current.  Those ancient thinkers who reduced the Supreme Being to a negation, with all their subtlety, wanted strength, and settled questions by an easier test than that of modern philosophy.  The merit of a modern metaphysician is, like that of a good chemist or naturalist, accurate observation in noting the facts of mind.  Is there a contradiction in the idea of creation?  Is there a contradiction in the idea of a personal Infinite Being?  He examines his own mind, and if he does not see one, he passes the idea.  But the ancient speculators decided, without examination of the true facts of mind, by a kind of philosophical fancy; and, according to this loose criterion, the creation of matter and a personal Infinite Being were impossibilities, for they mistook the inconceivable for the impossible.  And thus a stringent test has admitted what a loose but capricious test discarded, and the true notion of God has issued safe out of the crucible of modern metaphysics.  Reason has shown its strength, but then it has turned that strength back upon itself; it has become its own critic; and in becoming its own critic it has become its own check.

If the belief, then, in a personal Deity lies at the bottom of all religious and virtuous practice, and if the removal of it would be a descent for human nature, the withdrawal of its inspiration and support, and a fall in its whole standard; the failure of the very breath of moral life in the individual and in society; the decay and degeneration of the very stock of mankind;—­does a theory which would withdraw miraculous action from the Deity interfere with that belief?  If it would, it is but prudent to count the cost of that interference.  Would a Deity deprived of miraculous action possess action at all?  And would a God who cannot act be a God?  If this would be the issue, such an issue is the very last which religious men can desire.  The question here has been all throughout, not whether upon any ground, but whether upon a religious ground and by religious believers, the miraculous as such could be rejected.  But to that there is but one answer—­that it is impossible in reason to separate religion from the supernatural, and upon a religious basis to overthrow miracles....

And so we arrive again by another route at the old turning question; for the question whether man is or is not the vertex of nature, is the question whether there is or is not a God.  Does free agency stop at the human stage, or is there a sphere of free-will above the human, in which, as in the human, not physical law but spirit moves matter?  And does that free-will penetrate the universal frame invisibly to us, an omnipresent agent?  If so, every miracle in Scripture is as natural an event in the universe as any chemical experiment in the physical world; if not, the seat of the great Presiding Will is empty, and nature has no Personal Head; man is her highest point; he finishes her ascent; though