the miraculous, science and religion cannot be made to harmonise.

As Huxley said:

The magistrate who listens with devout attention to the precept,
"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," on Sunday, on Monday
dismisses, as intrinsically absurd, a charge of bewitching a
cow brought against some old woman; the superintendent of a
lunatic asylum who substituted exorcism for rational modes of
treatment, would have but a short tenure of office; even parish
clerks doubt the utility of prayers for rain, so long as the
wind is in the east; and an outbreak of pestilence sends men,
not to the churches, but to the drains. In spite of prayers for
the success of our arms, and _Te Deums_ for victory, our real
faith is in big battalions and keeping our powder dry; in
knowledge of the science of warfare; in energy, courage, and
discipline. In these, as in all other practical affairs, we
act on the aphorism, _Laborare est orare_; we admit that
intelligent work is the only acceptable worship, and that,
whether there be a Supernature or not, our business is with Nature.

We have ceased to believe in miracles. When we come upon a miracle in
any historical document we feel not only that the miracle is untrue, but
also that its presence reduces the value of the document in which it is
contained. Thus Matthew Arnold, in _Literature and Dogma_, after saying
that we shall "find ourselves inevitably led, sooner or later," to
extend one rule to all miraculous stories, and that "the considerations
which apply in other cases apply, we shall most surely discover, with
even greater force in the case of Bible miracles," goes on to declare
that "this being so, there is nothing one would more desire for a
person or document one greatly values than to make them independent of
miracles."

Very well. The Gospels teem with miracles. If we make the accounts
of the death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ "independent
of miracles," we destroy those accounts completely. To make the
Resurrection "independent of miracles" is to disprove the Resurrection,
which is a miracle or nothing.

We must believe in miracles, or disbelieve in the Resurrection; and
"miracles never happen."

We must believe miracles, or disbelieve them. If we disbelieve them, we
shall lose confidence in the verity of any document in proportion to the
element of the miraculous which that document c