still. And into the silence there fell, one by
one, the short terse sentences, in which the seer, the believer,
struggled to express what God has been, is, and will ever be to the soul
which trusts Him. In them the whole effort of the speaker was really to
restrain, to moderate, to depersonalise the voice of faith. But the
intensity of each word burnt it into the hearer as it was spoken. Even
Lady Charlotte turned a little pale--the tears stood in her eyes.

Then, from the witness of God in the soul, and in the history of man's
moral life, Elsmere turned to the glorification of _Experience_, 'of
that unvarying and rational order of the world which has been the
appointed instrument of man's training since life and thought began.'

'_There_,' he said slowly, 'in the unbroken sequences of nature, in the
physical history of the world, in the long history of man, physical,
intellectual, moral--_there_ lies the revelation of God. There is no
other, my friends!'

Then, while the room hung on his words, he entered on a brief exposition
of the text, '_Miracles do not happen_,' restating Hume's old argument,
and adding to it some of the most cogent of those modern arguments drawn
from literature, from history, from the comparative study of religions
and religious evidence, which were not practically at Hume's disposal,
but which are now affecting the popular mind as Hume's reasoning could
never have affected it.

'We are now able to show how miracle, or the belief in it, which is the
same thing, comes into being. The study of miracle in all nations, and
under all conditions, yields everywhere the same results. Miracle may
be the child of imagination, of love, nay, of a passionate sincerity,
but invariably it lives with ignorance and is withered by knowledge!'

And then, with lightning unexpectedness, he turned upon his audience, as
though the ardent soul reacted at once against a strain of mere
negation.

'But do not let yourselves imagine for an instant that, because in a
rational view of history there is no place for a Resurrection and
Ascension, therefore you may profitably allow yourself a mean and
miserable mirth of _this_ sort over the past!'--and his outstretched
hand struck the newspapers beside him with passion, 'Do not imagine for
an instant that what is binding, adorable, beautiful in that past is
done away with when miracle is given up! No, thank God! We still "live
by admiration, hope, and love." God only draw