Still the author of ‘Supernatural Religion’ is, no doubt, justified in raising the question, Did miracles really happen?  I only wish to protest against the idea that such a question can be adequately discussed as something isolated and distinct, in which all that is necessary is to produce and substantiate the documents as in a forensic process.  Such a ‘world-historical’ event (if I may for the moment borrow an expressive Germanism) as the founding of Christianity cannot be thrown into a merely forensic form.  Considerations of this kind may indeed enter in, but to suppose that they can be justly estimated by themselves alone is an error.  And it is still more an error to suppose that the riddle of the universe, or rather that part of the riddle which to us is most important, the religious nature of man and, the objective facts and relations that correspond to it, can all be reduced to some four or five simple propositions which admit of being proved or disproved by a short and easy Q.E.D.

It would have been a far more profitable enquiry if the author had asked himself, What is Revelation?  The time has come when this should be asked and an attempt to obtain a more scientific definition should be made.  The comparative study of religions has gone far enough to admit of a comparison between the Ethnic religions and that which had its birth in Palestine—­the religion of the Jews and Christians.  Obviously, at the first blush, there is a difference:  and that difference constitutes what we mean by Revelation.  Let us have this as yet very imperfectly known quantity scientifically ascertained, without any attempt either to minimise or to exaggerate.  I mean, let the field which Mr. Matthew Arnold has lately been traversing with much of his usual insight but in a light and popular manner, be seriously mapped out and explored.  Pioneers have been at work, such as Dr. Kuenen, but not perhaps quite without a bias:  let the same enquiry be taken up so widely as that the effects of bias may be eliminated; and instead of at once accepting the first crude results, let us wait until they are matured by time.  This would be really fruitful and productive, and a positive addition to knowledge; but reasoning such as that in ‘Supernatural Religion’ is vitiated at the outset, because it starts with the assumption that we know perfectly well the meaning of a term of which our actual conception is vague and indeterminate in the extreme—­Divine Revelation. [Endnote 10:1]

With these reservations as to the main drift and bearing of the argument, we may however meet the author of ‘Supernatural Religion’ on his own ground.  It is a part of the question—­though a more subordinate part apparently than he seems to suppose—­to decide whether miracles did or did not really happen.  Even of this part too it is but quite a minor subdivision that is included in the two volumes of his work that have hitherto appeared.  In the first place, merely as a matter of historical attestation, the Gospels