MODERNISM 



235 



corresponding evidence for the authenticity of the books of 

 classical literature. The other is that the critics of the Bible 

 and of the New Testament particularly are sometimes disposed 

 to acquiesce in comparatively slight evidence for a scientific 

 theory and to demand unreasonably strong evidence for the 

 story of the Gospel. I do not profess to speak as a man of 

 science; but I have long felt that the absence of the missing link, 

 as it has been called, i.e., the gap occurring between man and the 

 anthropoid ape or the animal next in order to him, just at the point 

 where the gap ought most easily to be bridged, as it might be 

 anticipated that the animals next in chronological order to maii 

 would, next to man himself, be the most frequently discoverable, 

 is a weakness in the evolutionary doctrine. The Piltdown skull, 

 although I was present when a learned professor expounded its 

 significance to the British Association, was and is in my eyes an 

 unsubstantial basis for the elaborate superstructure which was 

 built upon it. But what is to be said now when the world of 

 science has been lately called to reconstruct its doctrine of man's 

 origin and his history upon the strength of one decayed tootli 

 which has come to light in the wilds of the North American Con- 

 tinent or elsewhere. I do not wish to prejudice scientific evidence. 

 I only ask that it may not be wholly different in quality and quan- 

 tity from the evidence demanded in the domain of literature. There- 

 is, m fact, only one outstanding miracle, and that is the Person 

 of Jesus Christ. It is impossible. I think, to mistake His per- 

 sonal claim. If His own words respecting His own nature and 

 office are accepted as true, then it cannot be denied that He 

 asserted His own superiority to the conditions and limitations of 

 ordinary human life. But every student of the Gospels must 

 recognise the necessity of accounting for the extraordinary 

 influence of Jesus Christ upon His disciples. That a poor 

 Galilean peasant should have conquered both the Jewish theo- 

 cracy and the Eoman imperial polity is a marvel in itself. But 

 how did He win His disciples? Why did they at once obey His 

 summons? and how did He inspire them with the enthusiasm 

 of which the Acts of the Apostles is an abiding witness? The 

 more Jesus Christ is divested of His superhuman authority, the 

 more difficult of explanation becomes His success in founding 

 the one universal religion upon earth. 



There is, in fact, only one miracle; it is Jesus Christ Himself. 

 His life has been written in the four Gospels, above all, in the 

 three Synoptic Gospels. It may be true or false, but it cannot 

 be written again ; and Modernists, if they seek to re-write it, will 

 be driven to the necessity of discarding in a wholly arbitrary 

 spirit, all such works and words of His as do not accord with 

 their preconceived idea of His Person 



