well have given a colour to their account of events in which the
really transcendental element was less visible and tangible. We
cannot now distinguish with any degree of accuracy between the
subjective and the objective in the report. But that miracles, or
what we call such, did in some shape take place, is, I believe,
simply a matter of attested fact. When we consider it in its
relation to the rest of the narrative, to tear out the miraculous
bodily from the Gospels seems to me in the first instance a
violation of history and criticism rather than of faith.

Still the author of 'Supernatural Religion' is, no doubt, justified
in raising the question, Did miracles really happen? I only wish
to protest against the idea that such a question can be adequately
discussed as something isolated and distinct, in which all that
is necessary is to produce and substantiate the documents as in
a forensic process. Such a 'world-historical' event (if I may for
the moment borrow an expressive Germanism) as the founding of
Christianity cannot be thrown into a merely forensic form.
Considerations of this kind may indeed enter in, but to suppose
that they can be justly estimated by themselves alone is an error.
And it is still more an error to suppose that the riddle of the
universe, or rather that part of the riddle which to us is most
important, the religious nature of man and, the objective facts
and relations that correspond to it, can all be reduced to some
four or five simple propositions which admit of being proved or
disproved by a short and easy Q.E.D.

It would have been a far more profitable enquiry if the author had
asked himself, What is Revelation? The time has come when this
should be asked and an attempt to obtain a more scientific