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this side. The contest raged round the credibility or incredibility of miracle, as if the whole of revelation depended upon the issue. In reality, however, no vital point of revelation was endangered. It was an affair of outposts altogether, and the work so energetically assaulted and defended had little importance for the citadel in the rear. Neither the philosopher who argued against nor the divine who contended for miracle was dealing with the essence of Christianity, and the complete triumph of either would have made little change. At the worst, a dogma of the Church would have been overthrown; but the dogmas of the Church and the religion of Christ are not synonymous terms.
In enumerating the various causes which have produced a new "climate of opinion" in relation to miracles, Dr. Ferguson says:
First of all, there is the scientific conception of the universality of law. This may truly be said to be the revelation of our own age, not in the sense that it was unknown to our predecessors, but that in the present day the conception has been so extended and generalized as to dwarf its former proportions. It has passed out of the laboratory of science into the common possession of men, and is now one of the great truths so firmly established that they become truisms. We never stop to reason about them, and, were any one rash enough to call them in question, we should not give him even a patient hearing. Moreover, the idea of law is not to be confined to the material world, with its indestructible treasury of force. It must be carried over into the world of mind, and be seen at work there also, not indeed with the rigidity of physical law, but within the large limits which freedom of thought and action demands. It is to he traced in the advance of civilization, in the development of history, in the growth of religion, in relations such as those between morals and art, between society and government, between national life and literature. Now, it is not difficult to see how such a conception must indispose men under its influence to look favorably upon miracle. In the idea of order everywhere supreme, calm, eternal, there is a sublimity which fills their imagination and stimulates their intellect. Any interruption of its uniform course, any breach of continuity, would be a blemish in the picture, and not an additional charm—would be, indeed, a positive pain to thought, and, instead of disposing the mind to reverence, would fill it with confusion and doubt.
The Rev. Professor Knight, of St. Andrews, has a sermon of great interest and moment on "The Continuity and Development of Religion," in which he says:
It does not, therefore, follow that, if we can explain the origin of a particular belief by tracing its parentage, and finding that it has sprung from inferior elements, the validity of the belief itself is in the slightest degree imperiled. Nay, it is indisputable that, if the human mind has grown at all, its religious convictions—like everything else belonging to it—must have changed. Our remote ancestors could not possibly have had the same religion as ourselves, any more than they could have had the same physiognomy, the same social customs, or the same language. Thus, the intuitions of subsequent ages must necessarily have become keener and clearer, at once more rational and more spiritual, than the instincts of primeval days; the clearness, the intelligence, and the spirituality being due to a vast number of conspiring causes. And, if the opinions and the practices of the race thus change, the change is due to no accident or caprice, but to the ordinary processes of natural law. It can not be otherwise; because, since no human belief springs up miraculously, none can be maintained in the form in which it arises for any length of lime. Thus, the "increasing purpose" of the ages must inevitably bring to the front fresh modifications of belief. If our theologies have all grown out of something very different, why should we fear their continued growth? Why should any rational theist dread the future expansion of theistic belief? If it has grown, it must continue to grow, and many of its existing phases must disappear. The controversies of our time are the phases of its evolution. But is it now so very perfect that we would wish it to remain stationary at its present point of development? That its present phases should be permanent? May we not rather rejoice that "these all shall wax old as a garment," and that, "as a vesture, they shall be changed"; while the Object—of which they are the interpretation, or which they try to represent—endures, and of its immortality there shall be no end? It may even be affirmed that one of the best features in every human belief is its elasticity; that one sign of its vitality is its amenability to change. Were it irrevocably fixed, it would have some secret affinity with death and the grave. Paradoxical, therefore, as it may seem, if religion he among the things that can not be shaken, it must change. Its forms must die that its spirit may live; and the condition of the permanence of the latter is the perpetual vicissitude of the former. Curious it is that some of its most ardent advocates can not recognize it under a new dress, that even its disciples misconstrue it when it changes its raiment. They think it a foe if it is differently appareled. But how often in all human controversy the combatants are merely speaking different dialects while they mean the same thing 1 But, granting that the opinion of the world is an organic whole, that all human conviction—with its present variety and complexity has grown out of very lowly roots, and that our most sacred beliefs have emerged from others that are different, a further and a far more important question lies behind this admission. It is this: How are we to interpret the whole series from beginning to end? It is not enough to say that there has been progress; what meaning are we to attach to the term progress? Are we to think of it as simple succession and accumulation, the mere addition of new links to a chain of devel-
