apologetes argued: This crown of miraculous power bespeaks the royal
dignity of the wearer. The modern apologete reasons: This royal
character must have a crown of miraculous power corresponding with his
moral worth. In this antipodal reverse of Christian thought it is quite
plain that for evidential purposes the miracle is stripped of its
ancient value. And it has already been observed that modern knowledge
has now transferred many of the Biblical miracles to the new rooms
discovered for them in the natural order of things. It is not premature,
therefore, for leaders of Christian thought to put once more to
themselves the question, constantly recurring as learning advances:
What theological readjustment should we have to make, if obliged to
concede that the ancient belief in miracle is not inseparable from
belief in a supernatural Revelation, not indispensable to belief
therein? What modified conception must we form, if constrained to admit
that the living God, ever immanent in Nature, intervenes in Nature no
more at one time than another? What, indeed, but a revised and true in
place of a mistaken conception of the term _Supernatural_?

FOOTNOTES:

[35] "The Church asks, and it is entitled to ask the critic: Do you
believe in the Incarnation and Resurrection of Jesus Christ?... If he
replies in the negative, he has missed the way, and has put himself
outside of the Church of Christ."--_The Church's One Foundation_, p. 4.
[Note that "Incarnation" and "Resurrection" are terms which Dr. Nicoll
construes as denoting physical miracles.]

What Dr. Nicoll here means by "outside of the Church" he indicates by
saying elsewhere, that philosophers who reckon goodness as everything,
and miracles as impossible, "are not Christians" (_op. cit._, p. 10).

This conditioning of Christian character upon an intellectual judgment
concerning the reality of remote occurrences is both unbiblical and
unethical, as well as absurd when practically applied. Some years since,
Dr. E. A. Abbott, who admits no miracle in the life of Christ, published
a book, _The Spirit on the Waters_, in which he inculcated the worship
of Christ. Yet, according to Dr. Nicoll, such a man is no Christian!

[36] _The Miraculous Element in the Gospels_, p. 353.

VII

VII

SYNOPSIS.--Account to be made of the law of atrophy through
disuse.--The virgin birth and the corporeal resurrection of Jesus,
the two miracles now insisted on as t