usness. There is
no evidence of the consciousness of sin. There is a passage in the
_Discourses_, in which Schleiermacher himself declared that the
identification of the fundamental idea of religion with the historical
fact in which that religion had its rise, was a mistake. Surely it is
exactly this mistake which Schleiermacher has here made.

It will be evident from all that has been said that to Schleiermacher
the Scripture was not the foundation of faith. As such it was almost
universally regarded in his time. The New Testament, he declared, is
itself but a product of the Christian consciousness. It is a record of
the Christian experience of the men of the earlier time. To us it is a
means of grace because it is the vivid and original register of that
experience. The Scriptures can be regarded as the work of the Holy
Spirit only in so far as this was this common spirit of the early
Church. This spirit has borne witness to Christ in these writings not
essentially otherwise than in later writings, only more at first hand,
more under the impression of intercourse with Jesus. Least of all may we
base the authority of Scripture upon a theory of inspiration such as
that generally current in Schleiermacher's time. It is the personality
of Jesus which is the inspiration of the New Testament. Christian faith,
including the faith in the Scriptures, can rest only upon the total
impression of the character of Jesus.

In the same manner Schleiermacher speaks of miracles. These cannot be
regarded in the conventional manner as supports of religion, for the
simplest of all reasons. They presuppose religion and faith and must be
understood by means of those. The accounts of external miracles
contained in the Gospels are matters for unhesitating criticism. The
Christian finds, for moral reasons and because of the response of his
own heart, the highest revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Extraordinary
events may be expected in Jesus' career. Yet these can be called
miracles only relatively, as containing something extraordinary for
contemporary knowledge. They may remain to us events wholly
inexplicable, illustrating a law higher than any which we yet know.
Therewith they are not taken out of the realm of the orderly phenomena
of nature. In other words, the notion of the miraculous is purely
subjective. What is a miracle for one age may be no miracle in the view
of the next. Whatever the deeds of Jesus may have been, however
inexplic