New Points to Old Texts_. London:\nJames Clarke & Co., 1889. New York: Thomas Whittaker.\n\n[4] _The New Englander_, September, 1884.\n\n\n\n\nMIRACLES AND SUPERNATURAL RELIGION\n\nI\n\n\n\n\nI\n\n    SYNOPSIS.--The gradual narrowing of the miraculous element in the\n    Bible by recent discovery and discussion.--The alarm thereby excited\n    in the Church.--The fallacy which generates the fear.--The atheistic\n    conception of nature which generates the fallacy.--The present\n    outgrowing of this conception.\n\n\nIt is barely forty years since that beloved and fearless Christian\nscholar, Dean Stanley, spoke thus of the miracles recorded of the\nprophet Elisha: \"His works stand alone in the Bible in their likeness to\nthe acts of mediaeval saints. There alone in the Sacred History the gulf\nbetween Biblical and Ecclesiastical miracles almost disappears.\"[5] It\nrequired some courage to say as much as this then, while the storm of\npersecution was raging against Bishop Colenso for his critical work on\nthe Pentateuch. The evangelical clergymen in England and the United\nStates then prepared to confess as much as this, with all that it\nobviously implies, could have been seated in a small room. But time has\nmoved on, and the Church, at least the scholars of the Church, have\nmoved with it. No scholar of more than narrowly local repute now\nhesitates to acknowledge the presence of a legendary element both in the\nOld Testament and in the New. While the extent of it is still\nundetermined, many specimens of it are recognized. It is agreed that the\nearly narratives in Genesis are of this character, and that it is marked\nin such stories as those of Samson, Elijah, and Elisha. Even the\nconservative revisers of the Authorized Version have eliminated from the\nFourth Gospel the story of the angel at the pool of Bethesda, and in\ntheir marginal notes on the Third Gospel have admitted a doubt\nconcerning the historicity of the angel and the bloody sweat in\nGethsemane.\n\nFurthermore, some events, recognized as historical, have been divested\nof the miraculous character once attributed to them,--the crossing of\nthe Red Sea, for instance, by the Hebrew host. A landslip in the\nthirteenth century A.D. has been noted as giving historical character to\nthe story of the Hebrew host under Joshua's command crossing the Jordan\n\"on dry ground,\" but in a perfectly natural way. Other classes of\nphenomena once regarded as miraculous have been transferred to the\ndomain of natural processes by the investigations and discoveries that\nhave been made in the field of psychical research. The forewarning which\nGod is said to have given the prophet Ahijah of the visit that the\nqueen was about to pay him in disguise[6] is now recognized as one of\nmany cases of the mysterious natural function that we label as\n\"telepathy.\" The transformations of unruly, vicious, and mentally\ndisordered characters by hypnotic influence that have been effected at\nthe Salpetriere in Paris, and elsewhere, by physicians expert in\npsychical therapeutics are closely analogous to the cures wrought by\nJesus on some victims of \"demoniac possession.\"[7] The cases of\napparition,[8] also, which have been investigated and verified by the\nSociety for Psychical Research have laid a solid basis of fact for the\nBiblical stories of angels, as at least, a class of phenomena to be\nregarded as by no means altogether legendary, but having their place\namong natural though mysterious occurrences.\n\nBut this progressive paring down of the miraculous element in the Bible\nhas caused outcries of unfeigned alarm. Christian scholars who have\ntaken part in it are reproached as deserters to the camp of unbelief.\nThey are accused of banishing God from his world, and of reducing the\ncourse of events to an order of agencies quite undivine. \"Miracle,\"\nwrites one of these brethren,[9] \"is the personal intervention of God\ninto the chain of cause and effect.\" But what does this mean, except\nthat, when no miracles occur, God is not personally, _i.e._ actively, in\nthe chain of natural causes and effects? As Professor Drummond says, \"If\nGod appears periodically, he disappears periodically.\" It is precisely\nthis view of the subject that really banishes God from his world. Those\nwho thus define miracle regard miracles as having ceased at the end of\nthe Apostolic age in the first century. Except, therefore, for the\nnarrow range of human history that the Bible covers in time and place,\nGod has not been personally in the chain of natural causes and effects.\nThus close to an atheistic conception of nature does zeal for\ntraditional orthodoxy unwittingly but really come.\n\nThe first pages of the Bible correct this error. \"While the earth\nremaineth,\" so God is represented as assuring Noah, \"seedtime and\nharvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night,\nshall not cease.\" The presence of God in his world was thus to be\nevinced by his regular sustentation of its natural order, rather than by\nirregular occurrences, such as the deluge, in seeming contravention of\nit. To seek the evidence of divine activity in human affairs and to\nground one's faith in a controlling Providence in sporadic and cometary\nphenomena, rather than in the constant and cumulative signs of it to be\nseen in the majestic order of the starry skies, in the reign of\nintelligence throughout the cosmos, in the moral evolution of ancient\nsavagery into modern philanthropy, in the historic manifestation\nthroughout the centuries of a Power not our own that works for the\nincrease of righteousness, is a mode of thought which in our time is\nbeing steadily and surely outgrown. It is one of those \"idols of the\ntribe\" whose power alike over civilized and uncivilized men is broken\nless by argument than by the ascent of man to wider horizons of\nknowledge.\n\nIt is for the gain of religion that it should be broken,--of the\nspiritual religion whose God is not a tradition, a reminiscence, but a\nliving presence, inhabiting alike the clod and the star, the flower in\nthe crannied wall and the life of man. So thinking of God the religious\nman may rightly say,[10] \"If it is more difficult to believe in\nmiracles, it is less important. If the extraordinary manifestations of\nGod recounted in ancient history appear less credible, the ordinary\nmanifestations of God in current life appear more real. He is seen in\nAmerican history not less than in Hebrew history; in the life of to-day\nnot less than in the life of long ago.\"\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[5] _Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church_, Vol. II, p. 362,\nAmerican edition.\n\n[6] 1 Kings xiv. 1-7.\n\n[7] It is not intended to intimate that there is no such darker reality\nas a \"possession\" that is \"demoniac\" indeed. It cannot be reasonably\npronounced superstitious to judge that there is some probability for\nthat view. At any rate, it is certain that the problem is not to be\nsettled by dogmatic pronouncement. It is certain, also, that the burden\nof proof rests on those who contend that there can be no such thing. On\nthe other hand, it may be conceded that the cases recorded in the New\nTestament do not seem to be of an essentially devilish kind. On the\ngeneral subject of \"possession\" see F. W. H. Myers's work on _Human\nPersonality and Survival after Death_, Vol. I. (Longmans, Green & Co.,\nNew York and London.) Professor William James half humorously remarks:\n\"The time-honored phenomenon of diabolical possession is on the point of\nbeing admitted by the scientist as a fact, now that he has the name of\nhysterodemonopathy by which to apperceive it.\" _Varieties of Religious\nExperience_, p. 501, note.\n\n[8] See _Dictionary of Psychology_, art. \"Psychical Research.\"\n\n[9] Dr. Peloubet, _Teachers' Commentary on the Acts_, 1902.\n\n[10] Dr. Lyman Abbott in _The Outlook_, February 14, 1903.\n\n\n\n\nII\n\n\n\n\nII\n\n    SYNOPSIS.--The present net results of the discussion of the\n    miraculous element in the Bible.--Evaporation of the former\n    evidential value of miracles.--Further insistence on this value a\n    logical blunder.--The transfer of miracles from the artillery to the\n    baggage of the Church.--Probability of a further reduction of the\n    list of miracles.--Also of a further transfer of events reputed\n    miraculous to the domain of history.\n\n\nThe cultivation of scientific and historical studies during the last\ncentury, especially in its latter half, has deepened the conviction that\n\n    \"Through the ages one increasing purpose runs;\"\n\nhas disposed a growing number of thoughtful minds to regard occasional\nsigns and wonders, reported from ancient times, as far less evidential\nfor the reasonableness of religious faith than the steady sustentation\nof the Providential order and the moral progress of the world. Fully\nconvinced of this, we should now estimate, before proceeding further,\nthe present net results of the discussion, so far as it has gone, of\nwhat is called the miraculous element in the Bible.\n\nFirst, its former evidential value in proof of divine Revelation is gone\nfor the men of to-day. The believer in a divine Revelation does not now,\nif he is wise, rest his case at all on the miracles connected with its\noriginal promulgation, as was the fashion not very long since. This for\ntwo reasons; chiefly this: that _the decisive criterion of any truth,\nethical or physical, must be truth of the same kind_. Ethical truth must\nbe ethically attested. The moral and religious character of the\nRevelation presents its credentials of worth in its history of the\nmoral and religious renovations it has wrought both in individuals and\nin society. This is its proper and incontrovertible attestation, in need\nof no corroboration from whatever wonderful physical occurrences may\nhave accompanied its first utterance. Words of God are attested as such\nby the work of God which they effect. It may well be believed that those\nwonderful occurrences--the Biblical name for which is \"signs,\" or\n\"powers,\" terms not carrying, like \"miracles,\" the idea of something\ncontra-natural[11]--had an evidential value for those to whom the\nRevelation originally came. In fact, they were appealed to by the\nbearers of the Revelation as evidencing its divine origin by the mighty\nworks of divine mercy which they wrought for sufferers from the evils of\nthe world. But whatever their evidential value to the eye-witnesses at\nthat remote day, it was of the inevitably volatile kind that exhales\naway like a perfume with lapse of time. Historic doubts attack remote\nevents, especially when of the extraordinary character which tempts the\nnarrator to that magnifying of the marvellous which experience has found\nto be a constantly recurring human trait. It is simply impossible that\nthe original evidential value of the \"signs\" accompanying the Revelation\nshould continue permanently unimpaired. To employ them now as\n\"evidences of Christianity,\" when the Revelation has won on ethical\ngrounds recognition of its divine character and can summon history to\nbear witness of its divine effects in the moral uplift of the world, is\nto imperil the Christian argument by the preposterous logical blunder of\nattempting to prove the more certain by the less certain.\n\nA second net result consequent on the preceding may be described as the\ntransference of miracles from the ordnance department to the\nquartermaster's department of the Church. Until recently they were\nactively used as part of its armament, none of which could be dispensed\nwith. Now they are carried as part of its baggage, _impedimenta_, from\nwhich everything superfluous must be removed. It is clearly seen that to\nretain all is to imperil the whole. That there are miracles and\nmiracles is patent to minds that have learned to scan history more\ncritically than when a scholar like John Milton began his _History of\nEngland_ with the legend of the voyage of \"Brute the Trojan.