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of the structure of Religion which may safely be underpinned by physical science: the theory of death and of continued personal existence is one of them; there are many others, and there will be more. But there are and always will be vast religious regions for which that kind of scientific foundation would be an impertinence, though a scientific contribution is appropriate; perhaps these may be summed up in some such phrase as "the relation of the soul to God."

Assertions are made concerning material facts in the name of religion; these science is bound to criticise. Testimony is borne to inner personal experience; on that physical science does well to be silent. Nevertheless many of us are impressed with the conviction that everything in the universe may become intelligible if we go the right way to work; and so we are coming to recognize, on the one hand, that every system of truth must be intimately connected with every other, and that this connection will constitute a trustworthy support as soon as it is revealed by the progress of knowledge; and on the other hand, that the extensive foundation of truth now being laid by scientific workers will ultimately support a gorgeous building of æsthetic feeling and religious faith.

Theologians have been apt to be too easily satisfied with a pretended foun

dation that would not stand scientific scrutiny; they seem to believe that the religious edifice, with its mighty halls for the human spirit, can rest upon some event or statement, instead of upon man's nature as a whole; and they are apt to decline to reconsider their formulæ in the light of fuller knowledge and development.

Scientific men on the other hand have been liable to suppose that no foundation which they have not themselves laid can be of a substantial character, thereby ignoring the possibility of an ancestral accumulation of sound though unformulated experience; and a few of the less considerate, about a quarter of a century ago, amused themselves by instituting a kind of jubilant rathunt under the venerable theological edifice: a procedure necessarily obnoxious to its occupants. The exploration was unpleasant, but its results have been purifying and healthful, and the permanent substratum of fact will in due time be cleared of the decaying refuse of centuries.

Some of the chief hurly-burly of contention between the apparently attacking force and the ostensibly defending garrison arose round that bulwark which upholds the possibility of the Miraculous, and the efficacy of Prayer. It will be sufficient if in this Address I discuss briefly these two connected subjects.

II. MEANING OF MIRACLE.

I have to begin by saying that the term "miracle" is ambiguous, and that no discussion which takes that term as a basis can be very fruitful, since the combatants may all be meaning different things.

(1) One user of the term may mean merely an unusual event of which we do not know the history and cause, a bare wonder or prodigy; such an event

as the course of nature may, for all we know, bring about once in ten thousand years or so, leaving no record of its occurrence in the past and no anticipatory probability of its re-occurrence in the future. The raining down of fire on Sodom, or on Pompeii; the sudden engulphing of Korah, or of Marcus Curtius; or, on a different plane, the advent of some transcendent genius,

or even of a personality so lofty as to be called divine, may serve as examples.

(2) Another employer of the term "miracle" may add to this idea a definite hypothesis, and may mean an act due to unknown intelligent and living agencies operating in a self-willed and unpredictable manner, thus effecting changes that would not otherwise have occurred and that are not in the regular course of nature. The easiest example to think of is one wherein the lower animals are chiefly concerned; for instance, consider the case of the community of an ant hill, on a lonely uninhabited island, undisturbed for centuries, whose dwelling is kicked over one day by a shipwrecked sailor. They had reason to suppose that events were uniform, and all their difficulties ancestrally known, but they are perturbed by an unintelligible miracle. A different illustration is afforded by the presence of an obtrusive but unsuspected live insect in a galvanometer or other measuring instrument in a physical laboratory; whereby metrical observations would be complicated, and all regularity perturbed in a puzzling and capricious and, to half-instructed knowledge, supernatural, or even diabolical, manner. Not dissimilar are some of the asserted events in a Séance Room.

(3) Another may use the term "miracle" to mean the utilization of unknown laws, say of healing or of communication; laws unknown and unformulated,

but instinctively put into operation by mental activity of some kind,-sometimes through the unconscious influence of so-called self-suggestion, sometimes through the activity of another mind, or through the personal agency of highly-gifted beings, operating on others; laws whereby time and space appear temporarily suspended, or extraordinary cures are effected, or other effects produced, such as the levitations and other physical phenomena related of the saints.

