The present net results of the discussion of the miraculous element in the Bible.--Evaporation of the former evidential value of miracles.--Further insistence on this value a logical blunder.--The transfer of miracles from the artillery to the baggage of the Church.--Probability of a further reduction of the list of miracles.--Also of a further transfer of events reputed miraculous to the domain of history. 37 III Arbitrary criticism of the Biblical narratives of the raising of the "dead."--Facts which it ignores.--The subject related to the phenomena of trance, and records of premature burial.--The resuscitation in Elisha's tomb probably historical.--Jesus' raising of the ruler's daughter plainly such a case.--His raising of the widow's son probably such.--The hypothesis that his raising of Lazarus may also have been such critically examined.--The record allows this supposition.--Further considerations favoring it: 1. The supposition threatens no real interest of Christianity.--2. Enhances the character of the act as a work of mercy.--3. Is independent of the belief of the witnesses of the act.--4. Is coherent with the general conception of the healing works of Jesus as wrought by a peculiar psychical power.--Other cases.--The resurrection of Jesus an event in a wholly different order of things.--The practical result of regarding these resuscitations as in the order of nature. 47 IV A clearer conception of miracle approached.--Works of Jesus once reputed miraculous not so reputed now, since not now transcending as once the existing range of knowledge and power.--This transfer of the miraculous to the natural likely to continue.--No hard and fast line between the miraculous and the non-miraculous.--Miracle a provisional word, its application narrowing in the enlarging mastery of the secrets of Nature and of life. 75 V Biblical miracles the effluence of extraordinary lives.--Life the world's magician and miracle-worker; its miracles now termed _prodigies_.--Miracle the natural product of an extraordinary endowment of life.--Life the ultimate reality.--What any man can achieve is conditioned by the psychical quality of his life.--Nothing more natural, more supernatural, than life.--The derived life of the world filial to the self-existent life of God; "begotten, not made."--Miracle as the product of life, the work of God. 85 VI