Probably some would have realized less of the spiritual if they had imagined less of the material. You know how the English judges of our times still insist on much of the old pomp and ceremony which in the days of our forefathers was thought necessary in order to make justice venerable. The trumpets, and the javelin-men, and the sheriffs in the procession, the wig and gown and bands in court—they all seem a little ridiculous to most of us now; yet possibly the judges are right in retaining them. Possibly our brutal English nature will need for some decades longer these antique and now meaningless trappings before they will be able to respect the just judge for the sake of justice itself. And in the same way, from the days of Clovis to those of Napoleon, many a man who would have found it impossible to realize the righteous Judge as the invisible wielder of the two-edged sword of the Spirit, has felt a fear, which perhaps did more good than harm, at the thought of the opening graves, the unclothed trembling dead, the thunder-pealing verdict and the flames of a material hell. Who also can deny that the illusion which has represented Jesus as having possessed and exerted the power to cure every imaginable disease of the body, has led many to realize Him as the Healer of something more than material disease, in a manner otherwise impossible for masses of men living under an oppression which often scarcely left them the consciousness that they possessed anything but bodies wherewith to serve their masters? Do not suppose, because I am forced by evidence to reject the miracles, that I am blind to the part that they once played in facilitating faith in Christ. A whole essay, a volume of essays might be written on that subject, without fear of exaggeration. The Miraculous Conception, the Miraculous Resurrection and Ascension, the miracles of the feeding of the four thousand and of the five thousand,—it would be quite possible to shew from Christian literature and history, how in times gone by, when laws of nature were unrecognized, these supposed incidents of Christ’s life not only found their way into men’s minds without hesitation and without a strain upon intellect or conscience, but also conveyed to the human heart, each in its own way, some deep spiritual truth satisfying some deep spiritual need. It is the old lesson once more repeated: the eyes take in, as a picture, what the ears fail to convey to the brain or heart, when expressed in mere words.