The alternative lies between accepting that testimony, as it is given, or regarding the Gospels as a fiction, and the Christian faith as founded on imposture. In adopt- ing this argument, we do not, as is sometimes said, rea- son in a circle, employing the character of Christ as a testimony in favor of the miracles, and the miracles again as a testimony in favor of the character of Christ. For the character of Christ is contemplated in two dis- tinct aspects : first, as regards his human perfectness ; and, secondly, as regards his superhuman mission and powers. The first bears witness to the miracles, the mir- acles bear witness to the second. When our Lord rep- resents himself as a human example to be imitated by his human followers, he lays stress on those facts of his life which indicate his human goodness : ' Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me ; for I am meek and lowly of heart.' When, on the other hand, he represents himself as divinely commissioned for a spe- cial purpose, he appeals to the superhuman evidence of his miracles as authenticat'ng that mission : ' The works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me that the Fa- ther hath sent me.' It is true that the evidence of the miracles, as addressed to us, has a different aspect, and rests on different grounds, from that which belonged to them at the time when they were first performed. But this change has not diminished their force as evi- dences, though it has somewhat changed its direction. If we have not the advantage of seeing and hearing and questioning those who were eye-witnesses of the miracles, the deficiency is fully supplied by the addi- tional testimony that has accrued to us, in the history of Christianity, from their day to ours. If we have stricter concejitions of physical law, and of the uniform- it}^ of nature, we have also higher evidence of the exist- ence of a purpose worthy of the exercise of God's sov- ereign power over nature. If the progress of science has made many things easy of performance at the pres- ent day which would have seemed miraculous to the men of tlie 1st century, it has also shown more clearly how inimitable and unapproachable are the miracles of Christ, in the maturity of science no less than in its in- fancy. And when it is objected that ' if miracles were, in the estimation of a former age, among the chief supports of a former Christianity, they are at present among the main difficulties and hinderances to its ac- ceptance,' we may fairlj' ask. What is this Christianity which might be more easily believed if it had no mira- cles? Is it meant that the Gospel narrative, in gen- eral, would be more easy to believe were the miracles taken out of it? The miracles are so interwoven with the narrative that the whole texture would be de- stroyed by their removal. Or is it meant that the great central fact in the apostolic preaching — the resur- rection of Christ — would be more natural and credible if he who thus marvellously rose from the dead had in his lifetime exhibited no signs of a power superior to that of his fellow-inen ? Or is it meant that the great distinctive doctrines of Christianity — such as those of the Trinity and the Incarnation — might be more read- ily accepted were there no miracles in the Scripture ■which contains them ? We can scarcely imagine it to be seriously maintained that it would be easier to be- lieve that the second person of the divine Trinity came on earth in the form of man, were it also asserted that while on earth he gave no signs of a power be- yond that of ordinary men. In short, it is difficult to understand on what ground it can be maintained that the miracles are a hinderance to the belief in Christian- ity, except on a ground whicli asserts also that there is no distinctive Christianity in which to believe. It may with more truth be said that the miraculous ele- ment, which forms so large a portion of Christianity, has its peculiar worth and service at the present day as a protest and safeguard against two forms of unchristian thought to which an intellectual and cultivated age is liable — pantheism, the danger of a deeply speculative
philosophy; and materialism, the danger of a too ex- clusive devotion to physical science. Both these, in dif- ferent ways, tend to deify natiu'e and the laws of nat- ure, and to obscure the belief in a personal God distinct from and above nature ; against both these, so long as the Christian religion lasts, the miracles of Christ are a perpetual witness ; and in so witnessing they perform a service to religion different in kind, but not less im- portant than that which they performed at the begin-' ning. The miracles of the O. T. may be included in the above argument, if we regard, as Scripture requires us to regard, the earlier dispensation as an anticipation of and preparation for the coming of Christ. jNIany of the events in the history of Israel as a people are typ- ical of corresponding events in the life of the Saviour; and the earlier miraculous historj' is a supernatural sys- tem preparing the way for the later consummation of God's supernatural providence in the redemption of the world by Christ. Not only the occasional miracles of the O.-T. historj', but, as bishop Atterbury remarks, some of the established institutions under the law — the gift of prophecy, the Shechinah, the Urim and Thum- mim, the sabbatical year — are of a supernatural char- acter, and thus manifest themselves as parts of a super- natural system, ordained for and leading to the com- pletion of the supernatural in Christ."