the precious gifts coming at once from gracious hands--hands that love
could kiss and nails could wound.

There are some, I think, who would perhaps find it more possible to
accept the New Testament story if the miracles did not stand in the way.
But perhaps, again, it would be easier for them, to accept both if they
could once look into the true heart of these miracles. So long as they
regard only the surface of them, they will, most likely, see in them
only a violation of the laws of nature: when they behold the heart of
them, they will recognize there at least a possible fulfilment of her
deepest laws.

With such, however, is not my main business now, any more than with
those who cannot believe in a God at all, and therefore to whom a
miracle is an absurdity. I may, however, just make this one remark with
respect to the latter--that perhaps it is better they should believe in
no God than believe in such a God as they have yet been able to imagine.
Perhaps thus they are nearer to a true faith--except indeed they prefer
the notion of the Unconscious generating the Conscious, to that of a
self-existent Love, creative in virtue of its being love. Such have
never loved woman or child save after a fashion which has left them
content that death should seize on the beloved and bear them back to the
maternal dust. But I doubt if there can be any who thus would choose a
sleep--walking Pan before a wakeful Father. At least, they cannot know
the Father and choose the Pan.

Let us then recognize the works of the Father as epitomized in the
miracles of the Son. What in the hands of the Father are the mighty
motions and progresses and conquests of life, in the hands of the Son
are miracles. I do not myself believe that he valued the working of