o be supposed. When we look back upon history, the world has gone
through many similar crises before. The discoveries of Darwin and
the philosophies of Mill or Hegel do not mark a greater relative
advance than the discoveries of Newton and the philosophies of
Descartes and Locke. These latter certainly had an effect upon
theology. At one time they seemed to shake it to its base; so much
so that Bishop Butler wrote in the Advertisement to the first
edition of his Analogy that 'it is come to be taken for granted
that Christianity is not so much as a subject of inquiry; but that
it is now at length discovered to be fictitious.' Yet what do we
see after a lapse of a hundred and forty years? It cannot be said
that there is less religious life and activity now than there was
then, or that there has been so far any serious breach in the
continuity of Christian belief. An eye that has learnt to watch
the larger movements of mankind will not allow itself to be
disturbed by local oscillations. It is natural enough that some of
our thinkers and writers should imagine that the last word has
been spoken, and that they should be tempted to use the word
'Truth' as if it were their own peculiar possession. But Truth is
really a much vaster and more unattainable thing. One man sees a
fragment of it here and another there; but, as a whole, even in
any of its smallest subdivisions, it exists not in the brain of
any one individual, but in the gradual, and ever incomplete but
ever self-completing, onward movement of the whole. 'If any man
think that he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought
to know.' The forms of Christianity change, but Christianity
itself endures. And it would seem as if we might well be content
to wait until it was realised a little less imperfectly before we
attempt to go farther afield.

Yet the work of adaptation must be done. The present generation
has a task of its own to perform. It is needful for it to revise
its opinions in view of the advances that have been made both in
general knowledge and in special theological criticism. In so far
as 'Supernatural Religion' has helped to do this, it has served
the cause of true progress; but its main plan and design I cannot
but regard as out of date and aimed in the air.

The Christian miracles, or what in our ignorance we call miracles,
will not bear to be torn away from their context. If they are
facts we must look at them in strict connection with that