It will be to many of the honest disciples of Christ a real day of Damascus, when the very name of miracle shall be struck out of the dictionary of Christian theology. The facts remain exactly as they are, but the Spirit of truth will give them a higher meaning. What is wanted for this is not less, but more, faith, for it requires more faith to believe in Christ without, than with, the help of miracles. Nothing has produced so much distress of mind, so much intellectual dishonesty, so much scepticism, so much unbelief, as the miraculous element forced into Christianity from the earliest days. Nothing has so much impeded missionary work as the attempt to persuade people first not to believe in their own miracles, and then to make a belief in other miracles a condition of their becoming Christians. It is easy to say 'You are not a Christian if you do not believe in Christian miracles.' I hope the time will come when we shall be told, 'You are not a Christian if you cannot believe in Christ without the help of miracles.'
Gifford Lectures, III.
MUSIC
Music is the language of the soul, but it defies interpretation. It means something, but that something belongs not to this world of sense and logic, but to another world, quite real, though beyond all definition.... Is there not in Music, and in Music alone of all the arts, something that is not entirely of this earth?... Whence comes melody? Surely not from anything that we hear with our outward ears and are able to imitate, to improve, or to sublimise.... Here if anywhere we see the golden stairs on which angels descend from heaven and whisper sweet sounds into the ears of those who have ears to hear. Words cannot be so inspired, for words, we know, are of the earth, earthy. Melodies are not of the earth, and it is truly said,
'Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.'
Auld Lang Syne.