dualism, now hopelessly obsolete, for which a breach of the law of nature was the crowning evidence of the love of God.  On the other hand, the assertion that we do not believe in the miraculous will easily be taken by some to mean the denial of the whole sense of the nearness and power and love of God, and of the unimagined possibilities of such a moral nature as was that of Christ.  It is to be repeated that we have here a mere difference as to terms.  The debate is no longer about ideas.

The traditional notion of the miracle arose out of the confusion of two series of ideas which, in the last analysis, have nothing to do with each other.  On the one hand, there is the conception of law and order, of cause and effect, of the unbroken connexion of nature.  On the other hand is the thought of the divine purpose in the life of the world and of the individual.  By the aid of that first sequence of thoughts we find ourselves in the universe and interpret the world of fact to ourselves.  Yet in the other sequence lies the essence of religion.  The two sequences may perfectly well coexist in the same mind.  Out of the attempt to combine them nothing clear or satisfying can issue.  If one should be, to-day, brought face to face with a fact which was alleged to be a miracle, his instinctive effort would be, nevertheless, to seek to find its cause, to establish for it a connexion in the natural order.  In the ancient world men did not argue thus, nor in the modern world until less than two hundred years ago.  The presumption of the order of nature had not assumed for them the proportions which it has for us.  For us it is overwhelming, self-evident.  Therewith is not involved that we lack belief in a divine purpose for the world and for the individual life.

We do not deny that there are laws of nature of which we have no experience, facts which we do not understand, events which, if they should occur, would stand before us as unique.  Still, the decisive thing is, that in face of such an event, instead of viewing it quite simply as a divine intervention, as men used to do, we, with equal simplicity and no less devoutness, conceive that same event as only an illustration of a connexion in nature which we do not understand.  There is no inherent reason why we may not understand it.  When we do understand it, there will be nothing more about it that is conceivably miraculous.  There will be then no longer a unique quality attaching to the event.  Therewith ends the possible significance of such an event as proof of divine intervention for our especial help.  We have but a connexion in nature such that, whether understood or not, if it were to recur, the event would recur.