ich, if the
conditions were repeated, it would recur. We should unceasingly
endeavour through observation, reflexion, and new knowledge, to show how
we might subordinate this event in the connexion of nature which we
assume. We should feel that we knew more, and not less, of God, if we
should succeed. And if our effort should prove altogether futile, we
should be no less sure that such natural connexion exists. This is
because nature is for us the revelation of the divine. The divine, we
assume, has a natural order of working. Its inviolability is the
divinest thing about it. It is through this sequence of ideas that we
are in a position to deny, not facts which may be inexplicable, but the
traditional conception of the miracle. For surely no one needs to be
told that this is not the conception of the miracle which has existed in
the minds of the devout, and equally of the undevout, from the beginning
of thought until the present day.

However, there is nothing in all of this which hinders us from believing
with a full heart in the love and grace and care of God, in his holy and
redeeming purpose for mankind and for the individual. It is true that
this belief cannot any longer retain its naive and childish form. It is
true that it demands of a man far more of moral force, of ethical and
spiritual mastery, of insight and firm will, to sustain the belief in
the purpose of God for himself and for all men, when a man believes that
he sees and feels God only in and through nature and history, through
personal consciousness and the personal consciousness of Jesus. It is
true that it has, apparently, been easier for men to think of God as
outside and above his world, and of themselves as separated from their
fellows by his special providence. It is more difficult, through glad
and intelligent subjection to all laws of nature and of history, to
achieve the education of one's spirit, to make good one's inner
deliverance from the world, to aid others in the same struggle and to
set them on their way to God. Men grow uncertain within themselves,
because they say that traditional religion has apprehended the matter in
a different way. This is true. It is also misleading. Whatever miracles
Jesus may have performed, no one can say that he performed them to make
life easier for himself, to escape the common lot, to avoid struggle, to
evade suffering and disgraceful death. On the contrary, in genuine human
self-distrust, but also in ge