In a historical retrospect greater and more revolutionary changes are
seen to have occurred during the nineteenth century than in any century
preceding. In these changes no department of thought and activity has
failed to share, and theological thought has been quite as much affected
as scientific or ethical. Especially remarkable is the changed front of
Christian theologians toward miracles, their distinctly lowered estimate
of the significance of miracle, their antipodal reverse of the long
established treatment of miracles. Referring to this a British
evangelical writer[1] observes that "the intelligent believer of our
own day, ... instead of accepting Christianity on the ground of the
miracles, accepts it in spite of the miracles. Whether he admits these
miracles, or rejects them, his attitude toward them is toward
difficulties, not helps."
By this diametrical change of Christian thought a great amount of
scepticism has already been antiquated. A once famous anti-Christian
book, _Supernatural Religion_, regarded as formidable thirty years ago,
is now as much out of date for relevancy to present theological
conditions as is the old smooth-bore cannon for naval warfare. That
many, indeed, are still unaware of the change that has been experienced
by the leaders of Christian thought, no one acquainted with current
discussions will deny; the fact is indubitable. It is reviewed in the
following pages with the constructive purpose of redeeming the idea of
supernatural Religion from pernicious perversion, and of exhibiting it
in its true spiritual significance. The once highly reputed calculations
made to show how the earth's diurnal revolution could be imperceptibly
stopped for Joshua's convenience, and the contention that the
Mediterranean produced fish with gullets capable of giving passage to
Jonah, are now as dead as the chemical controversy about phlogiston. Yet
some sceptical controversialists are still so far from cultivating the
acquaintance with recent thought which they recommend to Christian
theologians, as to persist in affirmations of amazing ignorance, _e.g._
"It is admitted that miracles alone can attest the reality of divine
revelation."[2] Sponsors for this statement must now be sought among
unlearned Christians, or among a few scholars who survive as
cultivators of the old-fashioned argument from the "evidences." Even
among these latter the tendency to minimize miracle is undeniably
apparent in a reduction of the list classified as such, and still more
in the brevity of the list insisted on for the attestation of
Christianity.
A transitional state of mind is clearly evidenced by the present
division and perplexity of Christian thought concerning the Christian
miracles. Many seem to regard further discussion as profitless, and are
ready to shelve the subject. But this attitude of weariness is also
transitional. There must be some thoroughfare to firm ground and clear
vision. It must be found in agreement, first of all, on the real meaning
of a term so variously and vaguely used as _miracle_. In the present
imperfect state of knowledge it may be impossible to enucleate miracle,
however defined, of all mystery. But even so will much be gained for
clear thinking, if miracle can be reasonably related to the greater
mystery which all accept, though none understand,--the mystery of
_life_. This view of the dynamic relation of life to miracle[3] is here
suggested for what it may prove to be worth.
The great and general change that transfigured theology during the
nineteenth century was characteristically ethical. This, indeed, is the
distinctive feature of the so-called new theology, in contrast with that
which the Protestant Reformers inherited from St. Augustine. God and
Man, Faith, Salvation and Inspiration, Redemption and Atonement,
Judgment and Retribution,--all these themes are now presented in
orthodox pulpits far more conformably to ethical principles, though in
degrees varying with educated intelligence, than was customary in the
sermons of half a century ago. "One great source and spring of
theological progress," says Professor Bowne, in his recent work on
_Theism_, "has been the need of finding a conception of God which the
moral nature could accept. The necessity of moralizing theology has
produced vast changes in that field; and the end is not yet."
The ethical character of the theological change will perhaps be most
obvious in the field of Biblical study, to which the present subject
belongs. The traditional solution of such moral difficulties in the Old
Testament as commands, ostensibly divine, to massacre idolaters has
been quite discarded. It is no longer the mode to say that deeds
seemingly atrocious were not atrocious, because God commanded them.
Writers of orthodox repute now say that the _Thus saith the Lord_, with
which Samuel prefaced his order to exterminate the Amalekites, must be
understood subjectively, as an expression of the prophet's belief, not
objectively, as a divine command communicated to him. This great change
is a quite recent change. If a personal reference may be indulged, it is
not twenty years since the present writer's published protest against
"The Anti-Christian Use of the Bible in the Sunday School,"[4] the
exhibition to children of some vestiges of heathen superstition embedded
in the Old Testament narratives as true illustrations of God's ways
toward men, drew forth from a religious journal a bitter editorial on
"The Old Testament and its New Enemies." But a great light has since
dawned in that quarter. It is no longer deemed subversive of faith in a
divine Revelation to hold that the prophet Gad was not infallible in
regarding the plague which scourged Jerusalem as sent to punish David's
pride in his census of the nation.
A significant fact is presented in the comparison of these two aspects
of the theological change that has come to pass,--the growing importance
of the ethical, and the dwindling importance of the miraculous in the
religious thought of to-day. This may reassure those who fear whereto
such change may grow. The inner significance of such a change is most
auspicious. It portends the displacement of a false by the true
conception of supernatural Religion, and the removal thereby of a
serious antagonism between Science and Christian Theology, as well as of
a serious hindrance of many thoughtful minds from an intelligent embrace
of Christianity.