(4) Another may incorporate with the word "miracle" a still further infusion of theory, and may mean always a direct interposition of Divine Providence, whereby at some one time and place a perfectly unique occurrence is brought about, which is out of relation with the established order of things, is not due to what has gone before, and is not likely to occur again. The most striking examples of what can be claimed under this head are connected with the personality of Jesus Christ, notably the Virgin Birth and the Empty Tomb; by which I mean the more material and controversial aspects of those generally accepted doctrines -the Incarnation and the Resurrection. To summarize this part, the four categories are:-(1) A natural or orderly though unusual portent, (2) a disturbance due to unknown live or capricious agencies, (3) a utilization by mental or spiritual power of unknown laws, (4) direct interposition of the Deity.

III. ARGUMENTS CONCERNING THE MIRACULOUS.

In some cases an argument concerning the so-called miraculous will turn upon the question whether such things are theoretically possible.

In other cases it will turn upon whether or not they have ever actually happened.

In a third case the argument will be

directed to the question whether they happened or not on some particular occasion.

And in a fourth case the argument will hinge upon the particular category under which any assigned occurrence is to be placed:

For instance take a circumstance

which undoubtedly has occurred, one of events of undoubtedly substantial

upon the actual existence of which there can be no dispute, and yet one of which the history and manner is quite unknown. Take for instance the origin of life; or to be more definite, say the origin of life on any given planet, the Earth for instance. There is practically no doubt that the Earth was once a hot and molten and sterile globe. There is no doubt at all that it is now the abode of an immense variety of living organic nature. How did that life arise? Is it an event to be placed under head (1), as an unexpected outcome of the ordinary course of nature, a development naturally following upon the formation of extremely complex molecular aggregatesprotoplasm and the like-as the Earth cooled; or must it be placed under head (4), as due to the direct Fiat of the Eternal?

Again, take the existence of Christianity as a living force in the world of to-day. This is based upon a series

truth centering round a historical personage; under which category is that to be placed? Was his advent to be regarded as analogous to the appearance of a mighty genius such as may at any time revolutionize the course of human history; or is he to be regarded as a direct manifestation and incarnation of the Deity Himself?

I am using these great themes as illustrations merely, for our present purpose; I have no intention of entering upon them here and now. They are questions which have been asked, and presumably answered, again and again; and it is on lines such as these that debates concerning the miraculous are usually conducted. But what I want to say is that so long as we keep the discussion on these lines, and ask this sort of question, though we shall succeed in raising difficulties, we shall not progress far towards a solution of any of them: nor shall we gain much aid towards life.

IV. LAW AND GUIDANCE.

The way to progress is not thus to lose ourselves in detail and in confusing estimates of possibilities, but to consider two main issues which may very briefly be formulated thus:

(1) Are we to believe in irrefragable law?

(2) Are we to believe in spiritual guidance?

If we accept the first of these issues we accept an orderly and systematic universe, with no arbitrary cataclysms and no breaks in its essential continuity. Catastrophes occur, but they occur in the regular course of events, they are not brought about by capricious and lawless agencies; they are a part of the entire cosmos, regulated on the principle of unity and uniformity: though to the dwellers in any time

and place, from whose senses most of the cosmos is hidden, they may appear to be sudden and portentous dislocations of natural order.

So much is granted if we accept the first of the above issues. If we accept the second, we accept a purposeful and directed universe, carrying on its evolutionary processes from an inevitable past into an anticipated future with a definite aim; not left to the random control of inorganic forces like a motorcar which has lost its driver, but permeated throughout by mind and intention and foresight and will. Not mere energy, but constantly directed energy -the energy being controlled by something which is not energy, nor akin to energy, something which presumably is immanent in the universe and is akin to life and mind.

The alternative to these two beliefs is a universe of random chance and capricious disorder, not a cosmos or universe at all-a multiverse rather; consequently I take it that we all hold to one or other of these two beliefs. But do we and can we hold to both?

So far as I conceive my present mission, it is to urge that the two beliefs are not inconsistent with each other, and that we may and should contemplate and gradually feel our way towards accepting both.

(1) We must realize that the Whole is a single undeviating lawsaturated cosmos;

(2) But we must also realize that the Whole consists not of matter and motion alone, nor yet of spirit and will alone, but of both and all; we must even yet further, and enormously, enlarge our conception of what the Whole contains.

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Scientific men have preached the first of these desiderata, but have been liable to take a narrow view regarding the second. Keenly alive to law, and knowledge, and material fact, they have been occasionally blind to art, to emotion, to poetry, and to the higher mental and spiritual environment which inspires and glorifies the realm of knowledge.

