This view of the miracle renders entirely unnecessary and irrational the treatment accorded to the Scripture narratives by some modern theologians. There is a credulity of scepticism, which minimizes the miraculous element in the Bible and treats it as mythical or legendary, in spite of clear evidence that it belongs to the realm of actual history. Pfleiderer, Philos. Relig., 1:295—“Miraculous legends arise in two ways, partly out of the idealizing of the real, and partly out of the realizing of the ideal.... Every occurrence may obtain for the religious judgment the significance of a sign or proof of the world-governing power, wisdom, justice or goodness of God.... Miraculous histories are a poetic realizing of religious ideas.” Pfleiderer quotes Goethe’s apothegm: “Miracle is faith’s dearest child.” Foster, Finality of the Christian Religion, 128-138—“We most honor biblical miraculous narratives when we seek to understand them as poesies.” Ritschl defines miracles as “those striking _natural_ occurrences with which the experience of God’s special help is connected.” He leaves doubtful the bodily resurrection of Christ, and many of his school deny it; see Mead, Ritschl’s Place in the History of Doctrine, 11. We do not need to interpret Christ’s resurrection as a mere appearance of his spirit to the disciples. Gladden, Seven Puzzling Books, 202—“In the hands of perfect and spiritual man, the forces of nature are pliant and tractable as they are not in ours. The resurrection of Christ is only a sign of the superiority of the life of the perfect spirit over external conditions. It may be perfectly in accordance with nature.” Myers, Human Personality, 2:288—“I predict that, in consequence of the new evidence, all reasonable men, a century hence, will believe the resurrection of Christ.” We may add that Jesus himself intimates that the working of miracles is hereafter to be a common and natural manifestation of the new life which he imparts: _John 14:12—_“He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do, because I go unto the Father.”