Not only do we find the two different elements present in the Christianity of our day; they are also apparent in the presentation of Christianity found within the Gospels themselves.  The miraculous elements in the Gospels exhibit a number of contradictions; and an even more serious objection to them is the fact that they come into direct conflict [p.191] with the scientific interpretation of Nature.  As Eucken says:  “To place a miracle in that one situation would mean an overthrow of the total order of Nature, as this order has been set forth through the fundamental work of modern investigation and through an incalculable fulness of experiences.  What would justify such a breach with the total mode of reality ought to appear to us with overwhelming, indisputable clearness.  Has the traditional fact this degree of certainty, and cannot it be explained in any other way?  Who is able to assert this with entire assurance?  If the superiority of the Divine was, on this particular occasion, to be proclaimed in a tangible manner, why did all this happen for a small circle of believers alone, and why did it not happen to others?  There seems, however, to have been necessary a certain state of the souls of the disciples to make them see what they thought they saw; but in all this there is found a psychic and subjective factor in operation—­a factor whose potency is very difficult to define and to mark its boundaries.  It would have been a fact of a wonderful nature if the souls of the disciples, from within, became suddenly and without intermediary convinced of the continuation of the life and the presence of the Master:  all this would have been no sensuous miracle—­no break in the course of Nature.  But we have to bear in mind how times of strong religious agitation and [p.192] convulsion are so little qualified to judge concerning external phenomena, and how easily a psychic state solidifies into a supposed percept!  Within and without Christianity there are numerous examples of the sensuous appearance of a dead person being considered to be fully authenticated by the narrower circle of friends.  Savonarola appeared more than a hundred times after his death, but always to those whose hearts clung to him; and to fifteen nuns of the convent of St Lucia he gave the consecrated wafer through the opening in their grille."[64]

Eucken shows that an inability to accept the miraculous element in the Gospels need not prevent anyone from being the possessor of the Spiritual Substance.  The spiritual content of Christianity is a content which lies beyond the region of physical phenomena, whether those phenomena are natural or are supposed to be supernatural.  Christianity is dragged down to a lower level by confusing its mode of existence with its spiritual kernel.  Religion is able to subsist without such aids simply because it has discovered the true wonder within the spiritual life itself.  We do not know what future investigations may reveal