283 
long before there was any prospect of their fulfilment. He 
can scarcely, I think, refuse to admit that there is something 
not a little remarkable in the fact, that these apparently 
divergent and antagonistic lines of thought have been so 
strikingly reconciled in the life and death of J esus Christ, as 
related by the Evangelists and explained by the Apostles. 
15. The question of Miracles* is dealt with in a somewhat 
less summary manner than that of prophecy. Thirty-two 
pages ai’e devoted to this subject. Yet even these contain so 
grotesque a misrepresentation of what Christians hold upon 
the subject, that it is scarcely possible to understand how it 
could have been written. We are told that if the writer of 
the pages I am considering were to change the pen with 
which he wrote them into a pen-wiper, he would thenceforth, 
in the common opinion of mankind, “ be entitled to affirm, 
and to be believed in affirming, propositions the most palpably 
at war with common fact and experience. I am not con- 
cerned to defend the “judgment of the mass of mankind,” 
but if this is intended as a description of the grounds on 
which an intelligent Christian man believes in the miracles of 
Christ, it is singularly wide of the mark. The belief of the 
great mass of Christians is, that Christ was God manifest in 
the flesh, and that therefore, as the Creator and Governor of 
the world, He could at His Will, either by the suspension of 
the laws of nature, or by calling one force into play to 
counteract another, produce results at variance with our 
ordinary experience,;]: and that as thus manifesting Himself to 
* Thirty-two pages are also devoted to this subject in God and the 
Bible , but they wander much from the point. A good deal of space is 
taken up by parodies of passages from the Old Testament in which the 
word “ God ” is replaced by “ Shining,” Mr. Arnold being apparently 
ignorant of the fact, that the word translated “ God ” has in the Hebrew no 
such meaning. In the Semitic languages the word “ God ” is derived from 
the idea of strength. In eleven pages only does he grapple with the real 
question, and his reasoning is but a repetition of that in Literature and 
Dogma. He avoids the real question, and attempts, by casting doubt upon 
a few of the New Testament miracles, to lead his readers to believe that he 
has disposed of them all. Not the slightest allusion is made to the 
cumulative evidence afforded by the immense mass of miracles reported in 
the New Testament, which are not only an integral portion of the story, and 
cannot be separated from it without destroying the whole, but which are the 
sole explanation of the sensation caused by the teaching of the meekest, and 
lowliest, and most unobtrusive of men. 
t Literature and Dogma , p. 128. 
X It must be remembered that this is a power which even man possesses, 
at least within certain limits. 