\" One may\nreasonably believe that Jesus healed a case of violent insanity at\nGadara, and reasonably disbelieve that the fire of heaven was twice\nobedient to Elijah's call to consume the military companies sent to\narrest him. Cultivated discernment does not now put all Biblical\nmiracles on a common level of credibility, any more than the historical\nwork of Herodotus and that of the late Dr. Gardiner. To defend them all\nis not to vindicate, but to discredit all alike. The elimination of the\nindefensible, the setting aside of the legendary, the transference of\nthe supposedly miraculous to the order of natural powers and processes\nso far as vindicable ground for such critical treatment is discovered,\nis the only way to answer the first of all questions concerning the\nBible: How much of this is credible history? Thus it is not only\nthoroughly reasonable, but is in the interest of a reasonable belief\nthat divine agency is revealed rather by the upholding of the\nestablished order of Nature than by any alleged interference therewith.\nWith what God has established God never interferes. To allege his\ninterference with his established order is virtually to deny his\nconstant immanence therein, a failure to recognize the fundamental fact\nthat \"Nature is Spirit,\" as Principal Fairbairn has said, and all its\nprocesses and powers the various modes of the energizing of the divine\nWill.\n\nA third net result now highly probable is a still further reduction of\nthe list of reputed miracles. The critical process of discriminating\nthe historical from the legendary, and the natural from the non-natural,\nis still so comparatively recent that it can hardly be supposed to have\nreached its limit. Nor can it be stayed by any impeachment of it as\nhostile to Christianity, whose grand argument appeals to its present\nethical effects, not to ancient thaumaturgical accompaniments. There is,\nhowever, a considerable class of cases in which the advancing critical\nprocess is likely even to gain credibility for the Biblical narrative in\na point where it is now widely doubted--the resuscitations of the\napparently dead. Among all the Biblical miracles none have more probably\na secure historical basis.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[11] The Anglicized Latin word, \"miracle,\" indiscriminately used in the\nAuthorized Version, denotes the superficial character of the act or\nevent it is applied to, as producing wonder or amazement in the\nbeholders. The terms commonly employed in the New Testament\n(_s{=e}meion_, a sign; _dunamis_, power; less frequently _teras_, a\nportent) are of deeper significance, and connote the inner nature of the\noccurrence, either as requiring to be pondered for its meaning, or as\nthe product of a new and peculiar energy.\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\n    SYNOPSIS.--Arbitrary criticism of the Biblical narratives of the\n    raising of the \"dead.\"--Facts which it ignores.--The subject related\n    to the phenomena of trance, and records of premature burial.--The\n    resuscitation in Elisha's tomb probably historical.--Jesus' raising\n    of the ruler's daughter plainly a case of this kind.--His raising of\n    the widow's son probably such.--The hypothesis that his raising of\n    Lazarus may also have been such critically examined.--The record\n    allows this supposition.--Further considerations favoring it: 1. The\n    real interests of Christianity secure.--2. The miracle as a work of\n    mercy.--3. Incompetency of the bystanders' opinion.--4. Congruity\n    with the general conception of the healing works of Jesus, as\n    wrought by a peculiar psychical power.--Other cases.--The\n    resurrection of Jesus an event in a wholly different order of\n    things.--The practical result of regarding these resuscitations as\n    in the order of nature.\n\n\nOf resuscitation from apparent death seven cases in all are\nrecorded,--three in the Old Testament and four in the New. Some critics\narbitrarily reject all but one of these as legendary. Thus Oscar\nHolzmann, in his recent _Leben Jesu_, treats the raising of the widow's\nson, and of Lazarus. But he accepts the case of the ruler's daughter on\nthe ground that Jesus is reported as saying that it was not a case of\nreal but only of apparent death,--\"the child is not dead, but sleepeth.\"\nBut for the preservation of this saving declaration in the record, this\ncase also would have been classed with the others as unhistorical. And\nyet the admission of one clear case of simulated death, so like real\ndeath as to deceive all the onlookers but Jesus, might reasonably check\nthe critic with the suggestion that it may not have been a solitary\ncase.[12] The headlong assumption involved in the discrimination made\nbetween these two classes, viz. that in a case of apparent but unreal\ndeath the primitive tradition can be depended on to put the fact upon\nrecord, is in the highest degree arbitrary and unwarrantable.\n\nThe scepticism which lightly contradicts the Biblical narratives of the\nraising of the \"dead\" to life is seemingly ignorant of facts that go far\nto place these upon firm ground as historical occurrences. Catalepsy,\nor the simulation of death by a trance, in which the body is sometimes\ncold and rigid, sensation gone, the heart still, is well known to\nmedical men.[13] In early times such a condition would inevitably have\nbeen regarded and treated as actual death, without the least suspicion\nthat it was not so. Even now, the dreadful mistake of so regarding it\nsometimes occurs. So cautious a journal as the London _Spectator_ a few\nyears ago expressed the belief that \"a distinct percentage\" of premature\nburials \"occurs every year\" in England.\n\nThe proper line of critical approach to the study of the Biblical\nnarratives of the raising of the \"dead\" is through the well-known facts\nof the deathlike trance and premature burial.\n\nWhere burial occurred, as in the East, immediately after the apparent\ndeath,[14] resuscitation must have been rare. Yet cases of it were not\nunknown. Pliny has a chapter \"on those who have revived on being carried\nforth for burial.\" Lord Bacon states that of this there have been \"very\nmany cases.\" A French writer of the eighteenth century, Bruhier, in his\n\"_Dissertations sur l'Incertitude de la Mort et l'Abus des\nEnterrements_,\" records seventy-two cases of mistaken pronouncement of\ndeath, fifty-three of revival in the coffin before burial, and\nfifty-four of burial alive. A locally famous and thoroughly attested\ncase in this country is that of the Rev. William Tennent, pastor in\nFreehold, New Jersey, in the eighteenth century, who lay apparently dead\nfor three days, reviving from trance just as his delayed funeral was\nabout to proceed. One who keeps a scrap-book could easily collect quite\nan assortment of such cases, and of such others as have a tragic ending,\nboth from domestic and foreign journals. A work published some years ago\nby Dr. F. Hartmann[15] exhibits one hundred and eight cases as typical\namong over seven hundred that have been authenticated.[16]\n\nFacts like these have been strangely overlooked in the hasty judgment\nprompted by prejudice against whatever has obtained credence as\nmiraculous. Some significant considerations must be seriously\nentertained.\n\nIt cannot be that no such facts occurred in the long periods covered by\nthe Biblical writers. Occurring, it is extremely improbable that they\nshould have altogether escaped embodiment in popular tradition and its\nrecord. Furthermore, while on one hand the custom of speedy burial\nrendered them much rarer than they are now under other conditions, and\nso much the more extraordinary, the universal ignorance of the causes\ninvolved would have accepted resuscitation as veritable restoration from\nactual death. As such it would have passed into tradition. In cases\nwhere it had come to pass in connection with the efforts of a recognized\nprophet, or through any contact with him, it would certainly have been\nregarded as a genuine miracle.\n\nAmong the raisings of the \"dead\" recorded in the Scriptures probably\nnone has been so widely doubted by critical readers as the story in the\nthirteenth chapter of the second book of Kings, in which a corpse is\nrestored to life by contact with the bones of Elisha. Dean Stanley's\nremark upon the suspicious similarity between the miracles related of\nElisha and those found in Roman Catholic legends of great saints here\nseems quite pertinent. Let the record speak for itself.\n\n    \"And Elisha died and they buried him. Now the bands of the Moabites\n    invaded the land at the coming in of the year. And it came to pass,\n    as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a band; and\n    they cast the man into the sepulchre of Elisha; and as soon as the\n    man touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his\n    feet.\"\n\nThe bizarre character of such a story excusably predisposes many a\ncritic to stamp it as fabricated to enhance the glory of the great\nprophet who had been a pillar of the throne. Yet nothing is more likely\nthan that tradition has here preserved a bit of history, extraordinary,\nbut real. There is not the least improbability in regarding the case as\none of the many revivals from the deathlike trance that have been noted\nby writers ancient and modern. It is entirely reasonable to suppose that\nthe trance in which the seemingly dead man lay was broken either by the\nshock of his fall into the prophet's tomb, or coincidently therewith;\nand stranger coincidences have happened. Such a happening would be\nprecisely the sort of thing to live in popular tradition, and to be\nincorporated into the annals of the time.\n\nHere it may be rejoined that this is only a hypothesis. Only that, to be\nsure. But so is the allegation that the story is a mere fantastic\nfabrication only a hypothesis. Demonstration of the actual fact past all\ncontroversy being out of the question, all that can be offered for the\nattempt to rate the narrative at its proper value, either as history or\nas fiction, is hypothesis. The choice lies for us between two\nhypotheses. Surely, that hypothesis is the more credible which is based\non a solid body of objective facts, and meets all the conditions of the\ncase.\n\nWill it be replied to this that the critics can show for their\nhypothesis the admitted fact of the human proclivity to invent legends\nof miracle? The decisive answer is that the burden of proof rests on him\nwho contests any statement ostensibly historical. If such a statement be\nfound to square with admitted objective facts, it must be accepted\nnotwithstanding considerations drawn from the subjective tendency to\ninvent extraordinary tales.\n\nWere raisings of the \"dead\" recorded in the Old Testament alone,\nobjection would less often be offered to this transference of them,\nalong with other occurrences once deemed miraculous, to a place in the\nnatural order of things. The statistics of premature burial and of the\nresuscitation of the apparently dead before burial are sufficiently\nstrong to throw grave doubt on any contention that the resuscitations\nnarrated of Elijah[17] and Elisha[18] do not belong in that historical\nseries. It has been frequently observed, however, that there is much\nreluctance to apply to the New Testament the methods and canons of\ncriticism that are applied to the Old. It will be so in the present\ncase, through apprehension of somehow detracting from the distinctive\nglory of Christ. That fear will not disturb one who sees that glory not\nin his \"mighty works,\" the like of which were wrought by the prophets,\nbut in the spiritual majesty of his personality, the divineness of his\nmessage to the world, and of the life and death that illustrated it.\n\nOne case, at least, among Jesus' raisings of the \"dead,\" that of the\nyoung daughter of the ruler of the synagogue,[19] is admitted even by\nsceptical critics to have been a resuscitation from the trance that\nmerely simulates death. But the fact that there is a record of his\nsaying in this case, \"the child is not dead, but sleepeth,\" and no\nrecord of his saying the same at the bier of the widow's son,[20] is\nslight ground, yet all the ground there is, against the great\nprobabilities to the contrary, for regarding the latter case as so\ntranscendently different from the former as the actual reembodiment of a\ndeparted spirit recalled from another world. Were these the only two\ncases of restoration to life in the ministry of Jesus, it is most\nprobable that they would be regarded as of the same kind.