The proper questions to ask in this connection are therefore :sx ( 1 ) Do you believe in the Divine guidance of the course of events ?sx ( 2 ) Do you believe that there is any indeterminate element in the actions of personality , even within the limits of certain statistical laws regarding the behaviour of matter ?sx ( 3 ) Do you believe in each individual event characterised as a miracle having occurred precisely as stated ?sx The answer to the first two questions must be a plain " Yes .sx " The answer to the third question varies according to the event in question .sx Sometimes it will be a direct negative , sometimes a query , sometimes an affirmative reply , with perhaps the proviso that although an event took place , if we had been there we might have described it differently .sx To make matters plainer we will give briefly an example of each of these cases .sx If we are asked " did Christ or any Christian Saint ever cure disease by mental influence ?sx " we should say " yes " without hesitation .sx We might add that the original account of what happened would not necessarily be ours .sx If we were asked " did Christ walk on the water , or turn water into wine or multiply food ?sx " we should say quite plainly " no , " but again with the proviso that since our account of the events if we had been present would probably have been different , we are not left merely with a blank denial ( which in itself is of small value ) , but with the play of mind upon mind .sx The stories of the marriage feast and the hungry multitude contain , though in crude and primitive terms , the .sx fact that the personality of Jesus transmuted ordinary things into supernatural blessings .sx It seems hardly inappropriate to refer to the famous rendering of the Persian poet :sx " A loaf of bread , a flask of wine .sx .. and thou beside me singing in the wilderness , .sx .. and wilderness were Paradise enow .sx " It was the personality of the Prophet who spake as never man spake which counted on these occasions , and made men forget their hunger , and quench their thirst without fastidiousness .sx For the Christian to lead the supernatural life , then , is not for him to perform conjuring tricks , but habitually to think , speak and act on a level of heroic and supernatural virtue , to live " as seeing Him who is invisible " and to practise infinite love in ordinary intercourse .sx It has never been more clearly defined than in the words of an anonymous writer :sx " Let us lay aside every incumbrance , and the missing of the mark which doth so easily beset us , and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us , looking unto Jesus the pioneer and perfect example of the faith which should be ours .sx " The objection may be raised that this definition of the supernatural merely equates it with that which is above the average .sx This at any rate is not the view of the most recent and weighty judgment upon the subject :sx " The supernatural means the world which manifests more than natural values , the world which has values which stir the sense of the holy and demand to be esteemed as sacred .sx This is the only way in which the distinction can be drawn , but in this way we draw it quite simply every day .sx We cannot distinguish the Natural as the mechanical and the Supernatural as the free , for we do not know how muchfreedom there is in the Natural or how much law in the Supernatural ; nor can it be divided as between the ordinary and the miraculous , for the Natural is some-times the more miraculous , and the Supernatural the common stuff of our daily experience .sx The two are not in opposition , but are so constantly interwoven that nothing may be wholly natural or wholly super-natural .sx Yet our interests in them are different and very definitely distinguish two aspects of our experience .sx Part of what we experience is natural , in the sense that its values are comparative and to be judged as they serve our needs ; and part of it supernatural , in the sense that its values are absolute , to which our needs must submit .sx " We know the Supernatural as it reflects itself in the sense of the holy and has for us absolute value directly and without further argument :sx and the question is not that it exists , but how it exists in its relation to us and our relation to it .sx We can make no more out of arguing abstractly about it than we should out of arguing abstractly , as men long did , about the Natural .sx The supreme task , the task which has more than any other marked human progress , has been to discover the true Supernatural , and this means again to exercise the true sense of the holy , and have the right judgment of the sacred .sx Only as we are related to it and it to us by the right judgment inspired by the right feeling , can we with profit ask :sx `What is the Supernatural ?sx ' .sx " Thus awareness of the reality of the Supernatural is not something added to the sense of the holy and the judgment of the sacred by some kind of argument , say from the natural world .sx Where they are divorced , .sx religion is identified with theology , and theology hung up in the air without any world of its own to work in ; and the reality is sought in the theology , instead of theology being , like other sciences , the study of a reality already given .sx The Supernatural must be inquired into , like the Natural , as a world in which we live and move and have our being , if it is to be inquired into with profit .sx " Nor can we so easily separate the reality of the natural world from the reality of the supernatural as we imagine .sx The reality of the former is not proved merely by the violence of its assault on the senses .sx The difference between us who take it to be the most solid reality and the Indian to whom it is maya is no mere matter of the senses , for the witness of the senses is the same