he meaning of the event. Scepticism simply closes
the door through which we might pass to fuller knowledge. The
questioning of faith holds the door open. To those who have not closed
the door upon the supernatural it is evident that it is permeated with
forces and influences which are not material in their origin or their
effects; that God acts upon the world now as He has ever acted upon it.
If we cannot believe this I do not see that we can believe in God at all
in any intelligible sense. There is to me one attitude toward the
supernatural that is even more hopeless than the attitude of
materialistic scepticism which says, "Miracles do not happen"; and that
is the attitude which says, "Miracles happened in Bible times, but have
never happened since." As the one attitude seems to imply that God made
the world, but after He had made it left it to go on by itself and no
more expresses any interest in it; so the other implies that after God
put the Christian religion in the world He left that to go on by itself
and no longer pays any attention to it. Either to me is wholly
unintelligible and inconceivable.

And what is worse, is wholly out of touch with the revelation of God
made in Holy Scripture. That displays God working in and through the
material universe, and it displays God working in and through the spirit
of man; and it in no place implies that either the material world or the
human order is so perfect as to need no further divine action.
Revelation implies the constant presence and action of God in nature and
in the Church; it implies that both have a forward look and are not ends
in themselves but are moving on toward some ultimate perfection. "The
whole creation groaneth and travaileth ... waiting for the adoption,
that is, the redemption of our body." We look for a new heaven and a new
earth; and human society looks to a perfect consummation in the
fellowship of the saints in light.

Looking out on life from the spiritual point of vantage, we may
hopefully ask our _how_, and there will be an answer. To blessed Mary S.
Gabriel replied: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of
the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which
shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God."--An answer that
was full of light and of deepest mystery. The immediate question--the
mode of her conception--was cleared up; it would be through the direct
action of God the Holy Spirit: but the na