\n\nThe raising of Lazarus[21] presents peculiar features, in view of which\nit is generally regarded as of another kind, and the greatest of\nmiracles, so stupendous that the Rev. W. J. Dawson, in his recent _Life\nof Christ_, written from an evangelical standpoint, says of it: \"Even\nthe most devout mind may be forgiven occasional pangs of incredulity.\"\nBut the considerations already presented are certainly sufficient to\njustify a reexamination of the case. And it is to be borne in mind that\nthe question at issue is, not what the eye-witnesses at that time\nbelieved, not what the Church from that time to this has believed, not\nwhat we are willing to believe, or would like to believe, but what all\nthe facts with any bearing on the case, taken together, fully justify us\nin believing as to the real nature of it.\n\nWhat Jesus is recorded as saying of it is, of course, of prime\nimportance. \"Our friend Lazarus is fallen asleep, but I go that I may\nawake him out of sleep.\" Were this all, the case might easily have been\nclassed as one of trance. The disciples, however, understood Jesus to\nspeak of natural sleep. \"Then Jesus therefore said unto them plainly,\n_Lazarus is dead_.\" Tradition puts the maximum meaning into this word\n\"dead.\" But if this word here qualifies the preceding word, \"fallen\nasleep,\" so also is it qualified by that; the two are mutually\nexplanatory, not contradictory. These alternatives are before us: Is the\nmaximum or the minimum meaning to be assigned to the crucial word\n\"dead\"? For the minimum, one can say that a deathly trance, already made\nvirtual death by immediate interment, would amply justify Jesus in using\nthe word \"dead\" in order to impress the disciples with the gravity of\nthe case, as not a natural but a deathly, and, in the existing\nsituation, a fatal sleep. For the maximum, no more can be advanced than\nthe hazardous assertion that Jesus _must_ have used the word with\ntechnical precision in its customary sense; an assertion of course\nprotected from disproof by our ignorance of the actual fact.[22] But\nwhatever support this view of the case derives from such ignorance is\noverbalanced by the support supplied to the other view by the long\nhistory of revivals from the deathly trance, and by the probabilities\nwhich that history creates.\n\nMany, to whom the view here proposed seems not only new, but unwelcome,\nand even revolutionary, may reasonably prefer to suspend judgment for\nreflection; but meanwhile some further considerations may be\nentertained.\n\n1. Aside from the unwillingness to abandon a long-cherished belief on\nany subject whatever, which is both a natural, and, when not pushed to\nan unreasonable length, a desirable brake on all inconsiderate change,\nno practical interest is threatened by the adoption of the view here\nsuggested. Religious interest, so far as it is also intelligent, is\ncertainly not threatened. The evidences of Jesus' divine character and\nmission resting, as for modern men it rests, not on remote wonders, but\non now acknowledged facts of an ethical and spiritual kind, is\naltogether independent of our conclusion whether it was from actual or\nonly apparent death that Lazarus was raised. Since all the mighty works\nwrought by Jesus, and this among them, were identical in type with those\nwrought by the ancient prophets, with whom his countrymen classed him in\nhis lifetime, their evidential significance could be, even for the\neye-witnesses at that tomb, no greater for him than for an\nElisha,--signs of a divine mission attesting itself by works of mercy.\n\n2. As works of mercy these raisings from the \"dead,\" including that of\nLazarus, rank far higher in the view of them here proposed than in the\ntraditional view. This regards them as the recall of departed spirits\nfrom what is hoped to be \"a better world.\" Yet this, while it turns\nsorrow for a time into joy, involves not only the recurrence of that\nsorrow in all its keenness, but also a second tasting of the pains\npreliminary to the death-gate, when the time comes to pass that gate\nagain. But in the other view, a raising from the death that is only\nsimulated is a merciful deliverance from a calamity greater than simple\ndeath, if that be any calamity at all,--the fate of burial alive. In the\nformer view, therefore, the quality of mercy, distinctive of the mighty\nworks of Jesus, is imperfectly demonstrable. In the present view, as the\nrescue of the living from death in one of its most horrible forms, it is\nabundantly conspicuous.\n\n3. The onlookers by the tomb of Lazarus doubtless regarded his awakening\nas revival from actual death. Their opinion, however, does not bind our\njudgment any more than it is bound by the opinion of other onlookers,\nthat Jesus' healing of the insane and epileptic was through the\nexpulsion of demons that possessed them. In each instance it was\nunderstood as a sign of control over beings belonging to another world.\nBut such an attestation of Jesus' divine mission, having been superseded\nfor us by proofs of higher character, is now no more needful for us in\nthe case of the \"dead\" than in the case of the \"demons.\"\n\n4. The power of breaking the deathly trance, of quickening the dormant\nlife, reenergizing the collapsed nervous organism, and ending its\nparalysis of sensation and motion, may be reasonably regarded as power\nof the same psychical kind that Jesus regularly exerted in healing the\nsufferers from nervous disorders who were reputed victims of demoniac\npossession.[23] In this view these resuscitations from apparent death\nappear in natural coherence with the many other works of mercy that\nJesus wrought as the Great Physician of his people, and may be regarded\nas the crown and consummation of all his restorative ministries. Jesus'\nthanksgiving after the tomb had been opened--\"Father, I thank thee that\nthou hast heard me\"--shows that he had girded himself for a supreme\neffort by concentrating the utmost energy of his spirit in prayer.\nPhysically parallel with this was the intensity of voice put into his\ncall to the occupant of the tomb. This is better represented in the\noriginal than in our translation: \"He shouted with a great voice,\n'Lazarus, come forth.'\" The whole record indicates the utmost tension of\nall his energies, and closely comports with the view that this stood to\nthe sequel in the relation of cause to effect.[24] Another circumstance\nnot without bearing on the case is the energizing power of the intense\nsympathy with the bereaved family that stirred the soul of Jesus to weep\nand groan with them. And it is not without significance that this strong\nfactor appears active in the larger number of the Biblical cases,--three\nof them only children, two of these the children of the pitiable class\nof widows.\n\nPeculiar, then, as was the case of Lazarus, our examination of it\nreveals no substantial ground for insisting that it was essentially\nunlike the previous case of the ruler's daughter, that it was the\nbringing back into a decaying body of a spirit that had entered into the\nworld of departed souls. The actual fact, of course, is indemonstrable.\nOur conclusion has to be formed wholly upon the probabilities of the\ncase, and must be formed in a reasonable choice between the greater\nprobability and the less.\n\nThe restoration of Dorcas to life by Peter, recorded in the book of\nActs,[25] needs no special discussion beyond the various considerations\nalready adduced in this chapter. The case of Eutychus, recorded in the\nsame book,[26] requires mention only lest it should seem to have been\nforgotten, as it is not in point at all. The record makes it highly\nprobable that the supposed death was nothing more than the loss of\nconsciousness for a few hours in consequence of a fall from the window.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIf one should here suggest that no mention has yet been made of the\nresurrection of Jesus himself, it must be pointed out that this is a\nfact of a totally different kind from any of the foregoing cases. To\nspeak, as many do, of the \"resurrection of Lazarus\" is a misuse of\nwords. Resuscitation to life in this world, and resurrection, the rising\nup of the released spirit into the life of the world to come, are as\ndistinct as are the worlds to which they severally belong. We here\nconsider only the _raisings_ which restored to the virtually dead their\ninterrupted mortal life. The _rising_ from the mortal into the immortal\nstate belongs to an entirely different field of study.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nApart, then, from traditional prepossessions, examination of the\nBiblical narratives discloses nothing to invalidate the hypothesis which\none who is acquainted with the copious record of apparent but unreal\ndeath must seriously and impartially consider. The reputedly miraculous\nraisings of the \"dead\" related in both the Old and the New Testament\nmay, with entire reason, and without detriment to religion, be classed\nwith such as are related outside of the Scriptures, in ancient times as\nwell as modern, and as phenomena wholly within the natural order,\nhowever extraordinary. The practical result of such a conclusion is\nlikely to be a gain for the historicity of the Scripture narratives in\nthe estimate of a large class of thoughtful minds.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[12] An objection to the historicity of the raising of Lazarus which is\nmade on the ground that so great a work, if historical, would have been\nrelated by more than one of the Evangelists, yields on reflection the\npossibility that Jesus may have effected more than the three raisings\nrecorded of him. John is the sole narrator of the raising of Lazarus.\nBut he omits notice of the two raisings recorded by the other\nEvangelists, while Matthew and Mark do not record the raising of the\nwidow's son recorded by Luke. All this suggests that the record may have\npreserved for us specimens rather than a complete list of this class of\nmiracles. (Compare John xxi. 25.)\n\n[13] \"We have frequent cases of trance, ... where the parties seem to\ndie, but after a time the spirit returns, and life goes on as before. In\nall this there is no miracle. Why may not the resuscitations in Christ's\ntime possibly have been similar cases? Is not this less improbable than\nthat the natural order of the universe should have been set\naside?\"--_The Problem of Final Destiny_, by William B. Brown, D.D.,\n1899.\n\n[14] On account of the ceremonial \"uncleanness\" caused by the dead body.\nSee Numbers v. 2, and many similar passages.\n\n[15] _Buried Alive_ (Universal Truth Publishing Co., Chicago). See also\n_Premature Burial_, by D. Walsh (William Wood & Co., New York), and\n_Premature Burial_, by W. Tebb and E. P. Vollum (New Amsterdam Book Co.,\nNew York).\n\n[16] Other writers might be mentioned, as Mme. Necker (1790), Dr. Vigne\n(1841). Yet on the other hand it is alleged, that \"none of the numerous\nstories of this dreadful accident which have obtained credence from time\nto time seem to be authentic\" (_American Cyclopedia_, art. \"Burial\").\nAllowing a wide margin for exaggeration and credulity, there is\ncertainly a residuum of fact. A correspondent of the (London)\n_Spectator_ a few years since testified to a distressing case in his own\nfamily.\n\n[17] Kings xvii. 17-23.\n\n[18] Kings iv. 32-36.\n\n[19] Mark v. 35-43.\n\n[20] Luke vii. 12-16.\n\n[21] John xi. 11-44.