speak afterwards. Here we are only concerned with this clear point;
that in so far as the liberal idea of freedom can be said to be
on either side in the discussion about miracles, it is obviously
on the side of miracles. Reform or (in the only tolerable sense)
progress means simply the gradual control of matter by mind.
A miracle simply means the swift control of matter by mind. If you
wish to feed the people, you may think that feeding them miraculously
in the wilderness is impossible--but you cannot think it illiberal.
If you really want poor children to go to the seaside, you cannot
think it illiberal that they should go there on flying dragons;
you can only think it unlikely. A holiday, like Liberalism, only means
the liberty of man. A miracle only means the liberty of God.
You may conscientiously deny either of them, but you cannot call
your denial a triumph of the liberal idea. The Catholic Church
believed that man and God both had a sort of spiritual freedom.
Calvinism took away the freedom from man, but left it to God.
Scientific materialism binds the Creator Himself; it chains up
God as the Apocalypse chained the devil. It leaves nothing free
in the universe. And those who assist this process are called the
"liberal theologians."

This, as I say, is the lightest and most evident case.
The assumption that there is something in the doubt of miracles akin
to liberality or reform is literally the opposite of the truth.
If a man cannot believe in miracles there is an end of the matter;
he is not particularly liberal, but he is perfectly honourable
and logical, which are much better things. But if he can believe
in miracles, he is certainly the more liberal for doing so;
because they mean first, the freedom of the soul, and secondly,
its control over the tyranny of circumstance. Sometimes this truth
is ignored in a singularly naive way, even by the ablest men.
For instance, Mr. Bernard Shaw speaks with hearty old-fashioned
contempt for the idea of miracles, as if they were a sort of breach
of faith on the part of nature: he seems strangely unconscious
that miracles are only the final flowers of his own favourite tree,
the doctrine of the omnipotence of will. Just in the same way he calls
the desire for immortality a paltry selfishness, forgetting that he
has just called the desire for life a healthy and heroic selfishness.
How can it be noble to wish to make one's life infinite and yet
mean to w