thought, no one acquainted with current
discussions will deny; the fact is indubitable. It is reviewed in the
following pages with the constructive purpose of redeeming the idea of
supernatural Religion from pernicious perversion, and of exhibiting it
in its true spiritual significance. The once highly reputed calculations
made to show how the earth's diurnal revolution could be imperceptibly
stopped for Joshua's convenience, and the contention that the
Mediterranean produced fish with gullets capable of giving passage to
Jonah, are now as dead as the chemical controversy about phlogiston. Yet
some sceptical controversialists are still so far from cultivating the
acquaintance with recent thought which they recommend to Christian
theologians, as to persist in affirmations of amazing ignorance, _e.g._
"It is admitted that miracles alone can attest the reality of divine
revelation."[2] Sponsors for this statement must now be sought among
unlearned Christians, or among a few scholars who survive as
cultivators of the old-fashioned argument from the "evidences." Even
among these latter the tendency to minimize miracle is undeniably
apparent in a reduction of the list classified as such, and still more
in the brevity of the list insisted on for the attestation of
Christianity.

A transitional state of mind is clearly evidenced by the present
division and perplexity of Christian thought concerning the Christian
miracles. Many seem to regard further discussion as profitless, and are
ready to shelve the subject. But this attitude of weariness is also
transitional. There must be some thoroughfare to firm ground and clear
vision. It must be found in agreement, first of all, on the real meaning
of a term so variously and vaguely used as _miracle_. In the present
imperfect state of knowledge it may be impossible to enucleate miracle,
however defined, of all mystery. But even so will much be gained for
clear thinking, if miracle can be reasonably related to the greater
mystery which all accept, though none understand,--the mystery of
_life_. This view of the dynamic relation of life to miracle[3] is here
suggested for what it may prove to be worth.

The great and general change that transfigured theology during the
nineteenth century was characteristically ethical. This, indeed, is the
distinctive feature of the so-called new theology, in contrast with that
which the Protestant Reformers inherited from St. Augustine. God and
Man, F