\n\n[22] Was Jesus aware that Lazarus was really not dead? It is impossible\nto reach a positive conclusion. In some directions his knowledge was\ncertainly limited. That he was not aware of the reality might be\ninferred from his seeming to have allowed his act to pass for what, in\nthe view of it here suggested, it was not,--the recall to life of one\nactually dead. This, however, assumes the completeness of a record whose\nsilence on this point cannot be pressed as conclusive. It is, indeed,\nunlikely that Jesus knew all that medical men now know. But awareness of\nany fact may be in varying degrees from serious suspicion up to positive\ncertitude. While far from positiveness, awareness may exist in a degree\nthat gives courage for resolute effort resulting in clear and full\nverification. Jesus may have been ignorant of the objective reality of\nLazarus's condition, and yet have been very hopeful of being empowered\nby the divine aid he prayed for (John xi. 41) to cope with it\nsuccessfully.\n\n[23] See pages 28, 29, Note.\n\n[24] Jesus' works of healing are explicitly attributed by the\nEvangelists to a peculiar power that issued from him. In Mark v. 30,\nLuke vi. 19, and viii. 46, the original word _dunamis_, which the\nAuthorized Version translates \"virtue,\" is more correctly rendered\n\"power\" in the Revised Version. Especially noticeable is the peculiar\nphraseology of Mark v. 30: \"Jesus perceiving in himself that the power\nproceeding from him had gone forth (R. V.).\" The peculiar circumstances\nof the case suggest that the going forth of this power might be motived\nsub-consciously, as well as by conscious volition.\n\n[25] Acts ix. 36-42.\n\n[26] Acts xx. 9-13.\n\n\n\n\nIV\n\n\n\n\nIV\n\n    SYNOPSIS.--A clearer conception of miracle approached.--Works of\n    Jesus once reputed miraculous not so reputed now, since not now\n    transcending, as once, the existing range of knowledge and\n    power.--This transfer of the miraculous to the natural likely to\n    continue.--No hard and fast line between the miraculous and the\n    non-miraculous.--Miracle a provisional word, its application\n    narrowing in the enlarging mastery of the secrets of nature and\n    life.\n\n\nAt this point it seems possible to approach a clearer understanding of\nthe proper meaning to attach to the generally ill-defined and hazy term\n_miracle_.[27] Matthew Arnold's fantastic illustration of the idea of\nmiracle by supposing a pen changed to a pen-wiper may fit some miracles,\nespecially those of the Catholic hagiology, but, if applied to those of\nJesus, would be a caricature. In the New Testament a reputed miracle is\nnot any sort of wonderful work upon any sort of occasion, but an act of\nbenevolent will exerted for an immediate benefit,[28] and transcending\nthe then existing range of human intelligence to explain and power to\nachieve. The historic reality of at least some such acts performed by\nJesus is acknowledged by critics as free from the faintest trace of\northodox bias as Keim: \"The picture of Jesus, the worker of miracles,\nbelongs to the first believers in Christ, and is no invention.\"\n\nIt has already been noted that a considerable number of the then reputed\nmiracles of Jesus, particularly his works of healing, do not now, as\nthen, transcend the existing range of knowledge and power, and\naccordingly are no longer reputed miraculous. And one cannot reasonably\nbelieve that a limit to the understanding and control of forces in\nNature and mind that now are more or less occult has been already\nreached. It is, therefore, not incredible that some of the mighty works\nof Jesus, which still transcend the existing limits of knowledge and\npower, and so are still reputed miraculous, and are suspected by many as\nunhistorical, may in some yet remote and riper stage of humanity be\ntransferred, as some have already been, to the class of the\nnon-miraculous and natural.\n\nDr. Robbins, Dean of the General Theological Seminary, New York, after\nremarking that \"the word _miracle_ has done more to introduce confusion\ninto Christian Evidences than any other,\" goes on to say: \"To animals\ncertain events to them inexplicable are signs of the presence of human\nintelligence and power. To men these miracles of Christ are signs of\ndivine intelligence and power. But how is miracle to be differentiated\nfrom other providential dealings of God? Not by removing him further\nfrom common events. Abstruse speculations concerning the relation of\nmiracles to other physical phenomena may be safely left to the\nadjustment of an age which shall have advanced to a more perfect\nsynthesis of knowledge than the present can boast.\"[29]\n\nThe truth to which such considerations conduct is, that no hard and fast\nline can be drawn between the miraculous and the non-miraculous. To the\nuntutored mind, like that of the savage who thought it miraculous that a\nchip with a message written on it had talked to the recipient, the\nsimplest thing that he cannot explain is miraculous: \"_omne ignotum pro\nmirifico_,\" said Tacitus. As the range of knowledge and power widens,\nthe range of the miraculous narrows correspondingly. Some twenty years\nsince, the International Sunday-school Lessons employed as a proof of\nthe divinity of Christ the reputedly miraculous knowledge which he\nevinced in his first interview with Nathanael of a solitary hour in\nNathanael's experience.[30] Since then it has been demonstrated[31] by\npsychical research that the natural order of the world includes\ntelepathy, and the range of the miraculous has been correspondingly\nreduced without detriment to the argument for the divinity of Christ,\nnow rested on less precarious ground.\n\nUnder such conditions as we have reviewed a miracle cannot always be one\nand the same thing. Miracle must therefore be defined as being what our\nwhole course of thought has suggested that it is: in general, an elastic\nword; in particular, a provisional word,--a word whose application\nnarrows with the enlarging range of human knowledge[32] and power which\nfor the time it transcends; a word whose history, in its record of\nranges already transcended, prompts expectation that ranges still beyond\nmay be transcended in the illimitable progress of mankind. Professor Le\nConte says that miracle is \"an occurrence or a phenomenon according to a\nlaw higher than any yet known.\" Thus it is a case of human ignorance,\nnot of divine interference.\n\nOn the other hand, we must believe that the goal of progress is a flying\ngoal; that human attainment can never reach finality unless men cease to\nbe. And so all widening of human knowledge and power must ever disclose\nfurther limitations to be transcended. There will always be a _Beyond_,\nin which dwells the secret of laws still undiscovered, that underlie\nmysteries unrevealed and marvels unexplained. This will have to be\nadmitted, especially, by those to whom the marvellous is synonymous\nwith the incredible. We have not been able to eviscerate even these\nprosaic and matter-of-fact modern times of marvels whose secret lies in\nthe yet uncatalogued or indefinable powers of the mysterious agent that\nwe name _life_: witness many well verified facts recorded by the Society\nfor Psychical Research.[33] How, then, is it consistent to affirm that\nno such marvels in ancient records are historical realities? Nay, may it\nnot be true that the ancient days of seers and prophets, the days of\nJesus, days of the sublime strivings of great and lonely souls for\ncloser converse with the Infinite Spirit behind his mask of Nature,\noffered better conditions for marvellous experiences and deeds than\nthese days of scientific laboratories and factories, and world-markets\nand world-politics?\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[27] \"Early and mediaeval theologians agree in conceiving the miraculous\nas being above, not contrary to, nature. The question entered on a new\nphase when Hume defined a miracle as a violation of nature, and asserted\nthe impossibility of substantiating its actual occurrence. The modern\ndiscussion has proceeded largely in view of Hume's destructive\ncriticism. Assuming the possibility of a miracle, the questions of fact\nand of definition remain.\"--_Dictionary of Psychology._\n\n\"When we find the definition for which we are searching, the miraculous\nwill no longer be a problem.\"--PROFESSOR W. SANDAY, at the Anglican\nChurch Congress, 1902.\n\n[28] For exceptions see Matthew xxi. 19; Acts xiii. 10, 11.\n\n[29] _A Christian Apologetic_, p. 97.\n\n[30] John i. 47-50.\n\n[31] In the opinion of such psychologists as Professor William James, of\nHarvard, the late Professor Henry Sidgwick, of Cambridge, England, and\nothers of like eminence.\n\n[32] A hint of this was given by Augustine: \"Portentum non fit contra\nnaturam, sed contra quam est nota natura.\"--_De Civitate Dei._\n\n[33] Consult the late F. W. H. Myers's remarkable volumes on _Human\nPersonality and Survival after Death_ (Longmans, Green & Co.).\n\n\n\n\nV\n\n\n\n\nV\n\n    SYNOPSIS.--Biblical miracles the effluence of extraordinary\n    lives.--Life the world's magician and miracle worker; its miracles\n    now termed _prodigies_.--Miracle the natural product of an\n    extraordinary endowment of life.--Life the ultimate reality.--What\n    any man can achieve is conditioned by the psychical quality of his\n    life.--Nothing more natural, more supernatural, than life.--The\n    derived life of the world filial to the self-existent life of God,\n    \"begotten, not made.\"--Miracle, as the product of life, the work of\n    God.\n\n\nBe it noted, now, that the marvellous phenomena of the Biblical record,\nwhatever else be thought of them, are, even to a superficial view, the\nextraordinary effluence of extraordinary lives. Here at length we gain a\nclearer conception of miracle. _Life_ is the world's great\nmagician,--life, so familiar, yet so mysterious; so commonplace, yet so\ntranscendent. No miracle is more marvellous than its doings witnessed in\nthe biological laboratory, or more inexplicable than its transformation\nof dead matter into living flesh, its development of a Shakespeare from\na microscopic bit of protoplasm. But its mysterious processes are too\ncommon for general marvel; we marvel only at the uncommon. The boy Zerah\nColburn in half a minute solved the problem, \"How many seconds since the\nbeginning of the Christian era?\" We prefer to call this a prodigy rather\nthan a miracle,--a distinction more verbal than real; and we fancy we\nhave explained it when we say that such arithmetical power was a\npeculiar endowment of his mental life. Now all of the inexplicable,\ninimitable reality that at any time has to be left by the baffled\nintellect as an unsolved wonder under the name of miracle is just\nthat,--_the natural product of an extraordinary endowment of life_. More\nof its marvellous capability is latent in common men, in the\nsubconscious depths of being, than has ever yet flashed forth in the\ncareer of uncommon men. Some scientists say that it depends on chemical\nand physical forces. It indeed uses these to build the various bodies it\ninhabits, but again it leaves these to destroy those bodies when it\nquits them. The most constant and ubiquitous phenomenon in the world,\nthe ultimate reality in the universe, is _life_, revealing its presence\nin innumerable modes of activity, from the dance of atoms in the rock to\nthe philosophizing of the sage and the aspirations of the saint,--the\ncreator of Nature, the administrator of the regular processes we call\nthe laws of Nature, the author of the wonders men call miraculous\nbecause they are uncommon and ill understood.\n\nThe works of which any man is naturally capable are conditioned by the\npsychical quality of his life, and its power to use the forces of\nNature. Through differences of vital endowment some can use color, as\nwonderful painters, and others employ sound, as wonderful musicians, in\nways impossible to those otherwise endowed. So \"a poet is born, not\nmade.\" So persons of feeble frame, stimulated by disease or frenzied by\npassion, have put forth preternatural and prodigious muscular strength.\nBy what we call \"clairvoyant\" power life calls up in intelligent\nperception things going on far beyond ocular vision. By what we call\n\"telepathic\" power life communicates intelligence with life separated by\nmiles of space. Such are some of the powers that have been discovered,\nand fully attested, but not explained, as belonging to the world's\nmaster magician, _Life_. And when the poet asks,--\n\n                \"Ah, what will our children be,\n    The men of a hundred thousand, a million summers away?