hsemane.

Furthermore, some events, recognized as historical, have been divested
of the miraculous character once attributed to them,--the crossing of
the Red Sea, for instance, by the Hebrew host. A landslip in the
thirteenth century A.D. has been noted as giving historical character to
the story of the Hebrew host under Joshua's command crossing the Jordan
"on dry ground," but in a perfectly natural way. Other classes of
phenomena once regarded as miraculous have been transferred to the
domain of natural processes by the investigations and discoveries that
have been made in the field of psychical research. The forewarning which
God is said to have given the prophet Ahijah of the visit that the
queen was about to pay him in disguise[6] is now recognized as one of
many cases of the mysterious natural function that we label as
"telepathy." The transformations of unruly, vicious, and mentally
disordered characters by hypnotic influence that have been effected at
the Salpetriere in Paris, and elsewhere, by physicians expert in
psychical therapeutics are closely analogous to the cures wrought by
Jesus on some victims of "demoniac possession."[7] The cases of
apparition,[8] also, which have been investigated and verified by the
Society for Psychical Research have laid a solid basis of fact for the
Biblical stories of angels, as at least, a class of phenomena to be
regarded as by no means altogether legendary, but having their place
among natural though mysterious occurrences.

But this progressive paring down of the miraculous element in the Bible
has caused outcries of unfeigned alarm. Christian scholars who have
taken part in it are reproached as deserters to the camp of unbelief.
They are accused of banishing God from his world, and of reducing the
course of events to an order of agencies quite undivine. "Miracle,"
writes one of these brethren,[9] "is the personal intervention of God
into the chain of cause and effect." But what does this mean, except
that, when no miracles occur, God is not personally, _i.e._ actively, in
the chain of natural causes and effects? As Professor Drummond says, "If
God appears periodically, he disappears periodically." It is precisely
this view of the subject that really banishes God from his world. Those
who thus define miracle regard miracles as having ceased at the end of
the Apostolic age in the first century. Except, therefore, for the
narrow range of human history that the Bible covers