We may group the phenomena and possibilities of existence in some such order as this:

(i) What nature, in the ordinary sense of the word, can do apart from man.

(ii) What can be done over and above nature through the operation of the human will.

(iii) What can be done in addition under the influence and direction of the Author of both nature and man.

Thus we have the sub-human, the human, the superhuman. The second group is not a violation of the first, nor is the third a violation of the second. The three make up nature in its highest sense as signifying God's method of acting on and through His creatures. The importance of this threefold scheme has been recognised by Dean Mansel, Professor Pritchard of Oxford, Professor Challis of Cambridge, and other men of science, but it needs constant reiteration.

We all acknowledge that the forces detected by science in the material world work systematically, not casually, and that if we knew the rules perfectly we could predict all such things as the time and place of the fall of any particular leaf. But let a child come on the scene. Then a new set of rules comes into action and we cannot predict with the same certainty. Will the child run to catch the leaf before it reaches the ground? It is no longer a question of calculable physical forces but of mental decision and of consequent muscular action; and we can only guess. There is no breach of law; but another kind of force, apparently immaterial, comes into play. So it is when God comes on the scene either to prepare the way for Christ or to exhibit Him and to be manifested in Him.

The late Professor Challis, in writing on this subject* some years ago, cited J. S. Mill to the following effect:-he admits that a cause may be counteracted by the direct interposition of an act of the will of some being who has power over nature, and if the being has endowed all causes with the powers that produce their effects, his will may well be supposed able to counteract them. Thus a miracle (Mill continues) is no contradiction to the law of cause and effect; it is merely a new effect produced by the introduction of a new cause (Mill's Logic, ii, 167). This being the case, as Professor Challis goes on to say, it becomes solely a question of the credibility of the testimony.

Letter to the Guardian, November 27th, 1874.

§ 8. THE QUESTION OF EVIDENCE.

In considering the evidence of the truth of the sacred record which contains the miracles, it is manifest that testimony has to do with the actual phenomena observed; not with their hidden causes. Also whole series of phenomena bearing on the mission of Christ have to be considered together. Each book which contains or implies such phenomena has to be studied in itself and in connection with the other books. Each event has to be examined in the light of the whole divine intervention of which it professedly forms a part. Also, certain central or champion phenomena have to be selected for special study. This is necessary because few things which happened 2,000 years ago can be verified by ordinary historical investigation. Of course, a scientific student does not lightly accept testimony to an event which he cannot verify; nevertheless, evidence to the series as a whole, or to leading events in the series, may be of such a character that he is compelled to yield. Even Hume admitted that evidence might be so strong that the rejection of it would be more difficult than the rejection of the supernatural. Renan and Huxley were of the same opinion. Històry must be allowed to tell its own tale in its own way, if only the canons of historical truth are satisfied. The question of questions asked in the twentieth century was asked with equal urgency by men who staked their lives on the answer in the second century. It is this: May we trust the mission of Christ as narrated with substantial agreement, though with more or less variation as to detail, by the four Evangelists? In answer, it must be said that whilst the genuineness of the Gospels as a whole is accepted by all or almost all students of history numerous efforts have been made to eliminate the supernatural from them.

Thus, it has been suggested that the so-called miracles were wrought by natural agencies; or, that they were illusions and were effects of a strong will acting on excited nerves; or, that they are a misinterpretation of Oriental hyperbolical language; or, that they are legendary accretions which did not exist in the lost original Gospel.

The last is the fashionable theory just at present in some quarters, but the burden of proof manifestly lies with the upholders of it. They have yet to produce the original Gospels; or to distinguish (say, in St. Mark, which is

* See Barnes' Christian Evidences, pp. 147 and 149.

F

considered nearest to the original) the portions which have been added between the days of the Apostles and the days of Justin Martyr.

In answer to such speculations the late Professor Smyth, formerly Professor of History in Cambridge, points out in his work on Christian evidences that the miracles are narrated naturally and circumstantially, not in grandiloquent style, not argumentatively, not apologetically. They were read in public from very early times, and wholesale alterations could not have been introduced without observation.

It is a curious thing that accretionists rely much on the inconsistencies to be found in the Gospels. But do they suppose that those ingenious persons who foisted in the miracles also foisted in the inconsistencies in the accounts of the miracles? This would seem rather a suicidal course.