\"\n\nwe can only answer with the Apostle: \"It doth not yet appear what we\nshall be.\" But we cannot deem it likely that the powers of life,\n\n    \"Deep seated in our mystic frame,\"\n\nand giving forth such flashes of their inherent virtue, have already\nreached their ultimate development.\n\nWe look with wonder and awe into the secret shrine of life, where two\nscarcely visible cells unite to form the human being whose thought shall\narrange the starry heavens in majestic order, and harness the titanic\nenergies of Nature for the world's work. There we behold the real\nsupernatural. Nothing is more natural than life, and nothing also more\nsupernatural. Biology studies all the various forms that the world shows\nof it, and affirms that life, though multiform, is one. This embryology\nattests, showing that the whole ascent of life through diverse forms\nfrom the lowest to the highest, during the millions of years since life\nfirst manifested its presence on this globe, is recapitulated in the\nstages of growth through which the human being passes in the few months\nbefore its birth. And philosophy, which does not seek the living among\nthe dead, affirms, _omne vivum ex vivo_. The varied but unitary life of\nthe world is the stream of an exhaustless spring. It is filial to the\nlife of God, the Father Almighty. What the ancient creed affirmed of the\nChrist as the Son of God--whom his beloved disciple recognized as \"the\neternal life which was with the Father and was manifested unto\nus[34]\"--may be truly affirmed of the mysterious reality that is known\nas life: \"Begotten not made; being of one substance with the Father;\nthrough whom [or which] all things were made.\" Looking from the derived\nand finite life of the world, visible only in the signs of its presence,\nbut in its reality no more visible than him \"whom no man hath seen, nor\ncan see,\" up to the life underived, aboriginal, infinite, we recognize\n_God_ and _Life_ as terms of identical significance. How superficial the\nnotion of miracles as \"the personal intervention of God into the chain\nof cause and effect,\" in which he is the constant vital element. If an\nevent deemed miraculous is ever ascribed, as of old, to \"the finger of\nGod,\" the reality behind the phenomenon is simply a higher or a stronger\npower of life than is recognized in an event of a common type--life that\nis one with the infinite and universal Life,\n\n              \"Life that in me has rest,\n    As I, undying Life, have power in Thee.\"\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[34] 1 John i. 2.\n\n\n\n\nVI\n\n\n\n\nVI\n\n    SYNOPSIS.--The question, both old and new, now confronting\n    theologians.--Their recent retreat upon the minimum of miracle.--The\n    present conflict of opinion in the Church.--Its turning-point\n    reached in the antipodal turn-about in the treatment of miracles\n    from the old to the new apologetics.--Revision of the traditional\n    idea of the supernatural required for theological readjustment.\n\n\nThe present line of thought has now reached the point where an important\nquestion confronts us,--a question not wholly new. Within the memory of\nliving men theologians have been compelled to ask themselves: What if\nthe geologists should establish facts that contradict our Biblically\nderived doctrine that the universe was made in a week? Again have they\nbeen constrained to put to themselves the question: What if the\nevolutionists should supersede our doctrine that the creation is the\nimmediate product of successive fiats of the Creator by showing that it\ncame gradually into existence through the progressive operation of\nforces immanent in the cosmos? Still again have they had to face the\nquestion: What if modern criticism by the discovery of demonstrable\nerrors in the Sacred Writings should fault our doctrine that, as the\nWord of God, the Bible is free from all and every error? In every\ninstance the dreaded concession, when found at length to be enforced by\nmodern learning, has been found to bring, not the loss that had been\napprehended, but clear gain to the intellectual interests of religion.\nNow it is this same sort of question which returns with the\nuncertainties and difficulties widely felt in the Church to be gathering\nover its hitherto unvexed belief in miracles as signs of a divine\nactivity more immediate than it has recognized in the regular processes\nof Nature.\n\nThe majority of uneducated Christians still hold, as formerly in each of\nthe points just mentioned, to the traditional view. Miracle as a divine\nintervention in the natural order, a more close and direct divine\ncontact with the course of things than is the case in ordinary\nexperience, they regard as the inseparable and necessary concomitant and\nproof of a divine Revelation. To deny miracles, thus understood, is\ncensured as equivalent to denial of the reality of the Revelation. But\nit is rather surprising, because it is rare, to find a man of such note\nin literature as Dr. W. Robertson Nicoll affirming[35] that one cannot\nbe a Christian without believing at least two miracles, the virgin\nbirth and the physical resurrection of the Christ. Without comment on\nthe significance of this retreat upon the minimum of miracle, it must\nhere be noted that a minority of the Church, not inferior to their\nbrethren in learning and piety, believe that there are no tides in God's\npresence in Nature, that his contact with it is always of the closest:--\n\n    \"Closer is he than breathing, and nearer than hands or feet.\"\n\nAll natural operations are to them divine operations. \"Nature,\" said Dr.\nMartineau, \"is God's mask, not his competitor.\" While his agency in\nNature may be _recognized_ at one time more than at another, it _exists_\nat any time fully as much as at any other. In the interest of this\nfundamental truth of religion they affirm that miracles in the\ntraditional sense of the word, and in their traditional limitation to\nthe small measure of time and space covered by Biblical narratives,\nnever occurred. Events reputed miraculous have indeed occurred, but\nsimply as unusual, inexplicable phenomena in the natural order of\nthings, the natural products of exceptionally endowed life, and, whether\nin ancient time or modern, the same sort of thing the world over. To the\nargument that this involves denial of a supernatural Revelation they\nreply that it is mere reasoning in a circle. For if one begs the\nquestion at the outset by defining supernatural Revelation as revelation\nnecessarily evidenced by miraculous divine intervention, then, of\ncourse, denial of this is denial of that, and how is the argument\nadvanced? But, besides this, the question-begging definition is a\nfallacious confusing of the contents of the Revelation with its\nconcomitants, and of its essentially spiritual character with phenomena\nin the sphere of the senses.\n\nThe turning-point in this argument between the two parties in the Church\nhas been reached in the antipodal change, already referred to, from the\nold to the new apologetics,--a change whose inevitable consequences do\nnot yet seem to be clearly discerned by either party in the discussion.\nThe contention that denial of miracles as traditionally understood\ncarries denial of supernatural Revelation has been virtually set aside,\nwith its question-begging definition and circular reasoning, by the\napologetics now current among believers in at least a minimum of miracle\nin the traditional sense of the word,--especially in the two chief\nmiracles of the virgin birth and the physical resurrection of Jesus. As\nan eminent representative of these the late Dr. A. B. Bruce may be\ncited. These adduce \"the moral miracle,\" the sinlessness of Jesus, as\nevidential for the reality of the physical miracles as its \"congruous\naccompaniments.\" \"If,\" says Dr. Bruce, \"we receive Him as the great\nmoral miracle, we shall receive much more for His sake.\"[36] But what a\nturn-about of the traditional argument on the evidences! The older\napologetes argued: This crown of miraculous power bespeaks the royal\ndignity of the wearer. The modern apologete reasons: This royal\ncharacter must have a crown of miraculous power corresponding with his\nmoral worth. In this antipodal reverse of Christian thought it is quite\nplain that for evidential purposes the miracle is stripped of its\nancient value. And it has already been observed that modern knowledge\nhas now transferred many of the Biblical miracles to the new rooms\ndiscovered for them in the natural order of things. It is not premature,\ntherefore, for leaders of Christian thought to put once more to\nthemselves the question, constantly recurring as learning advances:\nWhat theological readjustment should we have to make, if obliged to\nconcede that the ancient belief in miracle is not inseparable from\nbelief in a supernatural Revelation, not indispensable to belief\ntherein? What modified conception must we form, if constrained to admit\nthat the living God, ever immanent in Nature, intervenes in Nature no\nmore at one time than another? What, indeed, but a revised and true in\nplace of a mistaken conception of the term _Supernatural_?\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[35] \"The Church asks, and it is entitled to ask the critic: Do you\nbelieve in the Incarnation and Resurrection of Jesus Christ?... If he\nreplies in the negative, he has missed the way, and has put himself\noutside of the Church of Christ.\"--_The Church's One Foundation_, p. 4.\n[Note that \"Incarnation\" and \"Resurrection\" are terms which Dr. Nicoll\nconstrues as denoting physical miracles.]\n\nWhat Dr. Nicoll here means by \"outside of the Church\" he indicates by\nsaying elsewhere, that philosophers who reckon goodness as everything,\nand miracles as impossible, \"are not Christians\" (_op. cit._, p. 10).\n\nThis conditioning of Christian character upon an intellectual judgment\nconcerning the reality of remote occurrences is both unbiblical and\nunethical, as well as absurd when practically applied. Some years since,\nDr. E. A. Abbott, who admits no miracle in the life of Christ, published\na book, _The Spirit on the Waters_, in which he inculcated the worship\nof Christ. Yet, according to Dr. Nicoll, such a man is no Christian!\n\n[36] _The Miraculous Element in the Gospels_, p. 353.\n\n\n\n\nVII\n\n\n\n\nVII\n\n    SYNOPSIS.--Account to be made of the law of atrophy through\n    disuse.--The virgin birth and the corporeal resurrection of Jesus,\n    the two miracles now insisted on as the irreducible minimum,\n    affected by this law.--The vital truths of the incarnation and\n    immortality independent of these miracles.--These truths now placed\n    on higher ground in a truer conception of the supernatural.--The\n    true supernatural is the spiritual, not the miraculous.--Scepticism\n    bred from the contrary view.--The miracle narratives, while less\n    evidential for religion, not unimportant for history.--Psychical\n    research a needful auxiliary for the scientific critic of these.\n\n\nTo the true conception of the supernatural we shall presently come. But\nwe cannot proceed without briefly reminding ourselves of the certain\nconsequences of this now far advanced dropping of miracles by modern\napologetics from their ancient use as evidences of a supernatural\nRevelation. We are not ignorant of the law, which holds throughout the\nmaterial, the mental, and the moral realms, that disuse tends to atrophy\nand extinction. Disused organs cease to exist, as in the eyeless\ncave-fish. For centuries the story of the miraculous birth of Jesus was\nserviceable for confirmation of his claim to be the Son of God. In the\naddress of the angel of the annunciation to Mary that claim is expressly\nrested on the miraculous conception of \"the holy thing.