in the comprehensive meaning of the word, becomes the very essence of religion. The ways in which it shall manifest itself is quite a secondary consideration.

Miracles, as the most exposed and detached point in the supernatural, as burdened with the largest fungus growth of superstition, and the occasion of the most frequent and pernicious errors, have suffered the chief attack of materialism.

Miracles, as mere facts, are the most of them of very little moment. Ninety-nine in each hundred could be swept away with no loss to faith, but with great gain rather. It is because of the affinity of a small remainder of miracles with the religious spirit and method, that they call for defence. Prayer, worship, obedience under personal incentives, are of the essence of religion, and these all involve, in one form or another, the same elements as the miracle. The miracle offers philosophically no additional difficulty. Prayer can gain no true hearing, personal impulses can find no sincere expression and no range of control from man toward God and God toward man, without embracing at every step the efficacy of spiritual powers among physical forces. The personal in man and God alike rests on the supernatural. The miracle thus becomes, by its logical and emotional affinities, a strategical point in the controversy, settling the principles which are to rule in it. If the miracle is really and wholly irrational, many other things are so also.

The adjustment of the natural and the supernatural in their true balance with each other is