fe.
But this, the real supernatural, was not obvious as such to his
contemporaries. They looked for it in the lower region of physical
effects. And here the Church also in its embryonic spiritual life, in
its proneness to externalize religion in forms of rite, and creed, and
organization, has thought to find it. Jesus' reproof, "Except ye see
signs and wonders ye will not believe," is still pertinent to those who
will not have it that the supernatural Revelation--spiritual though it
be--can be recognized or believed in apart from an acknowledgment of
attendant miracles, wrought in physical nature by an intervention of
God. Such a contention, however, is as futile and desperate as was John
Wesley's declaration, "The giving up of witchcraft is in effect the
giving up of the Bible." Such mischievous fallacies succeed only in
blinding many a mind to the real issue which the moral and spiritual
Revelation of Jesus makes with men of the twentieth century. It is these
fallacies, and not their critics, that create the most of
scepticism.[47]

But while the question whether miracles are credible has ceased to be of
vital importance, it has by no means lost all importance. On the
contrary, so long as the path of progress is guided by the lamp of
experience, so long will it be of consequence that the historical record
of experience be found trustworthy. It may suit the overweening pride
which defies both the past and the present to say with Bonaparte, that
history is only a fable that men have agreed to believe. But it is a
human interest, and a satisfaction of normal minds to establish, so far
as reason permits, the credibility of every record ostensibly historic.
To discover that ancient experiences, once supposed to be miraculous
raisings from real death, may reasonably be classed with well attested
experiences of to-day, better understood as resuscitations from a
deathlike trance, should be welcomed by unprejudiced historical critics,
as redeeming portions of the ancient record from mistaken disparagement
as legendary. That further study may accredit as facts, or at least as
founded on facts, some other marvels in that record cannot, except by
arrant dogmatism, be pronounced improbable. Nevertheless, it cannot be
expected that the legendary element, which both the Old and the New
Testament in greater and less degree exhibit, can ever be eliminated.
Such stories as that of the origin of languages at Babel, and that of
the resu