The temptation of religious men has also lain in the direction of too narrow an exclusiveness, for they have been so occupied with their own conceptions of the fulness of things that they have failed to grasp what is meant by the first of the above requirements; they have allowed the emotional content to overpower the intellectual, and have too often ignored, disliked, and practically rejected an integral portion of the scheme,-appearing to desire, what no one can really wish for, a world of uncertainty and caprice, where effects can be produced without adequate cause, and where the connection of

antecedent and consequent can be arbitrarily dislocated.

The same vice has therefore dogged the steps of both classes of men. The acceptance of miracle, in the crude sense of arbitrary intervention and special providence, is appropriate to those who feel enmeshed in the grip of inorganic and mechanical law, without being able to reconcile it with the idea of constant guidance and intelligent control. And a denial of miracle, in every sense, that is, of all providential guidance, and all controlling intelligence, may also be the result of the very same feeling, experienced by people who are conscious of just the same kind of inability,people who cannot recognize a directing intelligence in the midst of law and order, who regard the absence of dislocation and interference as a mark of the inorganic, the mechanical, the inexorable: wherefore the denial of miracle has often led to a sort of prac tical atheism and to an assertion of the valuelessness of prayer.

But to those who are able to combine the acceptance of both the above faiths, prayer is part of the orderly cosmos, and may be an efficient portion of the guiding and controlling will; somewhat as the desire of the inhabitants of a town for a civic improvement may be a part of the agency which ultimately brings it about, no matter whether the city be representatively or autocratically governed.

The two beliefs cannot be logically and effectively combined by those who think of themselves as something detached from and outside the cosmos, operating on it externally and seeking to modify its manifestations by vain petitions addressed to a system of ordered force. To such persons the above propositions must seem contradictory or mutually exclusive. But if we can grasp the idea that we ourselves are an intimate part of the whole

scheme, that our wishes and desires are a part of the controlling and guiding will, then our mental action can

not but be efficient, if we exercise it in accordance with the highest and truest laws of our being.

V. HUMAN EXPERIENCE.

Let us survey our position:We find ourselves for a few score years incarnate intelligences on this planet; we have not always been here, and we shall not always be here: we are here in fact, each of us, for but a very short period, but we can study the conditions of existence while here, and we perceive clearly that a certain amount of guidance and control are in our hands. For better for worse we can, and our legislators do, influence the destinies of the planet. The process is called "making history." We can all, even the humblest, to some extent influence the destinies of individuals with whom we come into contact. We have therefore a certain sense of power and responsibility.

It is not likely that we are the only, or the highest, intelligent agents in the whole wide universe, nor that we possess faculties and powers denied to all else; nor is it likely that our own activity will be always as limited as it is now. The Parable of the Talents is full of meaning, and it contains a meaning that is not often brought out.

It is absurd to deny the attributes of guidance and intelligence and personality and love to the Whole, seeing that we are part of the Whole, and are personally aware of what we mean by those words in ourselves. These attributes are existent therefore, and cannot be denied; cannot be denied even to the Deity.

Is the planet subject to intelligent control? We know that it is: we ourselves can change the course of rivers for predestined ends, we can make highways, can unite oceans, can devise inventions, can make new compounds, can transmute species, can plan fresh

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variety of organic life; we can create works of art; we can embody new ideas and lofty emotions in forms of language and music, and can leave them as Platonic offspring to remote posterity. Our power is doubtless limited, but we can surely learn to do far more than we have yet so far in the infancy of humanity accomplished; more even than we have yet conjectured as within the range of possibility.

Our progress already has been considerable. It is but a moderate time since our greatest men were chipping flints and carving bones into the likeness of reindeer. More recently they became able to build cathedrals and make poems. Now we are momentarily diverted from immortal pursuits by vivid interest in that kind of competition which has replaced the competition of the sword, and by those extraordinary inequalities of possession and privilege which have resulted from the invention of an indestructible and transmissible form of riches, a form over which neither moth nor rust has any power.

We raise an incense of smoke, and offer sacrifices of squalor and ugliness, in worship of this new idol. But it will pass; human life is not meant to continue as it is now in city slums; nor is the strenuous futility of mere accumulation likely to satisfy people when once they have been really educated; the world is beautiful, and may be far more widely happy than it has been yet. Those who have preached

this hitherto have been heard with deaf ears, but some day we shall awake to a sense of our true planetary "Symposium," 209.

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