IV -AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 139 



alterability of the course of outward nature by 

 prayer, on the question of miracles in general; 

 for he is careful to say that " the possibility of 

 miracles, of a rare and unusual transcendence of 

 the world order is not here in question " (p. 38). 

 It may be permitted me to suppose, however, that, 

 if miracles were in question, the speaker who 

 warns us "that we must look for the heart of the 

 absolute religion in that part of it which prescribes 

 our moral and religious relations " (p. 46) would 

 not be disposed to advise those who had found the 

 heart of Christianity to take much thought about 

 its miraculous integument. 



My anonymous sermon will have nothing to do 

 with such notions as these, and its preacher is not 

 too polite, to say nothing of charitable, towards 

 those who entertain them. 



Scientific men, therefore, are perfectly right in asserting that 

 Christianity rests on miracles. If miracles never happened, 

 Christianity, in any sense which is not a mockery, which does 

 not make the term of none effect, has no reality. I dwell on 

 this because there is now an effort making to get up a non-mir- 

 aculous, invertebrate Christianity, which may escape the ban 

 of science. And I would warn you very distinctly against this 

 new contrivance. Christianity is essentially miraculous, and 

 falls to the ground if miracles be impossible. 



Well, warning for warning, I venture to warn 

 this preacher and those who, with him, persist in 

 identifying Christianity with the miraculous, that 

 such forms of Christianity are not only doomed to 

 fall to the ground; but that, within the last 