\"[37] But as\nethical enlightenment grows, the conviction grows that, whether the\nphysiological ground of that claim be tenable or not, the ethical ground\nof it is essentially higher. _Father_ and _son_ even in human\nrelationships are terms of more than physiological import. It is matter\nof frequent experience that, where the ethical character of such\nrelationship is lacking, the physiological counts for nothing.\nMoreover, the divine sonship of Jesus in a purely ethical view rests on\nground not only higher but incontestable. And so in our time theologians\nprefer to rest it on foundations that cannot be shaken, on his moral\noneness with God, the divineness of his spirit, the ideal perfectness of\nhis life. The strength of this position being realized, the world begins\nto hear from Christian thinkers the innovating affirmation that belief\nof the miraculous birth can no longer be deemed essential to\nChristianity; else it would not have been left unmentioned in two of the\nfour Gospels, and in every extant Apostolic letter. And now we hear\ntheologians saying: \"I accept it, but I place it no more among the\nevidences of Christianity. I defend it, but cannot employ it in the\ndefence of supernatural Revelation.\" Such a stage of thought is only\ntransitional. An antiquated argument does not long survive in the world\nof thought.[38] Military weapons that have become unserviceable soon\nfind their way either to the museum or the foundry. It is shortsighted\nnot to foresee the inevitable effect on our theological material of the\nlaw of atrophy through disuse. The case of the miracle is the case of a\npillar originally put in for the support of an ancient roof. When the\nroof has a modern truss put beneath it springing from wall to wall, the\npillar becomes an obstacle, and is removed.\n\nBut as in such a case the roof, otherwise supported, does not fall in\nwhen the pillar is removed, so neither is the central Christian truth of\nthe incarnation imperilled by any weakening or vanishing of belief in\nthe doctrine of the virgin birth. In a discussion of the subject in\nConvocation at York, England, while these pages were being written, the\nDean of Ripon (Dr. Boyd Carpenter) urged that it must be borne in mind\nthat the incarnation and the virgin birth were two different things, and\nthat some who found difficulty in the latter fully accepted the former.\nIn a recent sermon Dr. Briggs insists likewise upon this: \"The virgin\nbirth is only one of many statements of the mode of incarnation.... The\ndoctrine of the incarnation does not depend upon the virgin birth.... It\nis only a minor matter connected with the incarnation, and should have a\nsubordinate place in the doctrine.... At the same time the virgin birth\nis a New Testament doctrine, and we must give it its proper place and\nimportance.... The favorite idea of the incarnation among the people has\never been the simpler one of the virgin birth, as in the Ave Maria. The\ntheologians have ever preferred the more profound doctrine of the Hymn\nof the Logos [John i. 1-18].\"[39] Nay, it may even be found that the\nweakening of belief in the incarnation as an isolated and miraculous\nevent may tend to promote a profounder conception of it, that brings the\ndivine and the human into touch and union at all points instead of in\none point.[40]\n\nA similar change of thought, less remarked than its significance\ndeserves, is concerned with that other great miracle, the corporeal\nresurrection of Jesus, which such writers as Dr. Nicoll couple with that\nof his virgin birth as the irreducible minimum of miracle, belief in\nwhich is essential to Christian discipleship.[41] For many centuries the\nresurrection story in the Gospels has served as the conclusive proof\nboth of the divine sonship of Jesus,[42] and of our own resurrection to\nimmortality.[43] In the churches it is still popularly regarded as the\nsupreme, sufficient, and indispensable fact required for the basis of\nfaith. But in many a Christian mind the thought has dawned, that a\nsingle fact cannot give adequate ground for the general inference of a\nuniversal principle; that a remote historical fact, however strongly\nattested, can evince only what _has_ taken place in a given case, not\nwhat _will_ or _must_ occur in other cases; while it is also inevitably\nmore or less pursued by critical doubt of the attestations supporting\nit.\n\nThis rising tide of reflection has compelled resort to higher ground, to\nthe inward evidences in the nature of mind that are more secure from the\ndoubt to which all that is merely external and historical is exposed. A\nclear distinction has been discerned between the _real_ resurrection of\nJesus--his rising from the mortal state into the immortal, and his\n_phenomenal_ resurrection--the manifestations of his change that are\nrelated as having been objectively witnessed. What took place in the\ninvisible world--his real resurrection--is now more emphasized by\nChristian thinkers than the phenomenal resurrection in the visible\nworld. So conservatively orthodox a writer as Dr. G. D. Boardman goes so\nfar as to say: \"After all, the real question in the matter of his\nresurrection is not, 'Did Christ's body rise?' That is but a\nsubordinate, incidental issue.\" The real question, as Dr. Boardman\nadmits, is, \"Whether Jesus Christ himself is risen, and is alive\nto-day.\"[44] The main stress of Christian thought to-day is not laid, as\nformerly, on the phenomena recorded in the story of the resurrection,\nbut on the psychological, moral, and rational evidences of a\nresurrection to immortality that until recent times were comparatively\ndisregarded.[45] Meanwhile the vindication of the reality of the\nphenomena related of the risen Jesus, including his bodily ascension,\nthough not a matter of indifference to many of those who have found the\nhigher grounds of faith, has become to them of subordinate importance.\n\nIt is well for Christian faith that its supersensuous and impregnable\ngrounds have been occupied. It is certain that ancient records of\nexternal phenomena cannot in future constitute, as heretofore, the\nstronghold of faith. But it is by no means yet certain that they have\nlost serviceableness as, at least, outworks of the stronghold. While the\ndoctrine of the virgin birth seems to be threatened by atrophy, the\ndoctrine of the bodily resurrection, though retired from primary to\nsecondary rank, seems to be waiting rather for clarification by further\nknowledge.\n\nSomething of an objective nature certainly lies at its basis;\n_something_ of an external sort, not the product of mere imagination,\ntook place. To the fact thus indefinitely stated, that hallowing of\nSunday as a day of sacred and joyful observance which is coeval with the\nearliest traditions, and antedates all records, is an attestation as\nsignificant as any monumental marble. No hallucination theory, no\ngradual rise and growth of hope in the minds of a reflective few, can\naccount for that solid primeval monument. But _what_ occurred, the\nreality in distinctness from any legendary accretions, we shall be\nbetter able to conclude, when the truth shall have been threshed out\nconcerning the reality, at present strongly attested, and as strongly\ncontroverted, of certain extraordinary but occult psychical powers.[46]\n\nA point of high significance for those who would cultivate a religious\nfaith not liable to be affected by changes of intellectual outlook or\ninsight is, that this lower valuation of miracle observable among\nChristian thinkers has not been reached through breaches made by\nsceptical doubts of the reality of a supernatural Revelation. They\nhave, of course, felt the reasonableness of the difficulties with which\ntraditional opinions have been encumbered by the advance of knowledge.\nBut so far from giving way thereupon to doubts of the reality of divine\nRevelation, they have sought and found less assailable defences for\ntheir faith in it than those that sufficed their fathers. And their\nsatisfaction therewith stands in no sympathy with those who hold it a\nmark of enlightenment to assume with Matthew Arnold, that \"miracles do\nnot happen.\" It has resulted rather from reaching the higher grounds of\nreligious thought, on which supernatural Revelation is recognized in its\nessential character as distinctively moral and spiritual.\n\nThe true supernatural is the _spiritual_, not the miraculous, a higher\norder of Nature, not a contradiction of Nature. The Revelation of Jesus\nwas altogether spiritual. It consisted in the ideas of God which he\ncommunicated by his ministry and teaching, by his character and life.\nBut this, the real supernatural, was not obvious as such to his\ncontemporaries. They looked for it in the lower region of physical\neffects. And here the Church also in its embryonic spiritual life, in\nits proneness to externalize religion in forms of rite, and creed, and\norganization, has thought to find it. Jesus' reproof, \"Except ye see\nsigns and wonders ye will not believe,\" is still pertinent to those who\nwill not have it that the supernatural Revelation--spiritual though it\nbe--can be recognized or believed in apart from an acknowledgment of\nattendant miracles, wrought in physical nature by an intervention of\nGod. Such a contention, however, is as futile and desperate as was John\nWesley's declaration, \"The giving up of witchcraft is in effect the\ngiving up of the Bible.\" Such mischievous fallacies succeed only in\nblinding many a mind to the real issue which the moral and spiritual\nRevelation of Jesus makes with men of the twentieth century. It is these\nfallacies, and not their critics, that create the most of\nscepticism.[47]\n\nBut while the question whether miracles are credible has ceased to be of\nvital importance, it has by no means lost all importance. On the\ncontrary, so long as the path of progress is guided by the lamp of\nexperience, so long will it be of consequence that the historical record\nof experience be found trustworthy. It may suit the overweening pride\nwhich defies both the past and the present to say with Bonaparte, that\nhistory is only a fable that men have agreed to believe. But it is a\nhuman interest, and a satisfaction of normal minds to establish, so far\nas reason permits, the credibility of every record ostensibly historic.\nTo discover that ancient experiences, once supposed to be miraculous\nraisings from real death, may reasonably be classed with well attested\nexperiences of to-day, better understood as resuscitations from a\ndeathlike trance, should be welcomed by unprejudiced historical critics,\nas redeeming portions of the ancient record from mistaken disparagement\nas legendary. That further study may accredit as facts, or at least as\nfounded on facts, some other marvels in that record cannot, except by\narrant dogmatism, be pronounced improbable. Nevertheless, it cannot be\nexpected that the legendary element, which both the Old and the New\nTestament in greater and less degree exhibit, can ever be eliminated.\nSuch stories as that of the origin of languages at Babel, and that of\nthe resurrection of ancient saints at Jesus' resurrection are\nindubitable cases of it. But the legendary element, though permanent, is\nat present undefined. To define it is the problem of the critical\nstudent, a problem most difficult to him whose judgment is least\nsubjective; and he will welcome every contribution that advancing\nknowledge can supply.\n\nRegarding miracle as the natural product of exceptionally endowed life,\nthere is no source from which more light can be shed on its Biblical\nrecord than in those studies of the exceptional phenomena and occult\npowers of life which are prosecuted by the Society for Psychical\nResearch, whose results are recorded in its published _Proceedings_. For\nthose familiar with this record the legendary element in the Bible tends\nto shrink into smaller compass than many critics assign it. In the\ninterest both of the Bible and of science it is regrettable that the\nresults of these researches, though conducted by men of high eminence\nin the scientific world, still encounter the same hostile scepticism\neven from some Christian believers that Hume directed against the\nBiblical miracles. Mr. Gladstone has put himself on record against this\nphilistinism, saying that \"psychical research is by far the most\nimportant work that is being done in the world.