THE SCRIPTCEAL IDEA OF MIRACLES. 



77 



therefore their value was to be largely discounted in the light of our 

 more extended knowledge, not only of phenomena but of the occult 

 forces of nature. To give more definiteness to his criticism of the 

 word " supernatural " (and to a less extent of the words " preter- 

 natural " and " superhuman "), the speaker quoted from a paper 

 privately printed some four years ago as a critique of the position 

 taken up by the Dean of Eipon on the dogma of the Virgin Birth, 

 in which he had preferred the word preter-scientific, as one which the 

 evolutionist might safely use in speaking of the possibility of an 

 influence of mind and will leading gradually to results, in which the 

 moral and spiritual is seen to dominate the material. Here we 

 recognise the principle of (Uredivif// in the order of nature. Such a 

 term might be called unscientific, but it was not anti-scientific ; that 

 is to say, did not of necessity involve a l)reach of the laiv of continuity, 

 of all the factors of which Science could not claim certain knowledge. 

 Sound logic requires us to discriminate between " the contrary " 

 and " the contradictory." 



This leads us up to the " wonderful works " of Christ, of which 

 he wished to speak with the more emphasis in view of some things 

 contained in the address given by Professor Silvanus Thompson to 

 the Institute a year and a half ago. In the first place it was well 

 to notice that the " miracles " of Christ were never tentative, never 

 experimental; you never find Him making an experiment on the 

 human or any other subject. Whether we take the Gospels as they 

 stand, or the testimony of His " Witnesses," the Apostles, the Christ 

 of the New Testament is presented to us as One in whose whole life 

 and Avork and teaching preter-scientific powers exhibited themselves. 

 This is put forward with especial emphasis by St. Peter in Acts ii, 

 22 (where he challenges his audience to contradict his statements of 

 fact), and by St. Paul in Eomans i, 4, who speaks of Him (in his 

 greatest epistle) as One " declared to be the Son of God with power," 

 by the evidence of His life and resurrection. We cannot get away 

 from the fact (everywhere patent in the Gospels) that our Lord 

 staked the truth of His teaching on powers inherent in His Person, 

 such as have never been exhibited by any man before or since ; and 

 above all He appealed repeatedly to the evidence of His resurrection 

 before that was an accomplished fact. And when we think of the 

 palpable and unmistakable evidence furnished in the Gospels, it is 

 surely impossible for the mind of any fair and candid person to 



