Let us then in the presence of narratives of supernatural happenings ask our how with a good deal of reverence and a good deal of modesty, not as implying a sceptical doubt on our part, but as a wish that we may be admitted deeper into the meaning of the event.  Scepticism simply closes the door through which we might pass to fuller knowledge.  The questioning of faith holds the door open.  To those who have not closed the door upon the supernatural it is evident that it is permeated with forces and influences which are not material in their origin or their effects; that God acts upon the world now as He has ever acted upon it.  If we cannot believe this I do not see that we can believe in God at all in any intelligible sense.  There is to me one attitude toward the supernatural that is even more hopeless than the attitude of materialistic scepticism which says, “Miracles do not happen”; and that is the attitude which says, “Miracles happened in Bible times, but have never happened since.”  As the one attitude seems to imply that God made the world, but after He had made it left it to go on by itself and no more expresses any interest in it; so the other implies that after God put the Christian religion in the world He left that to go on by itself and no longer pays any attention to it.  Either to me is wholly unintelligible and inconceivable.

And what is worse, is wholly out of touch with the revelation of God made in Holy Scripture.  That displays God working in and through the material universe, and it displays God working in and through the spirit of man; and it in no place implies that either the material world or the human order is so perfect as to need no further divine action.  Revelation implies the constant presence and action of God in nature and in the Church; it implies that both have a forward look and are not ends in themselves but are moving on toward some ultimate perfection.  “The whole creation groaneth and travaileth ... waiting for the adoption, that is, the redemption of our body.”  We look for a new heaven and a new earth; and human society looks to a perfect consummation in the fellowship of the saints in light.

Looking out on life from the spiritual point of vantage, we may hopefully ask our how, and there will be an answer.  To blessed Mary S. Gabriel replied:  “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee:  therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.”—­An answer that was full of light and of deepest mystery.  The immediate question—­the mode of her conception—­was cleared up; it would be through the direct action of God the Holy Spirit:  but the nature of the Child to be born is filled with mystery.  We can imagine S. Mary in the days to come finding her child-bearing quite intelligible in comparison with the mystery that brooded over His nature.