This conditioning of Christian character upon an intellectual judgment concerning the reality of remote occurrences is both unbiblical and unethical, as well as absurd when practically applied. Some years since, Dr. E. A. Abbott, who admits no miracle in the life of Christ, published a book, _The Spirit on the Waters_, in which he inculcated the worship of Christ. Yet, according to Dr. Nicoll, such a man is no Christian! [36] _The Miraculous Element in the Gospels_, p. 353. VII VII SYNOPSIS.--Account to be made of the law of atrophy through disuse.--The virgin birth and the corporeal resurrection of Jesus, the two miracles now insisted on as the irreducible minimum, affected by this law.--The vital truths of the incarnation and immortality independent of these miracles.--These truths now placed on higher ground in a truer conception of the supernatural.--The true supernatural is the spiritual, not the miraculous.--Scepticism bred from the contrary view.--The miracle narratives, while less evidential for religion, not unimportant for history.--Psychical research a needful auxiliary for the scientific critic of these. To the true conception of the supernatural we shall presently come. But we cannot proceed without briefly reminding ourselves of the certain consequences of this now far advanced dropping of miracles by modern apologetics from their ancient use as evidences of a supernatural Revelation. We are not ignorant of the law, which holds throughout the material, the mental, and the moral realms, that disuse tends to atrophy and extinction. Disused organs cease to exist, as in the eyeless cave-fish. For centuries the story of the miraculous birth of Jesus was serviceable for confirmation of his claim to be the Son of God. In the address of the angel of the annunciation to Mary that claim is expressly rested on the miraculous conception of "the holy thing."[37] But as ethical enlightenment grows, the conviction grows that, whether the physiological ground of that claim be tenable or not, the ethical ground of it is essentially higher. _Father_ and _son_ even in human relationships are terms of more than physiological import. It is matter of frequent experience that, where the ethical character of such relationship is lacking, the physiological counts for nothing. Moreover, the divine sonship of Jesus in a purely ethical view rests on ground not only higher but incontestable. And so in our time theologians prefer to rest it on foundations that cannot be shaken, on his moral oneness with God, the divineness of his spirit, the ideal perfectness of his life. The strength of this position being realized, the world begins to hear from Christian thinkers the innovating affirmation that belief of the miraculous birth can no longer be deemed essential to Christianity; else it would not have been left unmentioned in two of the four Gospels, and in every extant Apostolic letter. And now we hear