ld's work. There we behold the real
supernatural. Nothing is more natural than life, and nothing also more
supernatural. Biology studies all the various forms that the world shows
of it, and affirms that life, though multiform, is one. This embryology
attests, showing that the whole ascent of life through diverse forms
from the lowest to the highest, during the millions of years since life
first manifested its presence on this globe, is recapitulated in the
stages of growth through which the human being passes in the few months
before its birth. And philosophy, which does not seek the living among
the dead, affirms, _omne vivum ex vivo_. The varied but unitary life of
the world is the stream of an exhaustless spring. It is filial to the
life of God, the Father Almighty. What the ancient creed affirmed of the
Christ as the Son of God--whom his beloved disciple recognized as "the
eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested unto
us[34]"--may be truly affirmed of the mysterious reality that is known
as life: "Begotten not made; being of one substance with the Father;
through whom [or which] all things were made." Looking from the derived
and finite life of the world, visible only in the signs of its presence,
but in its reality no more visible than him "whom no man hath seen, nor
can see," up to the life underived, aboriginal, infinite, we recognize
_God_ and _Life_ as terms of identical significance. How superficial the
notion of miracles as "the personal intervention of God into the chain
of cause and effect," in which he is the constant vital element. If an
event deemed miraculous is ever ascribed, as of old, to "the finger of
God," the reality behind the phenomenon is simply a higher or a stronger
power of life than is recognized in an event of a common type--life that
is one with the infinite and universal Life,

"Life that in me has rest,
As I, undying Life, have power in Thee."

FOOTNOTES:

[34] 1 John i. 2.

VI

VI

SYNOPSIS.--The question, both old and new, now confronting
theologians.--Their recent retreat upon the minimum of miracle.--The
present conflict of opinion in the Church.--Its turning-point
reached in the antipodal turn-about in the treatment of miracles
from the old to the new apologetics.--Revision of the traditional
idea of the supernatural required for theological readjustment.

The present line of thought has now reache