(4) The spiritual training of the world has actually proceeded on convictions inseparable from the miraculous. The worship, the psalmody, the prayer of devout spirits or of great assemblies, have been permeated with the feeling of an immediate, Divine Presence, involving supervision and open to intervention. The man who cannot assert the possibility of a miracle, can hardly assert anything which calls forth faith or feeds affection. Human feelings cannot be touched in their depths, nor controlled in their full force, otherwise than by a Power at once above them and sympathetic with them. This is preeminently true of popular thought, that reaches truth as often through the ministration of the emotions, as emotions by the aid of truth. A disposition to despise as inferior and false the conditions of popular progress, indicates a conceit of intellect that has not much to commend it. The hymn that ascends in volume, borne up by the voice of a great multitude, has an emotional force that springs from the constitution of man, and has significance therefore in spiritual discipline. Some reason as if it were not rational for a Divine Discipline to be efficacious, to treat men according to their actual endowments, to handle them under the real terms of their lives. The spiritual training of the world vindicates itself in that it has actually been fruitful and progressive.

The presumption in favor of miracles admits of enforcement in many directions, but the root of it is the presence of the supernatural in the world, its priority of power and importance, and the discipline