\" Were one disposed to\nprophesy, very reasonable grounds could be produced for the prediction\nthat, great as was the advance of the nineteenth century in physical\nknowledge, the twentieth century will witness an advance in psychical\nknowledge equally great. In this advance one may not unreasonably\nanticipate that some, at least, of the Biblical miracles may be relieved\nfrom the scepticism that now widely discredits them.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[37] Luke i. 35.\n\n[38] To what extent the law of atrophy has begun to work upon the\ndoctrine of the virgin birth appears in the recent utterance of so\neminent an evangelical scholar as Dr. R. F. Horton, of London. The\nfollowing report of his remarks in a Christmas sermon in 1901 is taken\nfrom the _Christian World_, London. \"We could not imagine Paul, Peter,\nand John all ignoring something essential to the Gospel they preached.\nStrictly speaking, this narrative in Matthew and Luke was one of the\nlatest touches in the Gospel, belonging to a period forty or fifty years\nafter the Lord had passed away, when men had begun to realize what he\nwas--the Son of God--and tried to express their conviction in this form\nor that.\" The implication here is unmistakable, that, in Dr. Horton's\nview, subjective considerations in the minds of pious believers, rather\nthan objective fact, form the basis of the story.\n\n[39] See the Sermon on \"Born of a Virgin,\" in the volume on _The\nIncarnation of Our Lord_.\n\n[40] \"Christian thought has not erred by asserting too much concerning\nthe incarnation of God, but, on the contrary, too little.... If ever\noverblown by blasts of denial, it is for wanting breadth of base.... Men\nhave disbelieved the incarnation, because told that all there was of it\nwas in Christ; and they reject what is presented as exceptional to the\ngeneral way of God. They must be told to believe more; that the age-long\nway of God is in a perpetually increasing incarnation of life, whose\nclimax and crown is the divine fulness of life in Christ.\"--From a\ndiscourse by the present writer on \"Life and its Incarnations,\" in the\nvolume, _New Points to Old Texts_. (James Clarke & Co., London. Thomas\nWhittaker, New York, 1889.)\n\n[41] See page 97 and Note.\n\n[42] Romans i. 4.\n\n[43] 1 Corinthians xv. 16-23.\n\n[44] _Our Risen King's Forty Days_, 1902.\n\n[45] In strong contrast with this are the reactionary protests of Dr. W.\nR. Nicoll: \"To talk of the resurrection of the spirit is preposterous.\nThe spirit does not die, and therefore cannot rise.... The one\nresurrection of which the New Testament knows, the one resurrection\nwhich allows to language any meaning, is the resurrection of the body,\nthe resurrection which leaves the grave empty\" (_op. cit._ p. 134).\n\nIt should be noted here that Jesus' argument with the Sadducees on the\nresurrection (Luke xx. 37, 38) logically proceeds on the assumption that\nliving after death and rising after death are convertible terms. Also,\nthat the contrast involved in the idea of the resurrection (the\n_anastasis_, or rising up) is a contrast not between the grave and the\nsky, but between the lower life of mortals and the higher life immortal.\n\nFor an extended exhibition of this line of evidence see \"The Assurance\nof Immortality,\" and \"The Present Pledge of Life to Come\" (in two\nvolumes of discourses by the present writer), London, James Clarke & Co.\nNew York, Thomas Whittaker, 1888 and 1889.\n\n[46] Could it have been only an apparition? The \"census of\nhallucinations\" conducted some ten years since by the Society for\nPsychical Research evinced the reality of veridical apparitions of\ndeceased persons at or near the time of their death, showing the number\nof verified cases to be so large as to exclude the supposition of chance\nhallucination (see _Proceedings_, August, 1894). Or could it have been a\nmaterial body suddenly becoming visible in a closed room, as narrated by\nLuke and John? First-class evidence, if there can be any such for such\noccurrences, has been exhibited for such phenomena as the passage of\nsolid substances through intervening doors and walls--easy enough, say\nmathematicians, for a being familiar with the \"fourth dimension\"--and of\nthe levitation of heavy bodies without physical support. (See\n_Proceedings_, January, 1894, and March, 1895.) As to such things\nscepticism is doubtless in order, but dogmatic contradiction is not.\n_Sub judice lis est._\n\n[47] Professor Borden P. Bowne has thus exhibited this great mistake and\nits grievous consequence:--\n\n\"In popular thought, religious and irreligious alike, the natural is\nsupposed to be something that runs itself without any internal guidance\nor external interference. The supernatural, on the other hand, if there\nbe any such thing, is not supposed to manifest itself through the\nnatural, but by means of portents, prodigies, interpositions, departures\nfrom, or infractions of, natural law in general. The realm of law\nbelongs to the natural, and the natural runs itself. Hence, if we are to\nfind anything supernatural, we must look for it in the abnormal, the\nchaotic, the lawless, or that which defies all reduction to order that\nmay be depended on. This notion underlies the traditional debate between\nnaturalism and supernaturalism.... This unhappy misconception of the\nrelation of the natural to the supernatural has practically led the\ngreat body of uncritical thinkers into the grotesque inversion of all\nreason--the more law and order, the less God.\"--_Zion's Herald_, August\n22, 1900.\n\n\n\n\nVIII\n\n\n\n\nVIII\n\n    SYNOPSIS.--The cardinal point in the present discussion, the reality\n    not of miracles but of the supernatural.--Fallacy of pointing to\n    physical events as essential characteristics of supernatural\n    Revelation.--The character of a revelation determined not by its\n    circumstances, but by its contents.--Moral nature supernatural to\n    physical.--Nature a hierarchy of natures.--Supernatural Religion\n    historically attested by the moral development it\n    generates.--Transfer of its distinctive note from moral ideals to\n    physical marvels a costly error.--Jesus' miracles _a_ revelation, of\n    a type common with others before and since.--The unique Revelation\n    of Jesus was in the higher realm of divine ideas and ideals.--These,\n    while unrealized in human life, still exhibit the fact of a\n    supernatural Revelation.--The distinction of natural and\n    supernatural belongs to the period of moral progress up to the\n    spiritual maturity of man in the image of God. The divine\n    possibilities of humanity, imaged in Jesus, revealed as our\n    inheritance and our prize.\n\n\nIt remains finally to emphasize the point of cardinal importance in the\nconsiderations that have been presented. This is not the reality of\nmiracles, but the reality of the supernatural, what it really is, as\ndistinct from what it has been thought to be. The advance of science and\nphilosophy has brought to the front this question: \"Have those who\nreject the claims of supernatural Religion been misinformed as to what\nit is?\" Is it, as they have been told, dependent for its attestation on\nsigns and wonders occurring in the sphere of the senses? Does it require\nacceptance of these, as well as of its teachings? Or is its\ncharacteristic appeal wholly to the higher nature of man, relying for\nits attestation on the witness borne to it by this, rather than by\nextraordinary phenomena presented to the senses? There is at present no\nintellectual interest of Christianity more urgent than this: to present\nto minds imbued with modern learning the true conception of the\nsupernatural and of supernatural Religion.\n\nMiracles, legitimately viewed as the natural product of extraordinary\npsychical power, or, to phrase it otherwise, of an exceptional vital\nendowment, belong not to the Hebrew race alone, nor did they cease when\nthe last survivor of the Jewish apostles of Christianity passed away at\nthe end of the first century. This traditional opinion ought by this\ntime to have been entombed together with its long defunct relative,\nwhich represented this globe as the fixed centre of the revolving\nheavens. Miracles have the same universality as human life. Nor will\ntheir record be closed till the evolution of life is complete. Animal\nlife, advancing through geologic aeons to the advent of man, in him\nreached its climax. Spiritual life, appearing in him as a new bud on an\nold stock, is evidently far from its climax still. To believe in\nmiracles, as rightly understood, is to believe in spirit and life, and\nin further unfoldings of their still latent powers.\n\nThis, however, is just now of subordinate importance. The present\ninterest of chief moment is a riddance of the hoary fallacy that\nvitiates the current idea of a supernatural Revelation by looking for\nits specific characteristics to the physical world. By this deplorable\nfallacy Christian theology has blinded the minds of many scientific men\nto the essential claims of Christianity, with immense damage in the\narrested development of their religious nature through the scepticism\ninevitably but needlessly provoked by this great mistake. When Elijah\nproclaims to idolaters that their deity is no God, and, as we read,\ncorroborates his words by calling down fire from heaven to consume his\nsacrifice, it is reckoned as supernatural Revelation. But it is not so\nreckoned when the sage in the book of Proverbs proclaims to a nation of\nreligious formalists the moral character of God: \"To do righteousness\nand justice is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice.\" This is\naccounted as ethical teaching, somewhat in advance of the times. A pagan\nrather than a Christian way of thinking is discoverable here. In each of\nthe cases cited the specific character of supernatural Revelation is\nequally evident,--the disclosure of spiritual truth above the natural\nthought of the natural men to whom it came. The character of any\nrevelation is determined by the character of the truth made known, not\nby the drapery of circumstances connected with the making known. Clothes\ndo not make the man, though coarse or careless people may think so. What\nbelongs to the moral and spiritual order is supernatural to what\nbelongs to the material and physical order.\n\nThis way of thinking will be forced on common minds by thoughtful\nobservation of common things. Animate nature of the lowest rank, as in\nthe grass, is of a higher natural order than inanimate nature in the\nsoil the grass springs from. Sentient nature, as in the ox, is of a\nhigher order than the non-sentient in the grass. Self-conscious and\nreflective nature in the man is of a higher order than the selfless and\nnon-reflective nature in his beast of burden. In the composite being of\nman all these orders of nature coexist, and each higher is supernatural\nto the nature below it. Nature, the comprehensive term for _all that\ncomes into being_, is a hierarchy of natures, rising rank above rank\nfrom the lowest to the highest. The highest nature known to us,\nsupernatural to all below it, can only be the moral nature, whose full\nsatisfaction is necessary to the highest satisfaction of a man, and in\nwhose complete development only can be realized in permanency his\nperfected welfare as a social being.