We frankly acknowledge that "legendary accretions" came into existence very early in the history of the churches. Our gospels, however, were evidently too scrupulously watched over to allow of their being tampered with, and accordingly the writers of the accretions had to make new gospels, or, as they are usually called, Apocryphal Gospels. The series commenced in the second century and ran on for some hundreds of years. They are compounded from imagination rather than from tradition and were intended either to teach error, or to satisfy curiosity on certain subjects. In Mr. Harris Cowper's preface to his edition of the Apocryphal Gospels, he says, "before I undertook this work I never realised so completely as I do now the impassable character of the gulf which separates the genuine gospels from these. All who read them with

any attention will see that they are fictions not histories; not traditions even so much as legends. They are all spurious; they all seek to supplement or develop the writings of the New Testament, and all that we have are of more recent date than any of the canonical books."

In the edition which forms part of the Ante-Nicene library there are versions of twenty-two of these so-called gospels, but none of them profess to give an account of the Lord's ministry ; they are occupied with matters relating to His birth and youth, or to His descent into Hades. The editor says of them," they leave on our minds a profound sense of the immeasurable superiority and the unapproachable simplicity and majesty of the canonical writings."

What is the class of miracles which they narrate? They are the same kind that we read in fairy stories and folk-lore,

and Indian legend and Greek myth, suited rather to a magician than to a Saviour. But, as Origen wisely says in answer to Celsus, "Show me the magician who calls upon the spectators of his prodigies to reform their life. . . . The miracles of Christ bear the impress of His own holiness, and He ever uses them as the means of winning to the cause of goodness and truth those who witnessed them." The very opposite is true of these apocryphal narratives. They may be truly called "unhistorical," and by their very contrast they testify to the historical character of the four Gospels.

§ 9. GOSPEL MIRACLES CARRY THEIR OWN EVIDENCE WITH

THEM.

"Miracles as

After

Among the essays of De Quincey there is one on Subjects of Testimony."* The writer puts Hume's argument in a nutshell, and divides the possibilities of testimony into three classes: first, the case of a single witness; secondly, that of many witnesses; thirdly, that of our own selves. dealing shortly with the first and second, he discusses the third more fully. Here experience comes in, and doubt vanishes. He further distinguishes evidential miracles, which simply prove Christianity, from constituent miracles which are Christianity. The first are Credentials, the second Essentials. These last include our Lord's birth and resurrection. He proceeds to dwell on the moral purpose of Christ's miracles and of His mission generally, and points out that the end aimed at called for supernatural means, inasmuch as it is at least equal in importance to the end of original creation. This witness is true, and it is specially interesting as coming from such a source. A scientific study of the Bible teaches us that Christianity is part of a large scheme. On the one hand it is the undoing of the personal and social evils by which human life is infested and debased. On the other it is the bringing men of all sorts and conditions into true relationship with the Fountain Head, and the enabling them by His spirit to share His nature.

We are thus in a position to verify Christianity for ourselves, to "try it," as Coleridge once said. If we find that Christ's mission is producing its normal results wherever its conditions are fulfilled, then we are prepared to endorse the narratives taken as a whole. If, on the contrary, we fail, after careful

* Works, vol. vii, 234 (Author's Edit. 1862).

reading and enquiry and personal thought, to find the mission of Christ to be a force leading to a God-like life, then we must reconsider our position.

Hear the view of one of our most thoughtful writers on the subject. Mr. Lecky in his History of Morality (vol. ii) says, "It was reserved for Christianity to present to the world an ideal character which has filled the hearts of men with an impassioned love, and has shown itself capable of acting on all ages, nations, temperaments, and conditions; and has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but the highest incentive to its practice; and has exerted so deep an influence that it may be freely said that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and than all the exhortations of moralists."

§ 10. CONCLUSION.

I have been trying to show the relative position of scriptural miracles, nature and science. If miracles are not impossible, if experience verifies Christ's mission of which the miracles is an integral part, if Christ Himself be the miracle of miracles, the conclusion seems obvious.

In discussing the physical phenomena which we call miracles. we are really dealing with the spiritual, we are studying the footprints of Him Who is supreme, Whose throne is in heaven while His feet are on earth. We are dealing with what are called the powers of the world to come, and with a sphere where much which is now called supernatural or superhuman will prove to be natural and human. The scriptural idea of miracles is that they bring God to the front, they are condensed and perhaps accelerated samples of divine action.

In Hume's posthumous dialogue on natural religion there are some such words as these: "Supposing there were a God who did not discover Himself immediately to our senses, were it possible for Him to give stronger proofs of His existence than what appears on the whole face of nature? What indeed would such a Being do but copy the present economy of things, render many of His artifices so plain that no stupidity could mistake them, and afford glimpses of still greater artifices which demonstrate His prodigious superiority over our narrow apprehension?"

This is true, but it is not everything. As Christ's teaching