is advance in
spiritual knowledge is in proportion to his nearness in thought and
feeling to God Himself. That the progress of the human race in spiritual
knowledge, unlike progress in scientific knowledge, should be due not to
thinkers intellectually gifted, but to Prophets and Apostles inspired by
God, thus exactly corresponds with what the spiritually-minded man finds
within his own soul. And so too does it correspond with what he sees in
others. Often and often the unlearned and untrained by sheer goodness of
life attain to wonderful perception of spiritual truth, and the holiness
of the unlettered peasant reveals to his conscience the law of right
conduct in circumstances which perplex the disciplined and well
informed. As the human race has learnt the highest spiritual truth by
direct communication from God, so too on communion with God far more
than on intellectual power, depends the progress of spiritual knowledge
in every human soul.

But though the hold of the Bible on the faith of believers
unquestionably depends on its satisfying the conscience in every stage
of its enlightenment, it is equally certain that those who gave the
messages recorded in the Bible claimed something more as proof of their
authority than the approval of the conscience of their hearers. They
professed to prove their mission by the evidence of supernatural powers;
and the teaching of the Bible cannot be dissociated from the miraculous
element in it which is connected with that teaching. If, indeed, the Old
Testament stood alone we might acknowledge that the miraculous element
in it occupied comparatively so small a place, and was so separable from
the rest, and the evidence for it was so rarely, if ever,
contemporaneous, that it might be left out of count. But we cannot say
this of the New Testament, nor in particular of the account that has
reached us of the sayings and doings of our Lord. The miracles are
embedded in, are indeed intertwined with, the narrative. Many of our
Lord's most characteristic sayings are so associated with narratives of
miracles that the two cannot be torn apart: 'I have not seen so great
faith, no, not in Israel;' 'My Father worketh hitherto, and I work;'
'Son, thy sins be forgiven thee;' 'Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees
and the Sadducees;' 'It is not meet to take the children's bread and
cast it to dogs;' 'This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting;'
'Were there not ten cleansed, but where are th