he irreducible minimum,
affected by this law.--The vital truths of the incarnation and
immortality independent of these miracles.--These truths now placed
on higher ground in a truer conception of the supernatural.--The
true supernatural is the spiritual, not the miraculous.--Scepticism
bred from the contrary view.--The miracle narratives, while less
evidential for religion, not unimportant for history.--Psychical
research a needful auxiliary for the scientific critic of these.

To the true conception of the supernatural we shall presently come. But
we cannot proceed without briefly reminding ourselves of the certain
consequences of this now far advanced dropping of miracles by modern
apologetics from their ancient use as evidences of a supernatural
Revelation. We are not ignorant of the law, which holds throughout the
material, the mental, and the moral realms, that disuse tends to atrophy
and extinction. Disused organs cease to exist, as in the eyeless
cave-fish. For centuries the story of the miraculous birth of Jesus was
serviceable for confirmation of his claim to be the Son of God. In the
address of the angel of the annunciation to Mary that claim is expressly
rested on the miraculous conception of "the holy thing."[37] But as
ethical enlightenment grows, the conviction grows that, whether the
physiological ground of that claim be tenable or not, the ethical ground
of it is essentially higher. _Father_ and _son_ even in human
relationships are terms of more than physiological import. It is matter
of frequent experience that, where the ethical character of such
relationship is lacking, the physiological counts for nothing.
Moreover, the divine sonship of Jesus in a purely ethical view rests on
ground not only higher but incontestable. And so in our time theologians
prefer to rest it on foundations that cannot be shaken, on his moral
oneness with God, the divineness of his spirit, the ideal perfectness of
his life. The strength of this position being realized, the world begins
to hear from Christian thinkers the innovating affirmation that belief
of the miraculous birth can no longer be deemed essential to
Christianity; else it would not have been left unmentioned in two of the
four Gospels, and in every extant Apostolic letter. And now we hear
theologians saying: "I accept it, but I place it no more among the
evidences of Christianity. I defend it, but cannot employ it in the
defence o