it lias doubtless greatly changed. IJut it is still a (luestiou wliicli is probably by no means so clear, whether, alio wing for its temporary and local character, the language then used di<l not con- tain an important element of truth. The physical and moral spheres are perhaps more intimately connected than we suppose. And the unbridled wickedness rife in those days may have had physical effects, which were not unfitly described as the work of 'demons.' The subject is one which it is probable has not yet been fully ex- plored.
(j3) There is, as we have seen, one large class of disea.ses in regard to which the healing force exerted by the presence and the word of Jesus has a certain amount of aiudogy in the facts recognized by modern medicine. We must not, liowever, treat that analogy as going farther than it does. It does not hold good etjually for all the forms of disease which are described as having been healed. Wherever the body is subject to the action of the mind, there we can give an account of the miracle which is to some extent — to a large extent — rational and intelligible. But in cases in which the miracle involves a purely physical process it will not be possible to explain it in the same way.
This other cla.ss of miracles will fall rather under the same head as those which were wrought, not upon man, but upim nature. In regard to these miracles, the world is probably not much nearer to a reasoned account than it was. It must always be remembered that the narratives which have come down to us are the work of those who expected that Divine action would (a.s we should say) run counter to natural laws and not be in harmony with them, and that the more Divine it was the more directly it would run counter to them. We may be sure that if the miracles of the tirst century had been wrought betiire trained spectators of the nineteenth, the version of them would be quite different. But to suppose this is to suppose what is impossible, be- cause all Hod's dealings with men are adapted to the age to which they belong, and cannot be transferred to another age. If God inteniled to ininifest Himself specially to the nineteenth century, we should expect Him to do so by other means. We are, then, compelled to take the accounts as they have come down to us. And we are aware beforehand that any attempt to trans- late them into our own habits of thought nuist be one of extreme difficulty, if not doomed to faiiure.
(ii.) Critical Ej-pnlienls for eliminating Miracle. — In view of the difficulty of giving a rational (i.*". a nineteenth century) version of miracle, it is not surprising that recourse should bo h.ad to critical expedients for explaining away Miracle altogether ; in other words, to account for the narratives of mir.ules without a.s.suming that objective facts corresponding to them really occurred. The ex- pedients most in favour are : (a) imitation of similar stories in OT ; (f)) exaggeration of natural occurrences ; (7) tran.slation of what was originally parable into external fiu;t. These are causes which liave about them nothing violent or Incredible, and we may believe that they were to some extent really at work. The question to trhat extent, will depend mainly upon the nature of the evidence for miracles and the length of time interposed between the evidence and the events. This will be the next subject to come before us. We may, liowever, anticipate so far as to say that whatever degree of veiisimilltude belongs to the causes suggesleil in themselvi's, they do not appear to be adecpiate, either separately or in combination, to account for the whole or any large part of the narratives as we vol- IL — dO
have them. And there is the further consideration, on which more will also be said presently, that something of the nature of miracle, something which was imderstood as miracle, and that on no insignificant scale, nuist be assumed to account for the estimate certainly formed by the whole first generation of Christians of the I'erson of Christ.
(iii. ) The Evidence for the Gospel Miracles in general. — Coming to the question as to the evidence for the Miracles recorded in the Gospels, there are three main observations to be made : (a) that the evidence for all these miracles, generally speaking, is strong ; (fi) that the evidence for all the different classes of miracles is equally strong ; (7) that although for the best attested miracles in each class the evidence is equal, there is a difference between particular miracles in each class ; some are better attested than others.
(a) It is minecessary to repeat what has been already said (p. tJ04 sup.) about the general charac- ter of the Go.spel History. The critical student must constantly have in mind the question to what state of things the different phases of that history as it has come down to us correspond. Does it reflect conditions as they existed after A.D. 70 or before? And if before, how far does it reflect the later half of that period, and how far the earlier ? How far does it coincide with a section of Christian thought and Christian life {e.g. ) taken at the height of the activity of St. Paul ; and how far does it certainly point to an earlier stage thaix this ? In other words, how much of the description contained in the Gospels belongs to the period of consequences, and how much to the period of cau.ses ?