LITERARY NOTICES. 



561 



this side. The contest raged round the credibil- 

 ity or incredibility of miracle, as if the whole of 

 revelation depended upon the issue. In reality, 

 however, no vital point of revelation was endan- 

 gered. It was an affair of outposts altogether, 

 and the work so energetically assaulted and de- 

 feuded had little importance for the citadel in 

 the rear. Neither the philosopher who argued 

 against nor the divine who contended for miracle 

 was dealing with the essence of Christianity, 

 and the complete triumph of either would have 

 made little change. At the worst, a dogma of 

 the Church would have been overthrown ; but 

 the dogmas of the Church and the religion of 

 Christ are not synonymous terms. 



In enumerating the various causes which 

 have produced a new " climate of opinion " 

 iu relation to miracles, Dr. Ferguson says : 



First of all, there is the scientific conception 

 of the universality of law. This may truly be 

 said to be the revelation of our own age, not in 

 the sense that it was unknown to our predeces- 

 sors, but that in the present day the conception 

 has been eo extended and generalized as to 

 dwarf its former proportions. It has passed out 

 of the laboratory of science into the common 

 possession of men, and is now one of the great 

 truths 80 firmly established that they become 

 truisms. We never stop to re.ason about them, 

 and, were any one rash enough to call them iu 

 question, we should not give him even a patient 

 hearing. Moreover, the idea of law is not to be 

 confined to the material world, with its inde- 

 structible treasury of force. It must be carried 

 over into the world of minrl, and be seen at 

 work there also, not indeed with the rigidity of 

 physical law, but within the large limits which 

 freedom of thought and action demands. It is 

 to he traced in the advance of civilization, in the 

 development of history, in the growth of reli- 

 gion, in relations such as those between morals 

 and art, between society and government, be- 

 tween national life and literature. Now, it is 

 not difflcult to see how such a conception must 

 indispose men under its influence to look favor- 

 ably upon miracle. In the idea of order every- 

 where supreme, calm, eternal, there is a sub- 

 limity which fills their imagination and stimu- 

 lates their intellect. Any interruption of its 

 uniform course, any breach of continuity, would 

 be a blemish in the picture, and not an addition- 

 al charm would be, indeed, a positive pain to 

 thought, and, instead of disposing the mind to 

 reverence, would fill it with confusion and doubt. 



The Rev. Professor Knight, of St. An- 

 drews, has a sermon of great interest and 

 moment on " The Continuity and Develop- 

 ment of Religion," in which he says : 



It does not, therefore, follow that, if we can 

 explain the origin of a particular belief by trac- 

 ing its parentage, and finding that it has sprung 

 from inferior elements, the validity of the belief 

 itself is in the slightest degree imperiled. Nay, 

 it is indisputable that, if the human mind has 

 VOL. XTIII. 36 



grown at all, its religious convictions like 

 everything else belonging to it must have 

 changed. Our remote ancestors could not pos- 

 sibly have had the same religion as ourselves, 

 any more than they could have had the same 

 physiognomy, the same social customs, or the 

 same language. Thus, the intuitions of subse- 

 quent ages must necessarily have become keen- 

 er and clearer, at once more rational and more 

 spiritual, than the instincts of primeval days ; 

 the clearness, the intelligence, and the spiritual- 

 ity being due to a vast number of conspiring 

 causes. And, if the opinions and the practices 

 of the race thus change, the change is due to no 

 accident or caprice, but to the ordinary pro- 

 cesses of natural law. It can not be otherwise ; 

 because, since no human belief springs up mi- 

 raculously, none can be maintained in the form 

 in which it arises for any length of lime. Thus, 

 the "increasing purpose" of the ages must in- 

 evitably bring to the front fresh modifications of 

 belief. If our theologies have all grown out of 

 something very different, why should we fear 

 their continued growth? Why should any ra- 

 tional theist dread the future expansion of the- 

 istic belief? If it has grown, it must continue 

 to grow, and many of its existing phases must 

 disappear. The controversies of our time are 

 tlie phases of its evolution. But is it now so 

 very perfect that we would wish it to remain 

 stationary at its present point 01 development ? 

 That its present phases should be permanent ? 

 May we not rather rejoice that " these all shall 

 wax old as a garment," and that, " as a vesture, 

 they shall be changed" ; while the Object of 

 which they are the interpretation, or which they 

 try to represent endures, and of its immortality 

 there shall be no end ? It may even be affirmed 

 that one of the best features in every human be- 

 lief is its elasticity ; that one si^n of its vitality 

 is its amenability to change. Were it irrevoca- 

 bly fixed, it would have some secret affinity with 

 death and the grave. Paradoxical, therefore, as 

 it may seem, if religion he among the things 

 that can not be shaken, it must change. Its 

 forms must die that its spirit may live ; and the 

 condition of the permanence of the latter is the 

 perpetual vicissitude of the former. Curious it 

 is that some of its most ardent advocates can 

 not recognize it under a new dress, that even its 

 disciples misconstrue it when it changes its 

 raiment. They think it a foe if it is differently 

 appareled. But how often in all human contro- 

 versy the combatants are merely speaking dif- 

 ferent dialects while they mean the same thing 1 

 But, granting that the opinion of the world is an 

 organic whole, that all human conviction with 

 its present variety and complexity has grown 

 out of very lowly roots, and that our most sacred 

 beliefs have emerged from others that are differ- 

 ent, a further and a far more important ques- 

 tion lies behind this admission. It is this: How 

 are we to interpret the whole series from begin- 

 ning to end ? It is not enough to say that there 

 has been progress ; what meaning are we to at- 

 tach to the term procress ? Are we to think of 

 it as simple succession and accumulation, the 

 mere addition of new links to a chain of devel- 



