Produced by Bryan Ness, Stephen Blundell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) MIRACLES AND SUPERNATURAL RELIGION BY JAMES MORRIS WHITON, PH.D. (YALE) _Portentum non fit contra naturam, sed contra quam est nota natura_ --AUGUSTINE New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 1903 _All rights reserved_ COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up, electrotyped, and published May, 1903. Norwood Press J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Variant spellings have been retained. {=e} represents e with upper macron. To M. B. W. PREFATORY NOTE While the present subject of discussion tempts to many an excursion into particulars, its treatment is restricted to general outlines, with an aim simply to clarify current ideas of miracle and the supernatural, so as to find firm holding ground for tenable positions in the present "drift period" of theology. The chief exception made to this general treatment is the discussion given to a class of miracles regarded with as much incredulity as any, yet as capable as any of being accredited as probably historical events--the raisings of the "dead." The insistence of some writers on the virgin birth and corporeal resurrection of Jesus as essential to Christianity has required brief discussion of these also, mainly with reference to the reasonableness of that demand. As to the latter miracle, it must be observed that in the Biblical narratives taken as a whole, whichever of their discordant features one be disposed to emphasize, the psychical element clearly preponderates over the physical and material. J. M. W. NEW YORK, April 11, 1903. CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTORY 13 THE ARGUMENT I The gradual narrowing of the miraculous element in the Bible by recent discovery and discussion.--The alarm thereby excited in the Church.--The fallacy which generates the fear.--The atheistic conception of nature which generates the fallacy.--The present outgrowing of this conception. 25 II