for him as for us .sx The difference concerns a different valuation of the world the senses reveal and a keener response to it in feeling .sx " The position could hardly have been more clearly or decisively put .sx The modern conservative position is that a miracle is not necessarily a violation or supersession of a normal piece of cosmic behaviour , but that whether normal or abnormal it is a direct Act of God , as distinct from an indirect one .sx It bears the same relation to the ordinary happenings of nature as the intervention of the Royal prerogative does to the normal operations of English law , i.e. it is a discretionary move which nevertheless takes place within the one world of experience , and proceeds from the same sovereign source as that which has given its assent to normal legislation .sx I do not know whether readers will think this convincing , or not .sx ( See Bultmann , " Zur Frage des Wunders , " 1933 , in his collected papers .sx ) CHAPTER III .sx THE RELATION OF JESUS TO DEITY .sx " Si la vie et la mort de Socrate sont d'un sage , la vie et la mort de Jesus sont d'un Dieu .sx " J. J. ROUSSEAU .sx IT has ever been a matter of belief on the part of many that the relation of the historical Jesus to Deity was in some special way different in degree , if not in kind , from that enjoyed by any other religious teacher .sx We may assume that in the first instance this difference made itself felt not through the alleged circumstances of His birth , or through any retrospective survey of His career or synopsis of His teaching , since the first were as yet unknown , the second was as yet impossible , and the third was as yet incomplete .sx Nor was it due to any actual doubt as to His full humanity .sx There were , it is true , heretics who denied the latter , and were called Docetics ( , I seem ) because they said that the Lord only seemed to be human ; but those who kept the broad highway of Christian faith rejected such teaching , and like the writer of the first Johannine epistle , and later on , Ignatius , Bishop of Antioch ( ob .sx 110 A.D. ) , proclaimed that Jesus had come in the flesh , and that He truly was born , truly ate and drank , and truly suffered crucifixion .sx Our records suggest that the primary influence which Jesus exercised , and which , as it were , almost coerced men into the conviction that they were dealing with Deity at close quarters , was His actual personality .sx The highest type of prophetic genius among the Semites had always furnished some such impression as this .sx Indeed , it is this feature which creates the alleged unique and majestic authority of the Bible .sx From Abraham to Jesus it is a gallery of portraits of men and women who claim that they are in immediate contact with a Reality of an overwhelming and enthralling nature .sx " The Lord God hath spoken , who can but prophesy .sx " A measure of this same sense of contact is found in , at any rate , the earlier sayings of Mohammed , and is not unknown elsewhere in antiquity , but it seems to flourish most naturally and most perfectly among those who may be called the spiritual kinsmen of the Hebrew prophets .sx We possess few instances of it from modern Judaism ; indeed , there are not many examples of Jews who displayed it after the time of Christ , and the figure of Spinoza stands almost alone , even he not being a normal type among his own people .sx The earliest testimonies to Jesus speak of His unique authority , or say that He " spoke like no one else , " or that He was " a prophet mighty in deed and word .sx " It seems , however , impossible not to allow that even when a severe sifting has taken place , there is strong , even though limited , evidence that Jesus Himself did , by certain phrases which He used , claim a unique relation-ship to the transcendent Deity of whom He spoke .sx His so-called filial consciousness seems to have been something more than that of the most pious and devout of His contemporaries .sx Though others might use the word " Father " in prayer , it was to them one of a number of divine Names .sx To Jesus it was central .sx and though He succeeded in making it central to His followers , He used it Himself with a freedom and a sense of intimacy which they never seem to have displayed , and shows from the beginning of His ministry a growing consciousness of Sonship , which expresses itself in the form of veridical locutions and auditions .sx The evidence we possess does not seem to authenticate the use by Jesus of any word denoting actual identification with the transcendent Deity as applied to Himself , nor does His self-consciousness , as displayed in the earliest stratum of the Gospel narratives , carry us further than this possession of the sense of a unique and isolated relationship between Him and the Father , and the corresponding unique sense of sonship .sx It is , however , difficult to prove that His immediate disciples thought of Him during the whole of His earthly career simply as " one of the prophets , " though they probably began by treating Him as such .sx Towards the close of His career they certainly felt Him to be at least a most exceptional prophet , and by the end of the first century they did not feel it incongruous in view of their experiences to represent Him as having declared :sx " He that hath seen me hath seen the Father .sx " It is from this starting point onward that what is called christology develops , and we shall see that it was not a case of the progressive deification of an ordinary human being by his adoring and enthusiastic followers , but of the gradual discovery by succeeding generations of the only adequate means whereby a very extraordinary human being might be described , without omitting any .sx authentic feature of Christian experience .sx In other .sx words it was a growing into , not growing out of truth .sx