In all points, Christianity is emphatically a Supernatural Religion claiming to be divine in its origin, superhuman in its essence and miraculous in its evidence. It cannot be accepted without an absolute belief in Miracles, and those who profess to hold the religion whilst they discredit its supernatural elements--and they are many at the present day--have widely seceded from ecclesiastical Christianity. Miracles, it is true, are external to Christianity in so far as they are evidential, but inasmuch as it is admitted that miracles alone can attest the reality of Divine Revelation they are still inseparable {8} from it; and as the contents of the Revelation are so to say more miraculous than its attesting miracles, the supernatural enters into the very substance of Christianity and cannot be eliminated. It is obvious, therefore, that the reality of miracles is the vital point in the investigation which we have undertaken. If the reality of miracles cannot be established, Christianity loses the only evidence by which its truth can be sufficiently attested. If miracles be incredible the supernatural Revelation and its miraculous evidence must together be rejected. This fact is thoroughly recognized by the ablest Christian divines. Dean Mansel, speaking of the position of miracles in regard to Christianity, says: "The question, however, assumes a very different character when it relates, not to the comparative importance of miracles as evidences, but to their reality as facts, and as facts of a supernatural kind. For if this is denied, the denial does not merely remove one of the supports of a faith which may yet rest securely on other grounds. On the contrary, the whole system of Christian belief with its evidences... all Christianity in short, so far as it has any title to that name, so far as it has any special relation to the person or the teaching of Christ, is overthrown at the same time."(1) A little further on he says: "If there be one fact recorded in Scripture which is entitled, in the fullest sense of the word, to the name of a Miracle, the Resurrection of Christ is that fact. Here, at least, is an instance in which the entire Christian faith must stand or fall with our belief in the supernatural."(2) He, therefore, properly repudiates the view, "which represents the question of the possibility {9}