\n\nNow it is precisely in the progress of moral development that\nsupernatural Religion manifests itself as a reality. Religion, indeed,\nis as natural to man as Art. But there is religion and Religion, as\nthere is art and Art--the sexual religion of the primitive Semites, the\nanimistic religion of China, the spiritual Religion that flowered on the\nMount of the Beatitudes, embryonic religion and Religion adult; all,\nindeed, natural, yet of lower and of higher grade. Doubtless, Religion\nof whatever grade outranks all other human activities by its distinctive\naspiration to transcend the bounds of space and time and sense, and to\nlink the individual to the universal; and so all Religion sounds, feebly\nor distinctly, the note of the supernatural. But this is the resonant\nnote of the spiritual Religion which unfolds in the moral progress of\nthe world. As moral nature is supernatural to the psychical and the\nphysical, so is its consummate bloom of spiritual Religion to be ranked\nas such, relatively to the religions which more or less dimly and\nblindly are yearning and groping toward the light that never was on sea\nor land. Thus defining the word according to the nature of the thing,\nsupernatural Religion, with its corollary of supernatural Revelation not\nas an apparition from without, but as an unfolding from within, is both\na fact and a factor in the development of spiritual man.\n\nThe term _supernatural Religion_ has been rightly applied to that system\nof religious conceptions, ideals, and motives, whose effective culture\nof the moral nature is attested historically by a moral development\nsuperior to the product of any other known religion. Whether the\ngreatest saints of Christianity are all of them whiter souls than any\nthat can be found among the disciples of any other religion, may be\nmatter for argument. There can be no gainsaying the fact that, of great\nand lowly together, no other religion shows so many saints, or has so\nadvanced the general moral development in lands where it is widely\nfollowed. But its essential character has been obscured, its appeal to\nman's highest nature foiled, and its power lamed by the wretched fallacy\nthat has transferred its distinctive note of the supernatural from its\ndivine ideals to the physical marvels embedded in the record of its\noriginal promulgation, even conditioning its validity and authority upon\ntheir reality. Such is the false issue which, to the discredit of\nChristianity, theology has presented to science. Such is the confusion\nof ideas that in the light of modern knowledge inevitably blocks the way\nto a reasonable religious faith in multitudes of minds thereby offended.\nFrom this costly error Christian theology at length shows signs that it\nis about to extricate itself.[48]\n\nAs to the Christian miracles, there can be no reasonable doubt that\n\"mighty works,\" deemed by many of his contemporaries superhuman, were\nwrought by Jesus. These, whatever they were, must be regarded as the\nnatural effluence of a transcendently endowed life. Taking place in the\nsphere of the senses, they were _a_ revelation of the type seen before\nand since in the lives of wonder-workers ancient and modern, in whom the\npower of mind over matter, however astonishing and mysterious, is\nrecognized as belonging to the natural order of things no less than the\nunexplored Antarctic belongs to the globe. But _the_ Revelation which he\ngave to human thought as a new thing, a heavenly vision unprecedented,\nwas in the higher realm of the moral and spiritual life. This was the\ntrue supernatural, whose reality and power are separable from all its\nenvironment of circumstances, and wholly independent thereof. The\ncharacteristic ideals of Jesus, his profound consciousness of God, his\nfilial thought of God, his saturation with the conviction of his moral\noneness with God,[49] his realization of brotherhood with the meanest\nhuman being, still transcend the common level of natural humanity even\namong his disciples. As thus transcendent they are supernatural still.\nTill reached and realized, they manifest the fact of a supernatural\nRevelation in that peerless life as plainly as the sun is manifest in\nthe splendor of a cloudless day.\n\nIn the coming but distant age, when man's spiritual nature, now so\nembryonic, shall have become adult, it will doubtless so pervade and\nrule the physical and psychical natures which it inhabits that the\ndistinction between natural and supernatural, so important in the\nperiod of its development, will become foreign alike to thought and\nspeech. But until the making of man in the image of God is complete,\nwhen the spiritual element in our composite being, now struggling for\ndevelopment, shall be manifest in its ultimate maturity and ascendency\nas the distinctive and proper nature of humanity, it is of supreme\nimportance for the Christian teacher, who would point and urge to the\nheights of being, to free men's minds of error as to what the real\nsupernatural is. Not the fancied disturber of the world's ordered\nharmonies, but that highest Nature which is the moulder, the glory, and\nthe crown of all the lower.\n\nImaged to us in the human perfectness of Jesus, the ideal Son of man, it\nis revealed as the distinctive inheritance and prize of the humanity\nthat essays to think the thoughts and walk the ways of God. To each of\nus is it given in germ by our human birth, to be fostered and nourished\nin converse with the Infinite Presence that inhabits all things, till\nits divine possibilities appear in the ultimate \"revealing of the sons\nof God,\"[50] full grown \"according to the measure of the stature of the\nfulness of Christ.\"[51]\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[48] \"Upon the conception of the supernatural as the personal,\"\nsays Professor Nash, \"apologetics must found the claims of\nChristianity.\"--_Ethics and Revelation._\n\n[49] The words in which Jesus expresses this are much more extraordinary\nand profoundly significant than any of those mighty works of his, the\nlike of which are recorded of the ancient prophets. Jesus was conscious\nof God as living in him, and of himself as living in God, in the unity\nof the one eternal life. Not merely as a man _of_ God, but as a man _in_\nGod, as no other man has consciously been, does Jesus utter such sayings\nas, \"I am the light of the world,\" \"I and my Father are one.\" (See\n\"Jesus the Ideal Man,\" by the present writer. _The New World_, June,\n1897.)\n\n[50] Romans viii. 19.\n\n[51] Ephesians iv. 13.\n\n\n\n\n                        New Testament Handbooks\n\n                               EDITED BY\n\n                            SHAILER MATHEWS\n\n        _Professor of New Testament History and Interpretation,\n                         University of Chicago_\n\n\n    Arrangements are made for the following volumes, and the publishers\n    will, on request, send notice of the issue of each volume as it\n    appears and each descriptive circular sent out later; such requests\n    for information should state whether address is permanent or not:--\n\n\nTHE HISTORY OF THE TEXTUAL CRITICISM OF THE NEW TESTAMENT\n\n  Prof. MARVIN R. VINCENT, Professor of New Testament Exegesis, Union\n  Theological Seminary.                                    [_Now ready._\n\n    Professor Vincent's contributions to the study of the New Testament\n    rank him among the first American exegetes. His most recent\n    publication is \"A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistles\n    to the Philippians and to Philemon\" (_International Critical\n    Commentary_), which was preceded by a \"Students' New Testament\n    Handbook,\" \"Word Studies in the New Testament,\" and others.\n\n\nTHE HISTORY OF THE HIGHER CRITICISM OF THE NEW TESTAMENT\n\n  Prof. HENRY S. NASH, Professor of New Testament Interpretation,\n  Cambridge Divinity School.                               [_Now ready._\n\n    Of Professor Nash's \"Genesis of the Social Conscience,\" _The\n    Outlook_ said: \"The results of Professor Nash's ripe thought are\n    presented in a luminous, compact, and often epigrammatic style. The\n    treatment is at once masterful and helpful, and the book ought to be\n    a quickening influence of the highest kind; it surely will establish\n    the fame of its author as a profound thinker, one from whom we have\n    a right to expect future inspiration of a kindred sort.\"\n\n\nINTRODUCTION TO THE BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT\n\n  Prof. B. WISNER BACON, Professor of New Testament Interpretation, Yale\n  University.                                              [_Now ready._\n\n    Professor Bacon's works in the field of Old Testament criticism\n    include \"The Triple Tradition of Exodus,\" and \"The Genesis of\n    Genesis,\" a study of the documentary sources of the books of Moses.\n    In the field of New Testament study he has published a number of\n    brilliant papers, the most recent of which is \"The Autobiography of\n    Jesus,\" in the _American Journal of Theology_.\n\n\nTHE HISTORY OF NEW TESTAMENT TIMES IN PALESTINE\n\n  Prof. SHAILER MATHEWS, Professor of New Testament History and\n  Interpretation, The University of Chicago.               [_Now ready._\n\n    _The Congregationalist_ says of Prof. Shailer Mathews's recent work,\n    \"The Social Teaching of Jesus\": \"Re-reading deepens the impression\n    that the author is scholarly, devout, awake to all modern thought,\n    and yet conservative and pre-eminently sane. If, after reading the\n    chapters dealing with Jesus' attitude toward man, society, the\n    family, the state, and wealth, the reader will not agree with us in\n    this opinion, we greatly err as prophets.\"\n\n\nTHE LIFE OF PAUL\n\n  Prof. RUSH RHEES, President of the University of Rochester.\n\n    Professor Rhees is well known from his series of \"Inductive Lessons\"\n    contributed to the _Sunday School Times_. His \"Outline of the Life\n    of Paul,\" privately printed, has had a flattering reception from New\n    Testament scholars.\n\n\nTHE HISTORY OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE\n\n  Dr. C. W. VOTAW, Instructor in New Testament Literature, The\n  University of Chicago.\n\n    Of Dr. Votaw's \"Inductive Study of the Founding of the Christian\n    Church,\" _Modern Church_, Edinburgh, says: \"No fuller analysis of\n    the later books of the New Testament could be desired, and no better\n    programme could be offered for their study, than that afforded in\n    the scheme of fifty lessons on the _Founding of the Christian\n    Church_, by Clyde W. Votaw. It is well adapted alike for practical\n    and more scholarly students of the Bible.\"\n\n\nTHE TEACHING OF JESUS\n\n  Prof. GEORGE B. STEVENS, Professor of Systematic Theology, Yale\n  University.                                              [_Now ready._\n\n    Professor Stevens's volumes upon \"The Johannine Theology,\" \"The\n    Pauline Theology,\" as well as his recent volume on \"The Theology of\n    the New Testament,\" have made him probably the most prominent writer\n    on biblical theology in America. His new volume will be among the\n    most important of his works.\n\n\nTHE BIBLICAL THEOLOGY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT\n\n  Prof. E. P. GOULD, Professor of New Testament Interpretation,\n  Protestant Episcopal Divinity School, Philadelphia.      [_Now ready._\n\n    Professor Gould's Commentaries on the Gospel of Mark (in the\n    _International Critical Commentary_) and the Epistles to the\n    Corinthians (in the _American Commentary_) are critical and\n    exegetical attempts to supply those elements which are lacking in\n    existing works of the same general aim and scope.\n\n\nTHE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN LITERATURE UNTIL EUSEBIUS\n\n  Prof. J. W. PLATNER, Professor of Early Church History, Harvard\n  University.\n\n    Professor Platner's work will not only treat the writings of the\n    early Christian writers, but will also treat of the history of the\n    New Testament Canon.\n\n\nOTHERS TO FOLLOW\n\n    \"An excellent series of scholarly, yet concise and inexpensive New\n    Testament handbooks.\"--_Christian Advocate_, New York.\n\n    \"These books are remarkably well suited in language, style, and\n    price, to all students of the New Testament.\"--_The\n    Congregationalist_, Boston.\n\n                   *       *       *       *       *\n\n                         THE MACMILLAN COMPANY\n\n                       66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber's Note (Significant Amendments):\n\n    p. 28, 'Saltpetriere' amended to _Salpetriere_.","title":"Miracles and Supernatural Religion","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":17574}