guidance and "intervention "-is really essential and valuable in the popular conception of miracle, and this, I would affirm, is essential to Religion. It may be admitted that the evidence for it falls short of mathematical demonstration, yet the view that the Universe is not the result of, and governed by, blind forces acting in accordance with rigid mechanical law, but rather of a process guided by an overruling Providence, does rest upon a reasonable basis of extended and verifiable experience and legitimate inference. I would mention only the fact, no less stupendous because usually taken for granted, that in the past the evolution of apparently blind forces has led to Progress; the reflections suggested by the crises great and small in the history of nations; the evidence for "guidance" in the lives of individuals; cases of answers to prayer; and the less tangible phenomena to which the term Religious Experience is applied.

In

Miracles in this sense are occurring every day, but it needs no pointing out that in these the Divine is seen to manifest itself by using, if we may so speak, and not by superseding, the ordinary working of nature. It may be, as some philosophers maintain, that such manifestations, seen sub specie aeternitatis, are determined. Or it may be, as I would myself hold, that they are to some extent contingent, and act as a corrective to the havoc wrought by the vagaries of the human will. which case it would seem as though the Divine " Personality" has in this respect an analogy to human personality in that its "freedom" operates by combining, arranging, and directing, rather than in adding to or subtracting from, the system of forces which make up the normal working of nature;-though of course the analogy must not be pressed to the extent of conceiving the Divine activity as being in a Deistic sense external to nature.1

The Resurrection Appearances of our Lord, if con

1 Cf. also the remarks on Miracle in Essay IV. p. 167.

ceived in some such way as I have endeavoured to suggest, should then be regarded as a Divine intervention of this kind. There are some, I know, to whom such an interpretation of them seems lacking in reality and substance, but for myself I feel I am on firmer ground than if I were to rest all on a view of miracle which the lapse of time and the growth of knowledge seems ever to be making less secure, and which in the last resort appears to mean that God did things in Palestine nineteen hundred years ago which He will not or cannot do for us to-day, and that Christ was raised from the dead in a way that we shall not be.

Here, however, we are brought back to the point we started from. We set out to seek a sign. But the brief sketch given above makes it quite clear that the nature of the historical evidence is such that the empty tomb and the series of appearances-the sign which satisfied the Apostles-can, from the nature of the case, be no convincing sign to us. It may be that the old interpretation of the facts is right, and no one, I imagine, would abandon it without a pang, hallowed as it is by old associations and venerable tradition. But it can only be sustained, if at all, after a complex analysis of philosophical presuppositions, and after difficult and delicate discussions, critical and historical, which the plain man cannot follow, and where the experts are not agreed; and to call a conclusion so reached "a sign" is only to mock that cry for patent proof we fain would gratify. Christian theology will never be more than an ineffective, purely defensive "apologetic," until it has squarely and candidly faced this fact.

But facts fairly faced crucem portas portabit te. them is and can be no does not follow that we

soon lose their bitterness, si The sign which was given to convincing sign to us. But it are left without a sign at all,

that is, without anything in the sphere of the visible

and material world which we can point to as a vindication of God's rule and of His Christ. To us another sign is given, and that one which was not and could not be given to the disciples nineteen hundred years ago. Every century that passes makes the sign which convinced them, to us more remote and less convincing; every century that passes adds conviction to that other sign which is given to us-I mean the vindication in history of the claims He made.

The Jewish people, it was believed, had always stood in a quite special relationship to God and had enjoyed a unique revelation of His character and will, and the long history of God's dealings with them, and incidentally through them with mankind in general, was to reach its climax in the appearance of the Messiah. Thus the Christ was, so to speak, the "last word" in the dealings of God with man. Our Lord believed He was the Christ—a remarkable belief for one obviously sincere, disinterested, and sane to hold. He believed, moreover, that His own death was the means appointed for the accomplishment of His mission, and that after this He would be vindicated in some complete and startling way. This was an even more remarkable belief, but it had one obvious merit. It admitted of being put to the test of experiment. He put it to the test-and the experiment did not fail.

We have seen that though the force of isolated texts may be impugned, though the influence of the beliefs of His followers on the tradition of His sayings may be fully allowed for, yet withal it is impossible for candid criticism to doubt that He expected the consummation of the present course of this world to come at least within the lifetime of those who heard Him. No doubt, unlike some of the old prophets or apocalyptists, He gave no date. "Ye know not the day nor

the hour." "Of that day or that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father." Still, nineteen hundred years have passed and the end is not yet; nor will be, so far as science can foresee, for uncounted years to come.

Then was the message, "the Kingdom is at hand," that message at once of judgment and of hope, an empty dream? He rebuked those around Him who could prognosticate the weather but could not read the signs of the times. The hollowness and formalism of the established religion, the corruption and oppression of the ruling powers cried aloud, "And shall not God avenge His elect, who call day and night to Him, and He forbeareth? I say unto you, right soon shall He avenge" (Luke xviii. 7). That judgment did fall. Forty years after these words were spoken His prophecy about the Temple was fulfilled that "not one stone should be left upon another," after a siege of which the horrors have no parallel in history. The special glory of Israel, the task of being a "light to lighten the Gentiles," was left to the little remnant that acknowledged Jesus. Not three and a half more centuries and the stupendous fabric of the Roman Empire, the "world" as it was called (Luke ii. 1), undermined by slow internal decay, came crashing down-and of all that magnificent civilisation only that survived which could shelter itself under the protection of the Christian name. The judgment did fall.

He taught that the leaven which He brought was to leaven the whole lump. The process has been slow indeed, the lump is far larger than could have been contemplated in that age, yet it cannot be denied that the movement which He initiated, at a time when the highest civilisation the world had yet seen was consciously 2 decadent and despairing, has been the great

1 This is really as true of the surviving Eastern Empire as of the West, since its inner coherence and stability were due almost entirely to the Church.

2 The optimism reflected in the literature of the Augustan Age disappears with Tiberius.

And

ethical turning-point in the history of the race. that leaven is working still. Theologies and churches may seem to totter, but never before in history has the real spirit of Christianity had more influence on national and social life. His Kingdom has not yet come, but salvation is surely nearer now than when men first believed.

But His claim went far beyond the prophecy of an impending judgment and the preaching of a new ethical message. "Ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Almighty,' and coming in the clouds of Heaven." Granted that the words were "quasi-symbolic," at least they are a confident assertion that the God and Father in whom He trusted would signally vindicate Him and His cause-vindicate Him not only in the eyes of a select and spirituallyminded few, but also before the eyes of worldlings and decriers vindicate Him not only as a good man, or a true prophet, but as that One to whose appearance Prophet and Psalmist had looked forward, in whom was to be consummated, as in its finest blossom, all the previous history of Israel, as the spiritual if not also the temporal Lord and Judge of humanity. The claim was a tremendous one. Was this an empty

dream?

Shortly after the appearances which convinced His disciples that He was still alive, there came upon them an immense influx of spiritual power. They had been men, they now were giants, and the secret of the change in them was not merely that they believed the Master had risen, but that He was still and now their constant though unseen Companion. The lapse of time, instead of weakening, increased the intensity of this conviction, and all through the ages since a similar conviction, or rather experience, has been the central

1 Tôs dvváμews. It was common in Jewish, as indeed often in modern English usage, to use synonyms for the name of God, e.g. "Heaven" (Mark xi. 30 and Luke xv. 18), "The Blessed One" (Mark xiv. 61).