rrection of ancient saints at Jesus' resurrection are
indubitable cases of it. But the legendary element, though permanent, is
at present undefined. To define it is the problem of the critical
student, a problem most difficult to him whose judgment is least
subjective; and he will welcome every contribution that advancing
knowledge can supply.

Regarding miracle as the natural product of exceptionally endowed life,
there is no source from which more light can be shed on its Biblical
record than in those studies of the exceptional phenomena and occult
powers of life which are prosecuted by the Society for Psychical
Research, whose results are recorded in its published _Proceedings_. For
those familiar with this record the legendary element in the Bible tends
to shrink into smaller compass than many critics assign it. In the
interest both of the Bible and of science it is regrettable that the
results of these researches, though conducted by men of high eminence
in the scientific world, still encounter the same hostile scepticism
even from some Christian believers that Hume directed against the
Biblical miracles. Mr. Gladstone has put himself on record against this
philistinism, saying that "psychical research is by far the most
important work that is being done in the world." Were one disposed to
prophesy, very reasonable grounds could be produced for the prediction
that, great as was the advance of the nineteenth century in physical
knowledge, the twentieth century will witness an advance in psychical
knowledge equally great. In this advance one may not unreasonably
anticipate that some, at least, of the Biblical miracles may be relieved
from the scepticism that now widely discredits them.

FOOTNOTES:

[37] Luke i. 35.

[38] To what extent the law of atrophy has begun to work upon the
doctrine of the virgin birth appears in the recent utterance of so
eminent an evangelical scholar as Dr. R. F. Horton, of London. The
following report of his remarks in a Christmas sermon in 1901 is taken
from the _Christian World_, London. "We could not imagine Paul, Peter,
and John all ignoring something essential to the Gospel they preached.
Strictly speaking, this narrative in Matthew and Luke was one of the
latest touches in the Gospel, belonging to a period forty or fifty years
after the Lord had passed away, when men had begun to realize what he
was--the Son of God--and tried to express their conviction in this form
or that."