nuine heroism, he gave himself to his
vocation, accepting all that went therewith, and finished the work of
God which he had made his own. This is the more wonderful because it lay
so much nearer to him than it can lie to us, to pray for special
evidence of the love of God and to set his faith on the receiving of it.
He had not the conception of the relation of God to nature and history
which we have.

We may well view the modern tendency to belief in healings through
prayer, suggestion and faith, as an intelligible, an interesting, and in
part, a touching manifestation. Of course there is mingled with it much
dense ignorance, some superstition and even deception. Yet behind such a
phenomenon there is meaning. Men of this mind make earnest with the
thought that God cares for them. Without that thought there is no
religion. They have been taught to find the evidence of God's love and
care in the unusual. They are quite logical. It has been a weak point of
the traditional belief that men have said that in the time of Christ
there were miracles, but since that time, no more. Why not, if we can
only in spirit come near to Christ and God? They are quite logical also
in that they have repudiated modern science. To be sure, no
inconsiderable part of them use the word science continually.

But the very esoteric quality of their science is that it means
something which no one else ever understood that it meant. In reality
their breach with science is more radical than their breach with
Christianity. They feel the contradiction in which most men are bound
fast, who will let science have its way, up to a certain point, but who
beyond that, would retain the miracle. Dimly the former appreciate that
this position is impossible. They leave it to other men to become
altogether scientific if they wish. For themselves they prefer to remain
religious. What a revival of ancient superstitions they have brought to
pass, is obvious. Still we shall never get beyond such adventurous and
preposterous endeavours to rescue that which is inestimably precious in
religion, until the false antithesis between reason and faith, the lying
contradiction between the providence of God and the order of nature, is
overcome. Some science mankind apparently must have. Altogether without
religion the majority, it would seem, will never be. How these are
related, the one to the other, not every one sees. Many attempt their
admixture in unhappy ways. They might