VIII
VIII
Synopsis.—The cardinal point in the present discussion, the reality not of miracles but of the supernatural.—Fallacy of pointing to physical events as essential characteristics of supernatural Revelation.—The character of a revelation determined not by its circumstances, but by its contents.—Moral nature supernatural to physical.—Nature a hierarchy of natures.—Supernatural Religion historically attested by the moral development it generates.—Transfer of its distinctive note from moral ideals to physical marvels a costly error.—Jesus' miracles a revelation, of a type common with others before and since.—The unique Revelation of Jesus was in the higher realm of divine ideas and ideals.—These, while unrealized in human life, still exhibit the fact of a supernatural Revelation.—The distinction of natural and supernatural belongs to the period of moral progress up to the spiritual maturity of man in the image of God. The divine possibilities of humanity, imaged in Jesus, revealed as our inheritance and our prize.
t remains finally to emphasize the point of cardinal importance in the considerations that have been presented. This is not the reality of miracles, but the reality of the supernatural, what it really is, as distinct from what it has been thought to be. The advance of science and philosophy has brought to the front this question: "Have those who reject the claims of supernatural Religion been misinformed as to what it is?" Is it, as they have been told, dependent for its attestation on signs and wonders occurring in the sphere of the senses? Does it require acceptance of these, as well as of its teachings? Or is its characteristic appeal wholly to the higher nature of man, relying for its attestation on the witness borne to it by this, rather than by extraordinary phenomena presented to the senses? There is at present no intellectual interest of Christianity more urgent than this: to present to minds imbued with modern learning the true conception of the supernatural and of supernatural Religion.