those spiritual combinations of thought which are revelation. The miracle has comparatively little direct significance for us, unless we allow it, as in itself false, to honey-comb the intellectual and moral characters with which it has been associated. Nineteen centuries render any historical proof too weak to bear the weight of a strong rational presumption against it. The miracle must fade into distance; to retain its force, its merely miraculous proof, it must become a perpetual miracle; and a perpetual miracle is the suspension of reason, is spiritual syncope. On the other hand, truth as truth gains force with every century, disclosing more and more the extension and indestructibility of its light. The inner power of the revelation has been gaining ground on its outward form with every intervening century, till to-day our chief interest is in not allowing the one to weaken or contradict the other. We are fearful lest the miracle misunderstood, and contracting within itself an intellectual and spiritual opacity, shall lie like a veiling mist between us and the truth. Revelation would thus become a light muffled in its own smoke.

Christianity stands (1) by its perpetual appeal to the highest spiritual insight of the human race; (2) by its power to bring to those who accept it the purest personal discipline; (3) by its own historic force, as expressed in live and actions; (4) by its historic hold on human society; (5) by remaining to-day, as hitherto, the most comprehensive and holiest truth offered to man. So standing it carries with it the miracle as one spark struck out in the