[35] "The Church asks, and it is entitled to ask the critic: Do you
believe in the Incarnation and Resurrection of Jesus Christ?... If he
replies in the negative, he has missed the way, and has put himself
outside of the Church of Christ."--_The Church's One Foundation_, p. 4.
[Note that "Incarnation" and "Resurrection" are terms which Dr. Nicoll
construes as denoting physical miracles.]
What Dr. Nicoll here means by "outside of the Church" he indicates by
saying elsewhere, that philosophers who reckon goodness as everything,
and miracles as impossible, "are not Christians" (_op. cit._, p. 10).
This conditioning of Christian character upon an intellectual judgment
concerning the reality of remote occurrences is both unbiblical and
unethical, as well as absurd when practically applied. Some years since,
Dr. E. A. Abbott, who admits no miracle in the life of Christ, published
a book, _The Spirit on the Waters_, in which he inculcated the worship
of Christ. Yet, according to Dr. Nicoll, such a man is no Christian!
[36] _The Miraculous Element in the Gospels_, p. 353.